When Giving Is Just A Pain In The Ass

                                                                   

Two weeks ago our local paper reported that our local Vally View Community Food Bank may be forced to close its doors. Demand is high and donations are not matching the demand.

Valley View Food Bank, I thought, had a pretty smart idea. They located themselves in a an old strip mall, to keep costs down. In one side of the very large building they run a thrift shop, on the other, the food bank. Any profits from the thrift shop goes toward paying lease rent and buying bagging supplies and such, with any left over to buy additional non-donated food in bulk. Alas, again, Valley View is not making enough to meet their lease costs and associated supplies.

So they took their enterprise one step further. Outside, in the parking lot, they set up a row of tables and offered a large supply of fruits and veggies...whatever would fit in a 2.5 foot square veggie bin....and charged ten dollars for it. For that ten dollars a shopper gets ten pounds of potatoes, a large bag of carrots, a 2lb bag of Asparagus, a head of iceberg lettuce, a head of cabbage, four cucumbers, a small basket of Roma tomatoes, a five pound bag of pinto beans, a bag of turnip greens, five pounds of apples, five pounds of oranges and a five pound bag of onions.

                                                          

So, this morning, I drove over to donate some clothing and household items. As I started to pull into a parking slot two Black ladies in a late model Cadillac Escallade cut in front of me and took the spot. Big deal, I had to walk an extra ten feet to the front of the store.

So I took my donations into their thrift shop, then came back out of the store. And I stood and watched as those same two Black ladies were giving that poor volunteer at the vegetable market pure hell for charging $10 bucks for that huge vegetable and fruit package.

The volunteer was trying to explain that the ladies could go into the food bank and get food and meats but that these bulk vegetables and fruits were being sold to support the associated costs of operating the food bank. The two ladies weren't having it; "Ah already been in the food bank and ah already got the stuff in there...why you be SELLING this stuff! You'se gets this stuff for free and now you be ripping people off!"

I just shook my head and walked to my car, not feeling good at all...just feeling sick to my stomach. The "entitlement generation" is alive and well! Geesh!