Hunger
The soup kitchen is not a nice place on days there isn't enough food to give people second helpings. It's not exactly an easy place to begin with, but I guess that when you're hungry it's easy to forget the place that doesn't have enough food for you is mostly funded by donations and staffed by volunteers. Government support is about 2% of the income, private funds is 5% and the rest is donations - so not in all days they can afford to buy enough food for seconds.
Still, it's hard to tell people that I'm sorry, there just aren't second helpings today, even if they're still hungry. And even when I explain that if we give them a second helping, someone coming in later won't have a first one, they don't always understand. I had an older man make a bit of a scene today with shouting at length about how I'm not really sorry, and how the food stinks anyway. We let him vent out his frustration, it's just words and he wasn't really getting sympathy from the rest of the eaters for being angry with us. Later on, another man that got really upset about not getting a second helping, tried to forcefully grab food from the serving station. One of the guys manning it tried to get him to back off, and it turned into a fight between the two, ending with another diner helping the staff guy throw the man out. It was really scary there for a minute, as it looked like they might really hurt each other. I was standing just a few steps away from them and feeling really helpless, as they were two big men being very aggressive and violent and it was all happening too quickly.
So yeah, not a good day at the soup kitchen today.
Still, it's hard to tell people that I'm sorry, there just aren't second helpings today, even if they're still hungry. And even when I explain that if we give them a second helping, someone coming in later won't have a first one, they don't always understand. I had an older man make a bit of a scene today with shouting at length about how I'm not really sorry, and how the food stinks anyway. We let him vent out his frustration, it's just words and he wasn't really getting sympathy from the rest of the eaters for being angry with us. Later on, another man that got really upset about not getting a second helping, tried to forcefully grab food from the serving station. One of the guys manning it tried to get him to back off, and it turned into a fight between the two, ending with another diner helping the staff guy throw the man out. It was really scary there for a minute, as it looked like they might really hurt each other. I was standing just a few steps away from them and feeling really helpless, as they were two big men being very aggressive and violent and it was all happening too quickly.
So yeah, not a good day at the soup kitchen today.