We are volunteers and advocates for homeless people in Chicago. We studied journalism and learned that we are supposed to write fair and balanced reports of whatever we find out about our theme. In this case, we visited 7 Chicago pantries to learn how people are helping and maybe not helping homeless people who are looking for food. There have been other articles on here about advice for pantries. We decided to actually go and interview people when possible, report on their services to the homeless, and make judgments on whether they are good or bad pantries for homeless to visit.
BTW -- We know a certain professor of Journalism (not from a place called Korthwestern University in Devinston) who says he will give be “completely astonished if some fool prints this report.”
We decided to keep it anonymous and use all kinds of writing devices like what is called the clever “pseudonym.” Steven does most of the insults at the pantries and is the attractive one. Jessika is in charge of grammar -- and she also adds words like “pseudonym” to make the report look cool.
We do not care if the pantry workers are happy with what we found out. Or with the way we are reporting it. We do not care.
We do not care if it sounds like we are not thankful pantries give food and other items to homeless people. The stuff was not for us anyway. If people are offended by what we are saying here, maybe they should consider how they do business. Otherwise, guess what? We do not care.
This all started when homeless people we were visiting in different neighborhoods of Chicago would tell us random things about pantries and how they are a terrible place to get food and other things needed for survival. One guy told us, “They have nothing we need and they don’t know what we are looking for.” We asked him to explain and he told us, “They do not understand what it is like to be on the streets and have to deal with all the bullshit we deal with all day.”
His frustration about pantries is felt by most the homeless people we talked to in Chicago.
We posed as homeless people and we went as a couple to 3 pantries. We also went to 2 pantries each alone. We have a variety of IDs to use, and whenever we got anything at pantries (we turned almost everything down they tried to give us for a bunch of reasons) we gave it to homeless people we would meet on the way home (which is easy as hell to do in this city).
Is it a good country where you can give away potato chips, lime-flavored water, lip balm, tacos, and cans of cold soup to total strangers in a matter of moments? Is it a good country when you can give all this shit away and not one person asks where you got it? Is it a good country where people standing in front of an Aldi’s will take a bag of ham sandwiches and iced teas and go on about their daily bullshit? Is it a good country we live in when people walking by and seeing strangers take food from other strangers and not think this is weird or unsafe or dangerous? Is it a good country if people are so God damn hungry they will take a sandwich from two random kids on the street and unwrap it and eat the God damn sandwich right there on the God damn sidewalk?
Here is what we found out about pantries claiming to help homeless people:
PANTRY WORKERS ARE DENSE. These people usually have no idea at all what it is like to be poor and hungry. They will make crazy rules for people who have a place to cook (apartment, stove, refrigerator supplied) and then try to transfer those to homeless people. We got stir fry dinners, mac and cheese bowls, pop-tarty things for your toaster, and almost-bread that has to be baked the rest of the way. We would have had no way to warm, cook, blacken, or finish-cooking-preparing this stuff.
(Note: This particular pantry had a worker who was trying to shove a bouquet of flowers down Steven’s throat. Even when he repeated he was homeless and had no place to put flowers, the worker asked, “Can’t you give them to your girlfriend?” Steven responded that not only did he not have a girlfriend he was gay. The worker again tried to give him the flowers, saying maybe Steven “would meet some nice girl later.” This is what is called “dense” and there is a good synonym for it in the dictionary for urban settings: asshole).
PANTRY WORKERS ARE UNFAIR. When there were things we could actually use, like little wieners in a pop-top can, we could only get two. It did not matter that everything else on the wall did us no good (frozen uncooked French fries, cake mix not baked, potatoes not chopped or cooked or fried). When pressed, the workers told us it would “throw things off” if they gave us more of a category than the rules allow—you get two of x, two of y, and two of z. So since that made no sense, we again asked to get extras of things we “could actually use and why not let rich people with kitchens have the stuff you have to cook?” This apparently made some of the workers angry.
A woman (Polish) said, “It is not my fault you are homeless. Homelessness is a choice.”
(Jessika speaks Polish fluently and yelled something at her, pointing her finger in her face as she did so. The woman ran off screaming. When I asked Jessika what she had said to the unhappy old lady, she replied, “I told her to have a nice day.”)
PANTRY WORKERS ARE RUDE. In one case, two pantry workers ACTUALLY TOUCHED US SEVERAL TIMES and ACTUALLY MOVED US PHYSICALLY IN AND OUT OF LINE to get us where they wanted us in the process of giving us stuff. When we complained, we were told repeatedly they had to serve us however they needed to…that there were a lot of people and it gets too busy if they do not keep people moving…and they have to do what is necessary to make things happen. We don’t want to reveal which pantry allows this stuff to happen, but all of this physical contact reminds us of all the sex alluded to in the Canterbury Tales.
PANTRY WORKERS ARE CONFUSED. Some of the workers do not understand that the whole reason for having pantries is to give food away. Some of them think the reason is to KEEP THE FOOD. Keeping as much food as possible means you can have more food to give to more people. Except for the random rule you are trying not to give the next people much either. A good day at the pantry would therefore be having almost as much food at the end of the day as you started with that morning. Since a lot of the food is rotten when it gets to the pantry (like everything we got from Traitor Schmoes, the lettuce in every salad being wet and black) it seems silly to try to keep expired food too much longer.
