Politics of the Business

I'm still wondering how I managed to drag myself out of bed this morning. As it happened, my parents were having me fulfill some of the "true spirit of the season". (Yeah, I know all my latest posts have been seasonal, but this one has - might have - a point to it). Anyways, there I was, up at an undecent hour without all that much sleep, heading downtown to prepare food donations and then feed Edmonton's poor at the Bissell. I guess at first I really wasn't too happy with the notion of being up so early that you really don't know what's going on or why people are talking to you. So as I was pooring juice for the homeless I rapidly took down some "mental notes" for this Blog. For the humour part of this entry, I thought it's worthwhile to mention that the 200 and some homeless people who I encountered this morning we're, for the most part, happy. Or, as I once heard, "They get to push a shopping cart around all day without anyone asking them if they want the extra warranty". The similarities between them, other the being poor were few and far between. Everyone who's homeless is bound to have a different story and different background. What it came down to was that every man there was wearing a hat from his former plaec of work. Ti-co, Lazman, Co-op, Inland, Penetrode (not) and a handle of construction companies. How strange is that, everyone advertises for the place that laid them off? I'm talking about baseball caps by the way, not warm toques that would serve an obvious purpose. Another amazing characteristic of the street people is that, contrary to their rash stereotype, around 90% of them are actually pretty damn polite. I was thanked by scores and wished happy new year by a good number of them. Although often their behaviour seems strange, I guess I learnt today that sometimes it can be a mental or physical problem. Think about it, how often do you think these people were injected with flu shots when they were younger. It's predicted that astonishing numbers of them have hepatitis c, as destructive as that may sound. Otherwise, I saw brochures around about self-health testing, and seemingly less important things like a PAP test. (If you don't know what it is, don't "google" it. God. Who cares if Merriam-Webster made it a word? He's dead. That's that). Consequently, I guess that oftentimes we just don't think things through before stocking others. Anyhow, as these people lined up for food and the left over christmas presents that were donated (think about it, they're living off donations alone) they all wanted the same thing, plastic bags. Yeah, plastic bags like they bag your groceries with at Safeway.

I don't know why, but at least 7 out of 10 people would ask if I had any plastic bags. Furthermore, they would always be extremely polite about it, as if this had some impact on the number of bags I would be giving them. Unfortunately, I don't keep bags in my back pocket so none was usually the number of choice.

I guess that in the end, nothing will ever change because we only realise others' hardships when they hit close to home.