I bet that homeless people hate the Salvation Army holiday bell ringers

Posted By Hup | December 19, 2008

As I was getting off of the train yesterday morning I noticed a Salvation Army holiday bell ringer getting set up shop outside of the station. The area mainly consists of a few benches, trashcans and lots of people who are either arriving or leaving San Fransisco via Caltrain.

For all of these reasons this social space that was initially designed for welcoming and greeting visitors has become more of a gathering place for many of the homeless people in San Francisco. Well, or at least the ones who have figured out that it’s a beggars goldmine with the kind of traffic that it sees on a daily basis. With a popular Safeway grocery store across the street and at&t Park, the home of the SF Giants, only a few blocks away, it really doesn’t get any better than this if you’re looking to hit the masses for some spare change.

As the Salvation Army bell ringer began to get his gear ready an interesting thought crossed my mind. I started thinking that these bell ringers, whose main goal is to ask for donations during the holiday season, are actually taking away from the daily earnings of the homeless people who are normally ‘working’ this particular Caltrain station every single day, day in and day out.

I mean, there’s only so much change to go around, right? By these clean cut, Christmas carol singing, red kettle wielding, violin playing, vest wearing bell ringers invading their turf, these homeless people are basically shit out of luck for the holiday season. How can they possibly be expected to compete with the smiling faces and professional looking setup that the Salvation Army has perfected over the years? There’s just no possible way and I would bet there are some pretty pissed of homeless people out there right now (and there’s more now than ever).

In other words, homeless people hate the Salvation Army bell ringers.

However, as I was riding home on the train last night I found this article that claims the Salvation Army sometimes recruits homeless people to become bell ringers for some cheap, seasonal work. So now you’ve got a situation where temporary, bell ringing homeless people taking money from other homeless people. This is just getting crazy.

p.s. This morning I saw about 4 or 5 people give $1+ to a bell ringer within a matter of a 2-3 minutes.

If any of you would like to knowingly steal money from homeless people this holiday season, check out this training video that teaches you the ins and outs of proper Salvation Army bell ringing.