People who ask you for money: the curse of being nice

An open face had been Russel’s curse for as long as he’d lived.
It was his open face that got him called to everyone’s desk at work to help them download new fonts. His open face made him the go-to guy when you needed a lift to pick your car up from the garage.
And why was he the guy all the women in the office confided in when they had a crush on the new guy? Why, because of his open, boyish, unthreatening features and his slightly effeminate mannerisms, of course.
Russel had a habit of looking people right in the left eye, something he’d not been able to unlearn despite having lived in Johannesburg for five years.
This made him a sitting duck for every beggar, scammer, charlatan and panhandler on the streets and in the shopping malls of Gauteng, Tshwane and Ekhuruleni.
“Hau, Chief,” was a common opening line among the robot beggars, Homeless Talk salesmen and windscreen washers, often followed by that fist-to-fist handshake where you twist your thumbs together.
But most scary were the chancers. A guy at a robot will generally be satisfied with two bucks. A Homeless Talk costs R4 a month, but certain moneygrubbers set their sights higher than that.
They’re the types you only see once in your life. Not for them the reliable routine of a patch on the corner of Rivonia and Grayston. These loons roam Jo’burg ceaselessly, scamming the innocent, the soft-hearted and the open-faced with their transparent lies and shameless fabrications.
Like the sunburnt lunatic wearing a beanie whom Russel had once encountered in the parking lot behind the Market Theatre. He’d come up to him bearing a clipboard and a pen.
“Name?” he’d asked, the minute Russel had finished parking his car. “Mmm. How do you spell that? Okay, now please fill in your address.”
Before he knew it, Russel had complied.
“Thank you. How much will you be donating?”
The next thing you know, he’d given the guy ten bucks – and told him where he lived. And he wasn’t even the car guard!
Another time an Indian-looking woman had accosted him in the Grayston Shopping Centre parking lot.
“Hi there. Sorry. Are you in too much of a hurry? No? I’ve just finished my aromatherapy diploma and I’m busy collecting money to start a website so I can open my own business. If you could help with a hundred rand, fifty rand... Or even just twenty rand…”
He’d been half looking over his shoulder at her with his open face, on the way to the video shop. It just seemed easier to give her the bucks than argue the pointlessness of aromatherapy websites. Also, there’d been a swarthy-looking boyfriend type leaning against his car right next to the lady, monitoring her progress.
These people were mad. It was worth twenty bucks to avoid getting into conversation with them. You never knew what they might be capable of.
But the craziest conversation Russel’s approachable demeanour ever got him into was at the Killarney Mall on a Saturday afternoon, just before the five o’clock movie.
A teenage guy had come up to him just outside Woolworths carrying a cardboard egg box.
“Hi there, I’m a student. Are you a student perhaps? No? You know how all the varsities have initiation? Well I’m going through initiation at the moment, so if you give me five rand, I’ll let you break this egg on my head.”
He had only two eggs in his egg box and showed no signs of anyone else having accepted his offer.
Russel so knew he had to get away from this person.
“It’s to raise money for my hostel’s rugby tour,” the lunatic continued. This in mid-November! On the periphery of Russel’s vision was a girl, possibly a sidekick, with another egg box.
He had frantically fished out R4,35 in change from his jeans pocket and retreated into Woollies as if on a highly important mission.
When he emerged ten minutes later with a bag of pork crackling-flavoured crisps, the hustlers were gone, and he was able to make his way to the Killarney Nu Metro unmolested.
As luck would have it, he came up three rand short for his popcorn and a Coke. He had to bum a few bucks off the couple behind him in the queue. They both looked at him a little funny.