While driving to work this morning, I was listening to a morning radio show and the deejay talked about how he was robbed over the weekend.
His story, in paraphrased fashion, was this:
While at a drive thru late one night this past weekend, an averagely dressed college-aged guy was trying to get someone to break a hundred dollar bill for him, since the drive thru couldn’t accept that big of a bill.
When he approached the deejay’s vehicle, the deejay said he didn’t have change but offered five bucks out of his center console.
The drive thru employee said she couldn’t take an order since he was not in a vehicle. When the deejay said he’d buy it from his car, the woman said the man in question had to be in an actual vehicle to purchase food from the drive thru window.
So, the deejay allowed the guy to get into his car. After the food was purchased, the deejay drove into a spot to let the guy get back out.
Instead of getting out, the guy looked at him and told him he wanted more money.
When the deejay said he didn’t have any more on him, the guy told him to open up the console, where he saw two $20 bills and took them.
But the deejay wasn’t a pushover. He grabbed the money back.
He told the con guy to get out of his car, but the guy refused, stating he wasn’t leaving without the money. The deejay rolled down the window and threw the money out into the parking lot, and told him if he wanted it, he’d have to go get it.
While thinking about the cleverness of that tactic, I also started thinking about how shoddy of a situation it was. I’ll also point out that the deejay told the story a lot better, because while listening, I really got the impression the guy didn’t have any ulterior motives.
When I arrived at work this morning, I started my Monday-morning-ritual of doing the police blotters. When I read one in particular, I immediately thought back to the deejay’s story.
On Sept. 26, a woman said she encountered a "suspicious person" at the Dollar General in Richmond Hill. While walking from her car to the store, a woman approached her and asked if she could speak with her for a minute. After showing off a ring she was wearing, she told the complainant she needed money. She said she had four children, and asked if the complainant would buy her a box of crackers from inside the store.
When the woman said no, the suspect tried to rip the woman’s necklace off of her neck.
Really?!
There are always options. And I guess it’s just sad to see when people pick the most rotten one as the "answer" to their current problem(s).
The blotters tell alleged stories of people breaking into gas stations just to steal a case of beer; neighbors stealing A/C units out of each others’ windows; people breaking into homes and when they don’t find what they’re looking for, they just leave.
As the deejay’s story goes to show, sometimes there’s a master plan. Other times, it often sounds like an afterthought.
I don’t get it.
And the deejay’s story really got to me because, as he said, he never would have thought he’d be the kind of person to trust someone enough to let them into his car. But it all seemed so innocent at the time, and one thing led to another. But I guess that’s how most cons work.
It’s a tough battle, between compassion and the urge to help versus what we hear about on the news and how little we know we can trust. How can we make our world a better place when, even if we do the right thing, we don’t get it in return?
One of my favorite books (and movies) is Pay it Forward, by Catherine Ryan Hyde, where one little boy sets out to change the world through a chain reaction of good deeds. While his plan spreads across the nation, he ends up getting killed in the process of trying to help a total stranger.
Maybe it’s that we always need bad to counteract good. I’d like to think karma comes back to the bad, somewhere down the line. But it always makes me wonder, what would the world be like if everyone did one nice thing every day, for someone other than themselves?