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Normally I don't really bother with going out of my way to do any special acts of kindness during the holidays, because I do enough various good things throughout the year to affirm my status as a decent human being with no special effort required, but this morning I encountered someone in need of a bit of extra aid and I went ahead and did so. I know some people do hold with the notion of doing especially nice things around this time of year, so I figured what the hell, may as well make a thread for others to share their own things so we can make each other feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Okay, mainly to make ourselves feel warm and fuzzy by sort of humble bragging about how magnanimous we are, but it ends up being the same thing so it's cool.
Anyway, I work as a security guard for an office building in downtown Portland, Oregon, graveyard shift. This morning at about 1:55 AM I had a guy come and knock on the front door of the building. My orders both from the property management and the security company I work for say, in not so blunt terms, to just punt any homeless people off the property and don't ever let them in the building, and they even say don't even open the doors to ask what someone wants if they look too shabby to be someone who belongs in the building. It sounds kind of shitty and snobby, but it's a fairly high class building (lots of lawyers, offices for some big name companies, and some offices for government workers take up most of the place) and a zero tolerance policy against homeless people trying to sleep and loiter around the place is the only really effective way to keep them away. It's kind of shitty, but there are good reasons behind it.
However, this guy had a very prominent black eye and a bruise going along the side of his face, and I was pretty sure he'd just gotten the shit kicked out of him recently. Even so, protocols say that I should've ignored him, told him to fuck off without opening the door, or just called the police through the non-emergency line to get them to move him along for trespassing. I didn't do any of those things. Dude looked like a fucking wreck: he was wearing some plain blue clothes that they give to inpatients at some of the local hospitals, had a blanket draped over him like a sort of cloak, he was soaking wet because of the rain, he was shivering and looked unsteady on his feet, and there was that nasty bruise. I went and unlocked the door and asked the guy if I could help him with anything.
As it turned out I was right about the assault, though it had happened an hour or more earlier. The guy said he was in a lot of pain, felt dizzy and thought he'd pass out, and that he was hearing voices telling him to hurt himself due to his schizophrenia, which he had no medication for (which is a sadly common state of affairs for homeless people who have mental illnesses that could really benefit from or require pharmaceutical treatment). He asked me to call and ambulance for him because he'd gone to about a dozen places along the street looking for a public phone or for someone to call for him, and everyone else had either given him the cold shoulder or told him to fuck off. It was almost pathetic, certainly pitiful, how grateful he was for me just bothering to talk to him like a human being. I felt sorry for the guy so I let him come inside out of the cold and rain and sit on a bench in the lobby while I called 911 for him.
I talked to him while we waited for them to get there, and the poor bastard said that he'd been in the hospital earlier that day because of the suicidal schizophrenia problems, but they booted him because of some issue with insurance. After wandering around the city he ended up getting jumped by some asshole kids, probably just because they were cruel cunts since the guy clearly wouldn't have been carrying anything of much value. After they left and he'd recovered enough to walk he went about 6 blocks from there to my building (in the cold, wind, and rain while in pain and feeling faint), though his end goal was the police station about 5 more blocks away because they were the only people he knew might actually give a damn. His thanks while the EMTs helped him out to the ambulance were some of the most heartfelt gratitude I've ever heard. What I did was such a tiny thing, but it meant so much to him, probably because like other homeless people he was very used to being treated like something less than human all the time, so finding a tiny bit of compassion was made huge by its rarity. Kind of a sobering thought, but I'm glad I was able to lend him a hand while he was sinking toward rock bottom.
So, have any of you guys done any good deeds lately?
Anyway, I work as a security guard for an office building in downtown Portland, Oregon, graveyard shift. This morning at about 1:55 AM I had a guy come and knock on the front door of the building. My orders both from the property management and the security company I work for say, in not so blunt terms, to just punt any homeless people off the property and don't ever let them in the building, and they even say don't even open the doors to ask what someone wants if they look too shabby to be someone who belongs in the building. It sounds kind of shitty and snobby, but it's a fairly high class building (lots of lawyers, offices for some big name companies, and some offices for government workers take up most of the place) and a zero tolerance policy against homeless people trying to sleep and loiter around the place is the only really effective way to keep them away. It's kind of shitty, but there are good reasons behind it.
However, this guy had a very prominent black eye and a bruise going along the side of his face, and I was pretty sure he'd just gotten the shit kicked out of him recently. Even so, protocols say that I should've ignored him, told him to fuck off without opening the door, or just called the police through the non-emergency line to get them to move him along for trespassing. I didn't do any of those things. Dude looked like a fucking wreck: he was wearing some plain blue clothes that they give to inpatients at some of the local hospitals, had a blanket draped over him like a sort of cloak, he was soaking wet because of the rain, he was shivering and looked unsteady on his feet, and there was that nasty bruise. I went and unlocked the door and asked the guy if I could help him with anything.
As it turned out I was right about the assault, though it had happened an hour or more earlier. The guy said he was in a lot of pain, felt dizzy and thought he'd pass out, and that he was hearing voices telling him to hurt himself due to his schizophrenia, which he had no medication for (which is a sadly common state of affairs for homeless people who have mental illnesses that could really benefit from or require pharmaceutical treatment). He asked me to call and ambulance for him because he'd gone to about a dozen places along the street looking for a public phone or for someone to call for him, and everyone else had either given him the cold shoulder or told him to fuck off. It was almost pathetic, certainly pitiful, how grateful he was for me just bothering to talk to him like a human being. I felt sorry for the guy so I let him come inside out of the cold and rain and sit on a bench in the lobby while I called 911 for him.
I talked to him while we waited for them to get there, and the poor bastard said that he'd been in the hospital earlier that day because of the suicidal schizophrenia problems, but they booted him because of some issue with insurance. After wandering around the city he ended up getting jumped by some asshole kids, probably just because they were cruel cunts since the guy clearly wouldn't have been carrying anything of much value. After they left and he'd recovered enough to walk he went about 6 blocks from there to my building (in the cold, wind, and rain while in pain and feeling faint), though his end goal was the police station about 5 more blocks away because they were the only people he knew might actually give a damn. His thanks while the EMTs helped him out to the ambulance were some of the most heartfelt gratitude I've ever heard. What I did was such a tiny thing, but it meant so much to him, probably because like other homeless people he was very used to being treated like something less than human all the time, so finding a tiny bit of compassion was made huge by its rarity. Kind of a sobering thought, but I'm glad I was able to lend him a hand while he was sinking toward rock bottom.
So, have any of you guys done any good deeds lately?