To think the cafe staff should have given the money to this homeless man?

[Eastie77Returns]

I went to a cafe earlier today. There was a man outside who regularly sits with a sign stating he is homeless and asking for money. At one point a man came in, handed a member of the cafe staff a £20 note and left. It turned out he had given the staff this money to buy a meal for the homeless man who subsequently came into the cafe and ordered some food and drink. It was clearly a regular occurrence as the staff member automatically knew to charge the bill to the £20. When she had rung everything up she handed the man his meal and he asked for his change. She refused and said “No, the money is only to be used for food here. You know this. If you want to use any of the change you can order something else tomorrow”

The homeless man became angry and shouted that he wanted his money. The whole episode escalated and he began banging a table. A male member of staff eventually escorted/pushed him outside.

AIBU to think the cafe should have just given him the money??

YABU. The donor did not give the man £20. He gave the cafe £20 to provide food/drink for the man. Therefore the money belonged to the cafe.

The cafe told the man that he knew it was for food, so it has likely happened before.

If the donor wanted the man to have £20 he would have handed it to him direct, which he did not do.

Nope.

But if you lived in an area with a high level of homelessness then, unless you are being deliberately obtuse, you wouldn't be asking this question.

There is a small group of homeless people that hang around begging outside the local shops a few hundreds yards from where I live. Most of them are relatively harmless, but there's the occasional drunken / drug-induced outburst from one of them. They are banned from going into the shops due to shoplifting offences. One of them died in an alley next to the COOP a couple of years ago from a drug overdose. Someone probably gave them a few pounds that paid for those drugs (maybe as little as the £7 change mentioned by OP). I would not want that on my conscience & no doubt the donor / cafe don't either.

This ^. Also, the cafe was being very reasonable as they had also told him that he could come back the next day and buy food/drink to the value of the money that was left over. If he starts threatening/intimidating the staff, the staff should just terminate the arrangement.

Omg you know what the member of staff no doubt has to deal with this lunacy every day on minimum wage with no training having NOT volunteered for working with mentally unwell local homeless people while people like you who DON’T have to do this sit there judging how well they handle it. You go in there once and cast judgement when you have no understanding of the situation.

I used to have this situation - a woman would come in, go round table to table in the place, tears in her eyes. We’d ask her to leave and she’d cry ohhh how evil the staff are at this cruuuuel establishment. And the patrons would gasp and say ooh that wasn’t very generous, how would it have hurt you to let her go round collecting some money?

welll a) actually yes, it is damaging to a hospitality business as it makes customers uncomfortable and stops them wanting to come back and considering the margins are tiny, to avoid becoming homeless themselves, hospitality owners need to, you know, try to keep customers?

B) it makes people feel uncomfortable and if she was a man people wouldn’t have felt so much sympathy!

but most importantly c) she wasn’t homeless, or poverty stricken, she was a hideous con artist who went venue to venue all over the county with her pitiful girlfriend driving her round in their brand new bmw with their incredibly expensive tiny dog (you know, the car and dog she bought by being a drug dealer and con artist). And she was a nasty piece of work who we were sick and tired of coming in, conning our customers, trying to take the place over as a dealing spot, and just generally smirking at us when customers would tel us WE were the heartless bastards.

and so yes, you are unreasonable because you have no idea of the back story.

the man who leaves the money is the one with the issue frankly because he’s putting the responsibility on wait staff instead of going to the shop and buying food for the guy himself. And there’s every chance the reason they say no is that if they give him money he goes straight next door, buys vodka and comes back later aggressive and drunk.

are all homeless people aggressive drunken addicts? No. But there is by the very nature of it a higher percentage of these problems when people are homeless so it isn’t unreasonable to float them as a possible reason this staff memeber refused him the money.

here are other possible reasons:
he used to come in and kick off demanding food and this guy said he would pay 20quid a week for food. If they give him the change, he then doesn’t have any money left for food in the establishment for the rest of the week but he still comes in demanding food. So who pays for the food? The staff? The owner? Is that their job?

he has in the past asked they don’t give him the change because he will spend it unwisely - he’s in need of a fix of whatever so he’s asking for it but she’s sticking to his original wishes.

the man who gave the money said it’s just for food (because he, for his own right or wrong reasons, doesn’t want to give money if he doesn’t know what it’s being spent on) and the staff member is respecting his wishes.

Or the staff think homeless people are all drunken drug addicts and doesn’t want to give him change - this is a bias they hold. And while not all homeless people are this way, and not all not homeless people are not this way, THIS guy is clearly aggressive yet they still show care for him. and for some reason you’ve decided THEY are in the wrong???

you are so unreasonable.

In that case then the donor would’ve given the money directly to the homeless man. There’s a reason he gave it to the cafe. The donor and the cafe staff obviously have an understanding between them about how this should be used, and it’s none of your business.

Then you donate £20 to the cafe and stipulate he can have the change.

Or give him £20 directly.

That's your choice.

The benefactor made his choice.

The guy giving the £20 didn’t give it directly to the homeless man for a reason. They are obviously familiar with him and have that arrangement for a reason. It probably isn't drugs but very likely he would just buy alcohol and not eat any food. Presumably at the cafe he gets hot food with some nutritional value and some left for tomorrow.

So, if the donor often brings £20 into the cafe to feed this homeless man, why doesn't he just give the money directly to the man? It's highly likely the donor knows the homeless man's back story and knows what he would spend the surplus cash on if he were given it. YABU OP. It's clear, judging by the cafe worker's response, that this isn't the first time this has happened and I think you need to accept that you don't know the full circumstances.

