Homeless Helen and the Employment Application

Homeless people and Starbucks seem to sort of gravitate toward one another - like moths to a flame, fat girls to peanut butter fudge ripple (don't rag on me - I have a special weakness for Ben & Jerry's peanut butter cup) or heroin addicts to a needle and a spoon. Starbucks cafes provide a place to get in out of the elements, a place to sit and a clean bathroom - things usually lacking in the "no housing wilds."

Now, I *seriously* do not want to be seen to be making fun of the homeless. I've had some skinny months - and bounced my share of rent checks. And yes, I've written a credit card check to cover the rent. For two weeks in grad school until I could find an apartment, I "lived" in, on and around the couches of various friends and seriously wore out my welcome. But I had money and friends and was never in danger of being thrown out of anything - even if I did get a ginormous crick in my neck.

Where was I? Starbucks. Homeless people.

I arrive for my evening mocha and dose of Starbucks drama only to find I missed all the fun.

There was apparently a homeless person begging for work. Which isn't all that unusual - except said homeless person decided to beg for work while the manager was counting money with the safe wide open and that the homeless person decided to walk around behind the counter and personally confront the manager while he had the safe open and bundles of cash in his arms. Maybe the homeless woman was detached from reality (joblessness will do that to you) and maybe it was just prep for a robbery.

I got the full chapter-and-verse replay to excited crowd of ex-baristas and off-duty baristas who rolled by for a latte and cheap (read free) pastries on their way to somewhere. This particular SBUX is like a magnet for current and former coffee-slingers.

Apparently, the woman had come in about twenty minutes before and ordered a tall coffee and a pastry. Nothing untoward about that. She's sat out on the patio even though it was raining - again, nothing odd, because it is cold as hell up in this SBUX and maybe she wanted to smoke or something.

Anyway. The lady drinks her coffee and eats her pastry and apparently the crazy balls start popping in her internal Lotto hopper and the "I'm going to go beg for a job" number ping-ponged to the surface.

So, as near as I can piece this together, from four excited baristas and ex-baristas and lots of squeals of "I'M SO GLAD THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN TO MEEEEE!"

MANAGER: I'm counting, I'm counting, I raking in the dough. Merrily, merrily, merrily, to Starbucks the world will go!

HOMELESS LADY: "Are you hiring?"
MANAGER: "Aaaaaaahhhhhhh." And he mimed clutching a stack of twenties to his chest. Seriously. Who puts the safe RIGHT UNDER THE PASTRY CASE?


HOMELESS LADY: "I really need a job. Are you hiring here?"

MANAGER: "Uhhhhhh. I really don't think so......."

HOMELESS LADY: "Maybe you need somebody part-time?"

MANAGER: "We're really not hiring anyone right now."

HOMELESS LADY: "I really need a job. I haven't worked since last May."

MANAGER: "I'm really sorry to hear that."

HOMELESS LADY: "I have to work. I lost my house. I don't have any money."

And this is apparently when the woman edges around behind the counter. According to the manager, she was "crazy-looking," but never really looked like she might go for the cash. You never know though. People are strange.

MANAGER: "I'm really sorry." Tries to shut the safe.

HOMELESS LADY: "I only have $34 left." Left unsaid is the fact that she apparently just spent $4 on a coffee and pastry at the Starbucks in stead of going across the road and getting a fifty-cent cup of coffee at the Hess station. Who knows.

MANAGER: "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."

HOMELESS LADY: "Are you sure you're not hiring?"

MANAGER: "Really. I'm sorry. We're not hiring." Manages to close safe and realizes he's left with an armful of singles - which isn't a lot of money - but might be a significant haul to Madame Thirty-Four over here.

HOMELESS LADY: "Ohhhhhhhhh. I gotta getta job." Apparently, this was a moan.

MANAGER: "Uhhhhhhhh."

And apparently the woman started to cry and ran out.

I feel bad for her. I really do. And I just don't know how to handle it any better.

Because customer service training can only take you so far in so many situations. Empathy or not, what do you do with a jobless, homeless, not-quite-right person in your lobby who is putting themselves and you into a very awkward situation just by standing around asking the wrong questions at the wrong time?


This Starbucks seems to attract the homeless sort.

A homeless person once took up semi-permanent residence there years ago. It was summer and he slept in the woods at night and more or less moved into the men's room during the day. The door locked, so he came in early in the morning and locked himself in. If you tried the door,  you just thought someone else was in there - who would think to bother with the traffic a Starbucks gets?

Apparently - and I found this out after the fact - it went on for a couple weeks. The store staff realized after a couple days that the was holed up in there, but were a bunch of softies and sympathized with him. He wasn't hugely smelly or nasty, just homeless. First, one of the baristas tried to talk to him, then the manager. They offered to let him sit in the lobby or outside and give him food at the end of the night.

He wanted privacy to do whatever it is that men do in private, apparently. And was at least honest about it.

Which resulted in a call to the police. Said po-pos didn't do much more than give him a good stern "what for" and taking him off to the local homeless mission, which resulted in the homeless guy wandering back in two days later and locking himself in the bathroom.

So the cops come again. Take him off again. He shows up again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Which is actually starting to get necessay, because the guy is starting to get a bit rough around the edges. Apparently, the woodsman lifestyle isn't sitting so well with him - and at this point in the story, I see him for the first time.

He's sort of like the New York City homeless people. And he stinks. Whatever he's doing in that bathroom, he isn't using taking advantage of the unlimited soap, water and paper towels to bathe, shave and tend to necessary matters of sanitation.

It is a public health issue when the cops show up this time - and Mr. Smelly goes off to the stockade - which might have been his cunning plan. Three hots and a cot had to have been better than the Starbucks bathroom....