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4meAndyou · F
I used to work in the local homeless shelter, which was for families with children. WHILE working there I became very cynical about the reasons for homelessness.
One of my jobs was to wear rubber gloves, and search ALL the pockets of ALL the clothing of incoming residents for syringes and needles. Boy, I hated THAT part of the job.
While it is true that women with very young children who are trying to escape their bad marriage need a place to go, (and I am all for that), there were an equal number of massively fat women whose conservation of energy was beyond belief.
Watching two parents with three children so mired in their drugs that they lived in a tent in Myles Standish with them during three weeks of pouring rain, while their children had nothing dry to wear, mold growing on all their clothes, lice in their hair, and feet beginning to rot because they had rubber boots but no socks...was horrifying. REALLY horrifying. After we got them all to the shelter, watching these same two parents sleep almost 24 hours a day while the kids ran wild all through the hallways unsupervised was very NEARLY as horrifying.
Trying to get some of these people motivated to get up off their rear ends and get a job was like pulling teeth. Most employers didn't want them because they were so lazy. We had a re-training program, and schooling available, but most of them couldn't get up off the sofa to go to school. We had to roust them out.
One family drove up HERE from South Carolina because the homeless shelters down there wouldn't take them on with their five kids. The mother was a sofa blob...wouldn't move unless it was to hoist herself up and feed herself, and the father was the laziest piece of sh!t I have ever seen. It was SO hard to get him OUT of the shelter to go to training.
I would assume that by now, thankfully, their kids are all grown and moved away from them. Without kids, adults have to stay in shelters for single men and women, and I would bet you anything the two of them are in single adult shelters right now.
One hugely fat woman was asked to make a wish for her Christmas gift, and instead of thinking of something that she or her son actually needed, she asked for a $200 cookbook called "Konditor Meister". All she could think about was eating cakes and desserts.
I watched one young woman have a bad trip on the floor in the hallway. She kept saying that another one of our residents was the devil. She ran into her room where her 3 year old son was sleeping, and barricaded herself in. We pounded on the door but she wouldn't let us in. Finally, one of the residents came and told me, in the morning, that her car was gone. She had taken her little three year old out the window in the back, sneaked around to her car, put it in neutral, and pushed it out of the parking lot. I was forced to call CPS. I don't think they ever found her.
ONE woman, who was bi-polar, used to come into the office late at night when she was manic. She tried to frighten me, threatening to jump across my desk and grab my throat, but when I wouldn't frighten, she was cool with me. We played Scrabble, mostly, and one night it was so bad I let her re-arrange the furniture.
Anyway...I could go on and on...but the mental illness, the sheer laziness and the drugs made me lose what sympathy I once had...the sympathy that made me want to work there and help them.
One of my jobs was to wear rubber gloves, and search ALL the pockets of ALL the clothing of incoming residents for syringes and needles. Boy, I hated THAT part of the job.
While it is true that women with very young children who are trying to escape their bad marriage need a place to go, (and I am all for that), there were an equal number of massively fat women whose conservation of energy was beyond belief.
Watching two parents with three children so mired in their drugs that they lived in a tent in Myles Standish with them during three weeks of pouring rain, while their children had nothing dry to wear, mold growing on all their clothes, lice in their hair, and feet beginning to rot because they had rubber boots but no socks...was horrifying. REALLY horrifying. After we got them all to the shelter, watching these same two parents sleep almost 24 hours a day while the kids ran wild all through the hallways unsupervised was very NEARLY as horrifying.
Trying to get some of these people motivated to get up off their rear ends and get a job was like pulling teeth. Most employers didn't want them because they were so lazy. We had a re-training program, and schooling available, but most of them couldn't get up off the sofa to go to school. We had to roust them out.
One family drove up HERE from South Carolina because the homeless shelters down there wouldn't take them on with their five kids. The mother was a sofa blob...wouldn't move unless it was to hoist herself up and feed herself, and the father was the laziest piece of sh!t I have ever seen. It was SO hard to get him OUT of the shelter to go to training.
I would assume that by now, thankfully, their kids are all grown and moved away from them. Without kids, adults have to stay in shelters for single men and women, and I would bet you anything the two of them are in single adult shelters right now.
One hugely fat woman was asked to make a wish for her Christmas gift, and instead of thinking of something that she or her son actually needed, she asked for a $200 cookbook called "Konditor Meister". All she could think about was eating cakes and desserts.
I watched one young woman have a bad trip on the floor in the hallway. She kept saying that another one of our residents was the devil. She ran into her room where her 3 year old son was sleeping, and barricaded herself in. We pounded on the door but she wouldn't let us in. Finally, one of the residents came and told me, in the morning, that her car was gone. She had taken her little three year old out the window in the back, sneaked around to her car, put it in neutral, and pushed it out of the parking lot. I was forced to call CPS. I don't think they ever found her.
ONE woman, who was bi-polar, used to come into the office late at night when she was manic. She tried to frighten me, threatening to jump across my desk and grab my throat, but when I wouldn't frighten, she was cool with me. We played Scrabble, mostly, and one night it was so bad I let her re-arrange the furniture.
Anyway...I could go on and on...but the mental illness, the sheer laziness and the drugs made me lose what sympathy I once had...the sympathy that made me want to work there and help them.
Heartlander · 80-89, M
@4meAndyou one cause of overweight poor is dirt cheap junk food. Meanwhile food stamps get traded for disposable Pampers and what real food is left gets consumed by undocumented boyfriend. Meanwhile the poor get caged in inner City project housing and jobs moved to the suburbs, beyond the reach of cars with broken tail lights and expired tags. Too risky a drive for someone with an outstanding arrest warrant from a no-show because of the last time they tried to make that drive.
4meAndyou · F
@Heartlander That might be true for some people. The people who lived in our shelter had access to lots of healthy food every week, free, over and above their food stamps. One or two of them may have been from the inner city, but most were from the suburbs. SOME of them even owned their own vehicles.
That was a long time ago. Today, the shelter where I worked is full of women and children from Haiti.
That was a long time ago. Today, the shelter where I worked is full of women and children from Haiti.