This is exactly what happens in our town. Half of the people who are homeless have a room is a hostel, or so,times even a house but choose to sleep rough to be close to the dealer. The other half have homes but earn good money from begging. I worked in town for many years and some of my customers were from the council’s homeless team. They really opened my eyes to the complexities of homelessness in the uk.

But you aren't the donor. You are making the assumption that the donor would want the homeless man to have the change. You don't know if this is a regular thing and the staff know what the donor wants. You should really just mind your own business. Or give the guy some cash.

Why couldn’t you just trust that the cafe staff understand the situation of this man and are acting in his best interests? Why do you think as a casual observer who doesn’t deal with this man on a regular basis that you’d know better?

My partner works in this area and he would never advise giving money, always food and warm drinks.

I don't know. If the bloke who donated the money wanted the man to have it he would be just bought him a sandwich and handed him the change? Or just gave him a twenty.

I guess the shop are being annoyed by his antics as if he's a crack head he might be really annoying, or he might be putting other customers off.

Next time just give this bloke some money yourself.

You weren't the donor though. And you have no idea what the donor would have wanted. Apart from not to give the man actual cash, obviously.

How much cash did you give the person btw?

If you remove the word “homeless” from the scenario, it may be clearer to see the financial transaction (between the first man and the cafe) is completely separate from the exchange of goods (between the cafe and the second man).

If a person bought a £20 gift card for me, from John Lewis, I would then have £20 credit to spend in John Lewis. I would not be able to spend £13 and then ask for the £7 change so I could spend it in Marks & Spencer.
The purchaser has already given the £20 to John Lewis, the £20 belongs to John Lewis, not me. They do not owe me any money but they do owe me £20 worth of goods or services of my choosing within the store’s terms and conditions.
I can use that gift card amount in one transaction or I can split it over multiple transactions.

Going back to the scenario in the cafe, the first man bought a £20 cafe tab (store credit) for the second man.
The cafe is honouring that.

You sound quite naive OP.

If he’d just have spent the money on other items that weren’t drink or drugs. presumably the kind benefactor wouldn’t have felt the need to issue the cash and an instruction to the cafe.

No good deed goes unpunished right enough, people have done a good thing here and you still have to pull up your judgy pants that it wasn’t good enough

The doner could have given the homeless man the money if he wanted him to have cash. He didn't, he gave it to the cafe. So it would be wrong for the cafe to have given him the change. It wasn't either of their money to choose what to do with. It has been donated for a particular purpose. Maybe you disagree with that way of donating, in which case your argument is with the doner not the cafe, but they were right to do as requested with it.

That's a good analogy

It really isn't a big leap at all.

But the person who is giving the cafe £20 on a regular basis to feed the man a meal in all likelihood does know why the man has ended up how he has and with this background knowledge has on told the cafe not to give him cash.

The fact the cafe worker spoke to the man in a way that seems to indicate that he does often ask for the change in cash full well knowing what the arrangement is suggests that the donor does not want the recipient to spend the money in a way that the recipient chooses, which does suggests it would be spend on drugs or alcohol.

It doesn't matter what he might have wanted to buy with it, the first man gave the money to the cafe for a specific reason. If he'd wanted the "homeless" man (because a lot of people asking for money aren't homeless at all) to have it he would have given him £20 directly.

Perhaps the cafe worker was patronising, but equally perhaps she'd be arsey with anyone who kicked off and had to be escorted out on a regular basis - the fact that she said "you know this" suggests it's not the first time he's done this.

Behave like a dick, don't be surprised people will treat you like one. If you get something for free, kicking off (at minimum wage staff who are only doing their job) because you can't get more stuff for free is shitty behaviour regardless of your circumstances.

If he'd really wanted a deodorant or sandwich he could have asked if he could go and get one and then a staff member could meet him at the till and pay for it with the change - perhaps they would have said no but it would be more likely to have worked than kicking off. Or he could have asked the donating man (as clearly they had some conversation or he wouldn't have known to come straight in and ask for food) to get him those things instead.

You don't know the rules around people paying for others - she might be at risk of disciplinary or even losing her job if she deliberately gave person 2 person 1's change.

If you cared so much why didn't you give him money to buy whatever he wanted?

Imagine eating a meal deal everyday. Maybe the person wanted them to have a cooked meal. We don’t know enough info to cast judgement. Kind of the donor to donate to them & the staff in the cafe for putting up with his outburst I am sure not for the first time.

Why is everyone assuming he planned to use the money on drugs? Quite the leap

The vast majority of rough sleepers in the UK have substance/alcohol abuse issues.

For years I'd been buying food/drink/items for homeless people.

I really had my thinking challenged by a CEO of a national poverty charity.

By buying things for homeless people, you are further removing what little autonomy or dignity they may have left.

And if a drug/alcohol fuelled buzz keeps them warm on the streets at night and dulls them to their daily hell, then it's understandable.

So I now give cash. I recognise this isn't a popular opinion, but I'm choosing to give people back a little humanity.

OP, you have no idea what the donor's instructions were. The fact that he gave the money to the cafe, and not directly to the homeless person, would suggest that he wanted it to be spent in the cafe only.

I've volunteered with homeless people, and the sad truth is that lots of them do have problems with drugs and alcohol. I can't say I blame them, as life on the streets is miserable, but there is nothing unreasonable about people wanting to help without feeding the habit. For all you know, the cafe may have been given strict instructions by the donor not to give the cash to the homeless man.