Sorry, Traitor, all of the food you give to pantries is expired and rotten.
PANTRY WORKERS CAN BE SILLY. It is not so much that the workers are all idiots and uncaring assholes (although we can give you the names and addresses of the pantries where some idiots and uncaring assholes are in charge of giving away the food) it is also that there is little known about homeless persons’ needs.
There seems to be NO TRAINING WHATSOEVER IN THE PANTRIES ABOUT THE NEEDS OF HOMELESS PERSONS. Further, it is obvious that in some pantries, nobody gives a shit. In some, they do (this is our little attempt at balancing). We have heard that there are a couple of pantries with great and helpful people who want very much to help and who try. Although they also seem to not train any of their workers or volunteers in the needs of homeless persons, they are truly helpful, trying very hard to “get it right.”
We have it on good authority that there are some pantry workers who “Care For Sure” and they are to be commended for being decent to people who do not have stoves!
PANTRIES HAVE SOME FOOD THAT ROCKS! Some of the very best and delicious dinners (BALANCE IS GOOD AND DELICIOUS TOO!) come from a store called “Hole Moods.” There is a lot of great vegan and other food and the stuff is fresh! Even the fake meatballs rock! They have so many great actual entrees to eat – all prepared, cooked, garnished, boxed, and sitting at a pantry! We were so glad people had not bought these dinners! We wished more of their stuff would fall into a hole so it could wind up at a pantry we would be visiting! Awesome stuff! Our favorite was plastic containers with meatballs in marinara or marijuana or something like that. They were so good we wanted to roll them up and smoke them (but that is a different article).
PANTRIES HAVE WEIRD TRADITIONS. Treating homeless “clients” like children does not seem to be the way to go. However, that is a common tradition. So workers tend to yell at the homeless, bother them about the bags they bring or do not bring, etc. Tradition has it that people cannot look through what they are being given, so even if the food is a bunch of krap nobody wants, the clients have to take it. This is true for all the clients. People still want to have some input about the krap they are taking home to eat.
Even the silly homeless people think they should have an opinion about the krap they are being forced to take along to eat. And they don’t even have a home!
PANTRY PROTOCOLS FOR THE HOMELESS ARE DEAF. Despite our complaints, we received from many of the pantries things like hand-warmers and socks. We gave all of them away, but when we tried to refuse them in the first place, pantry workers would argue with us.
At one pantry, a manager told us we were “required to take them” since we were homeless and would not be eligible for services if we did not agree to take the items. We got combs, toothpaste, hair ties, hand sanitizer, and hair conditioner, plus a bunch of candy in our “personal care packets.” We donated all these items to people on the bus (though a couple of Milky Way candy bars got lost).
PANTRY SERVICES FOR THE HOMELESS DO NOT FIT. The pantry we hated the most has a category of food for homeless people called “Ready-To-Eat.” This bullshit includes all kinds of noodle and rice entrees you must cook. Microwave versions of the preparation (remember the phrase “Ready-To-Eat”) are listed on the back of the item. When asked why it could be called “Ready-To-Eat” if in fact you have to cook or warm or boil the food, the worker responded that “most homeless people have access to a microwave.”
Since we were both at this pantry, we were able afterwards to check on some of the krap we heard from the workers. We thought this comment from the pantry food expert on homeless people was pretty God damn stupid.
We were also offered a box of produce. Every single item was something that would have to be prepared – most of the items needing to be peeled, cut, roasted, fried, etc. They also tried to force cornbread mix down our throats and we said several times we had no way to cook it (they had a huge case of some weird random brand like “Susie’s Happy Corn Bread Mix” or some other bullshit). Another thing they tried to force us to take was toilet tissue. They insisted we needed it – or would later.
What the hell?
Who would argue with a homeless adult about this stuff?
We feel sorry for any homeless person who ever has to go to “Fake-Vue Pantry” and deal with these out-of-touch rich people.
PANTRY RULES NEED REWRITING. We dealt with some of the most ridiculous old-fashioned rules and bullshit at almost all of the pantries. We got a long humiliating lecture when we wanted more than one piece of cake (chocolate squared) and were told we had to share it. We could even see more than one container right in front of us with about 50 slices of cake. It made us very sad to think a homeless person who has been through all kinds of shit all day, sleeping on a bus, and not allowed to use the bathroom at Walgreens could only have one piece of cake.
Luckily, we were able to go to a big store called Rule-Roscoe and buy a whole cake. We took it home and sliced it and pledged to try to help people more the next day.
It is a shitty country that has chocolate cake everywhere you look but it is God damn expensive. It is a shitty country that lets people be so poor they cannot afford cake. It is a shitty country where you go to a pantry with all kinds of freaking cake but you can only have one piece. It is a shitty country that allows people to sleep on the sidewalk or behind a dumpster. It is a shitty country that makes you cry when you are trying to eat your God damn cake but you are getting too God damn sad. Some of us are just a little too girlish to do this kind of reporting, I guess.
I am glad Jessika is the strong one on our team and glad she hugs me when I start crying when I am just trying to eat some God damn cake.