Swindling money from the Sally Army and Dublin taxi drivers

I'VE been meaning to post this for a while on two things I spotted recently in some Irish blogs. The first was on Howard's Way on a post entitled How not to swindle money.

Howard is an officer with the Salvation Army in England and he recounts an incident where someone came into his office asking if they could borrow some money to pay half of a parking fine, the man claimed to have the other half. Howard, cleverly, said give me what you have and I will pay the fine on my credit card.

Of course this didn't suit the man, he was trying to get money out of them by attempting to appeal to their Christian nature. As Howard points out he needed money for something but it wasn't a parking fine. He didn't get the 40 quid off Howard, instead he left with a tenner. Howard said: "I was asked by the staff ‘why did you give him anything’? Because I believe that in this day and age it is easy to become hard and cynical and just say no. I don’t want to turn away the genuine person that one will day walk in."

Howard's post is thought provoking dealing with the cynicism that is all too rife in modern life, overcoming that cynicism because we are not always right and about not judging. The last line of the post is a classic "the word 'Christian' is spelt CHRISTIAN and not MUG". Excellent.

The next one is something I read after I wrote a grumpy old woman post about taxi drivers and change or the lack thereof. I can't remember where I came across it at all, so sorry about that but I did grab the url before it disappeared into a blogstorm of a million posts on everything conceivable, something that happens to me a lot. I like something and don't mark it down and never find it again.

I've never seen John's Dublin Taxi blog before (he's been blogging since September) and had a quick look at some of his posts, one line in 'Not the Bunny' which caught my eye and made me laugh out loud. He was talking about airport runs and said: "My fare worked in insurance so there was not much to say".

Ha excellent. Have you ever had moments like that where you ask someone what they do only to be rendered speechless because there is nothing you can say about it, at all. The worst thing is the silence that follows is so awkward and they know and you know they know that you have nowt to say. I feel that way about accountants. 'Oh ehm really, ehm so you like numbers?'.

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