“Five enemies of peace inhabit with us – avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.”~ Petrarch
So its been a while since I have posted a story for you about our glorious goings-on at the food pantry. This one is a winner!!
Food pantry distribution happens here where I live once a month. (What I call “my time of the month”.) And it never seems to surprise me how the elderly neighbors can get so rowdy and ruthless over food that is in plentiful stock and the fact that everyone knows that nobody will go without.
The perk that I personally enjoy is that I am able to get in and get out and take whatever food I need first before anyone else goes in there, as I am there to make sure that everyone gets their food items in the best orderly fashion that is possible. That is all.
So I have volunteered my time to help out, calling numbers of apartments so that each person has a chance to go. There is not list of names, it doesn’t go one after the other.
Its like a lottery drawing. And we’ve been doing it this way for many, many months now. Nobody here should be a stranger to how it works.
Today’s surprise was that there was a nice selection of Strawberry flavored milk. One pint bottles. Not bad! It definitely has been a while since we’ve been given something like this.
Once the first few people were showing it off that they had it. So people were curious and interested.
But still, the avarice of these elderly people is amazing. There are a couple of people who give “problems”, but I am able to get a few steps ahead of them and deal with it. But this time, one of our esteemed neighbors had faked putting their slip of paper into the box and actually held on to it, and when I was ready to call numbers… this person attempted to get in FIRST. But when I had alerted the social worker that I had not called their number, they were refused. When their evil plan was ruined- they tried to use the excuse that they didn’t understand English.
It didn’t work.
When more and more people were coming in and out and talking about the strawberry milk, people were really getting out of control. Each person got ONE. Only ONE pint of the milk. The accusations began to fly over people getting two, three, even five of them. Which simply isn’t the case.
Others were apparently coming up with a plan to gain more than just the one that they were allowed and sharing their plans with others. Not exactly brilliant motives there.
Wouldn’t you know it.. an actual physical FIGHT broke out amongst three residents over strawberry flavored milk. People were throwing punches against their own neighbors. Mainly because those who were hearing about the plans to take more flavored milk than they would be given, were not liking the idea at all and believing that if these greedy people were successful then there would not be enough for the rest of them. And that, I would say is a safe assumption.
Three people get into it with arms and fists flying everywhere. It was chaos. Nobody could really tell who was doing the fighting, nobody could really tell who was trying to defend themselves, nothing. Everything was so unclear.
Needless to say that once this altercation had stopped, three people were pulled out and in the end sent home with NO food, and definitely NO strawberry milk. And two of them were pulled aside.
But at least I can say that nobody was physically hurt to the point where they were needing medical attention. Just a bunch of angry egos and greedy-minded plots that were exposed and ruined.
It seems as if each time this part of the month rolls around, there’s always something.
After the “Milk Madness”, I was eyewitness to two other people who were frustrated that their numbers were not being called. I pull the slips of paper out of the box and whatever is there, gets called. I believe that both of them just didn’t have the patience to wait any more. They had been waiting for over an hour. But today’s distribution took over TWO hours in total until we had the last person called in. It is a bit ironic to have gone that long because last month, everyone was taken care of in less than an hour. And it was about the same amount of people from last month compared to today.
These two people had such poor attitudes about it as well. I’ve seen people get up and leave for whatever reasons. But they were not complaining about the wait and how unfair things were. They waited as long as they could, until they could wait no longer and then they decide to leave. That’s just the way it is.
People who are 65 years of age and older, actually throwing punches over strawberry flavored milk. The elderly have no business getting into fights. Nobody’s health can take that kind of stress. Especially those who were involved in this today. Shouldn’t they know already that this kind of behavior could do something horrible to their bodies? I guess not.
Can you stand it???
Dambreaker 