Chapter 22: When They Rip Us Off

(This is chapter 22 of "Up and Out," a book condensing my long experience about how to best help poor people.  I pledged earlier to get it up online as soon as possible, so it would be available for free to everyone trying to cope with helping the Katrina evacuees.)

(These are not things that need to be done during the first part of this emergency.  Rather, this is for the time after that, when Katrina evacuees will be moving from getting immediate emergency assistance to trying to normalize their lives.  That is when good programs to help them "up and out" of their situation need to kick in.  The following is for that time.)

(For other chapters, look under "Categories" and click on the chapter you want.)

UP AND OUT: A GUIDE TO TRUE COMPASSION FOR THE POOR"

PART II: MOVING UP AND BREAKING OUT OF POVERTY

Section 2: Attitude Adjustments for Helpers

Chapter 22: When They Rip Us Off

There is a story I told in Out of the Iron Furnace that may be worth repeating here.

It happened while I was still in jail before being sent to prison.  Because they believed I was a dangerous Communist revolutionary, I was kept locked up by myself most of the time.  I was in the “trusty” tank with the other women, but my cell door was kept locked.  The others were locked in only at bedtime.

My best friend in there was Pat, a tall, good-looking young black woman.  She was head trusty.  We spent much time talking.  Sometimes Tony, her adopted jail “child”, would be with her.

One day after she finished work, she came to my cell looking troubled.  She asked me if I knew that someone had been stealing from me.  I did not.

The way that happened was that we could not have money with us, but were allowed to keep money with the matrons.  In the evenings, a matron would come to the tank door and let the women order snacks from the commissary with whatever cash they had in their accounts.

Pat told me that Tony and her young friends had been ordering a lot of snacks at night out of my funds.  They told the matron they were doing it for me, since I was locked in and could not come to the door myself to order what I wanted.  Then they took the snacks, supposedly to bring them to me, and ate them.

“Your money is all gone,” Pat told me.  “What are you going to do about it?” 

I thought a minute.  “Nothing,” I shrugged.

“Why not?” Pat wanted to know.

“Well,” I said, “I have money and she doesn’t.”

Pat’s eyes narrowed—a bad sign.  She put her hands on her hips, dropped back a step from my bars and looked me up and down slowly.  I was getting uneasy.

Finally, head back, lip curled, she almost sneered, “You call yourself some kind of teacher?”

“Yes,” I told her, puzzled.

“Then just what do you think you’re teaching Tony?”

Thinking a minute first, I replied, “That there is at least one white who is compassionate and not a racist.”

Pat lost it then.  She yelled at me, “Dummy!  You’re teaching her to be a thief, that’s what you’re teaching her!”  Without taking her eyes off me she yelled over her shoulder, “Tony! Get over here!”

Tony ambled up, smiling and unsuspecting.  Pat lit into her immediately.  “What did this woman ever do to you?” she yelled close to Tony’s face, pointing to me.  “Answer me!” She was getting louder.  “Just tell me, what did this woman ever do to you?”

“Nothing.”  Tony’s voice was defiant.

“Then why were you stealing from her?  Tell me that! “Why?”  Tony lost her defiance and started trembling.  Pat got a tiny bit less loud.  “Don’t you remember all those times we talked, about how you weren’t ever going to steal anymore?”

“Yes.”  Tony was both trembling and crying now.

“Well?  Are you ever going to steal anything again?”

“No ma’m.”  Tony was looking down at the floor, trying to disappear.

“Do you promise?”

“Yes ma’m.”

After a few more minutes of this, they walked off together, their arms around each other, leaving me doing some of the heaviest thinking of my life.  It was one of those life-changing moments.  I knew that Pat knew more about Tony than I did; that she, not I, was the one who had done what was best for Tony.  Obviously, my thinking had to change.

What watching Pat and Tony taught me was that when you let people rip you off, you are not doing them any favor.  On the contrary, you are just confirming them in bad behavior.  You just make it more certain that they will do the same thing to someone else later.  Thanks to Pat, I learned that the only kind and loving thing to do is to bring them up short.  To tell them, “You’re not going to do that.”  And tell them why.  Tell them how bad it is for them.

The next time you are tempted to let someone get away with ripping you off because of a misguided sense of compassion, remember my story.  Remember Pat.  And don’t do it! 

Staff people should be very vigilant not to let their volunteers get ripped off by a client.  Getting “burned” by a client has caused many green volunteers to stop volunteering altogether.  They can be so disillusioned and disheartened that they give up on helping the poor.

Staff people need to be diligent in teaching volunteers that clients may try to rip them off.  They need to be trained in handling that situation.  They need to be taught, first, not to let it happen and why, and second, if it does happen, not to just overlook it.  Someone, whether a volunteer or a staff person, needs to confront the situation, and right away.

Remember, this confrontation is not just to protect the one being ripped off.  It is also to help turn around the one doing the ripping off.

Staff should be alert to spotting situations where clients are taking undue advantage of volunteers.  For instance, one LIFT client got a volunteer retired couple to find and donate to her a used dryer.  When they got to her apartment with the dryer, she had these older people carry the heavy dryer in.  When it did not fit, she got them to carry it back out, return it, find another of the right size, load it on the trailer they had rented, bring it back, unload it and carry it in too.  She could have caused them serious physical injury.  It should have not been allowed.

Another LIFT client had a technique that began by asking for a ride home with her baby.  When almost home, she would ask to just swing by a relative’s house nearby first. 

The relative was actually not nearby, but some distance away.  She would go in, to get back money she had loaned the relative, she would say.  She would be inside 15 or 20 minutes, then come storming out, swearing and angry, saying they would not pay her. 

Then, almost to her house again, she would ask to go to the grocery first, saying she had no milk for the baby.  When about to go in the grocery, she would say she had no money.  Could we give her some money?  When she came out, she had just one more place she needed to go before she went home.  And so it went.       

She was good.  It took us awhile before we compared notes and found that she was doing the same thing to several of us.  Getting away with that kind of exploitative behavior was not teaching her anything good.  And it certainly was not good for us either.

Getting ripped off may seem like a small thing.  Making a fuss about it may seem entirely too much.  But in a situation where there is a concern to help someone grow and change, letting them rip someone off is not the right thing to do.  Stopping them, confronting them, and explaining why, is the only way to be kind and loving about it.