With the municipalites of Tucson, Oro Valley and Marana restricting panhandlers and such from the medians — ordinances that have reduced but certainly not eliminated such entrepreneurs — the “spare change people” have moved into parking lots.

Some of them can be quite charming. They greet you, they hold your car door open, they provide that human touch that is missing so much in modern life. Of course, they look almost as dirty as Taliban fighters, but most of them seem more benign. For a buck or two, they will bless you and wish you eternal happiness. I suppose there are worse ways you could spend your money. They ask for “spare change” but they really want folding money.

Some, however, can be quite threatening and who knows how much they might back up their threats. Actually, I suppose if they were that ambitious, they might be doing something more productive. But since the charming ones and the threatening ones all look pretty similar, it’s hard to tell them apart when they approach you. Neither enhances the appeal of the businesses in whose parking lots they ply their trade.

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Speaking of plying their trade, I have never been approached by a woman offering herself for rent. Most of the few women in the parking lot racket hand you the tired line about needing a couple of bucks because they ran out of gas in their invisible car or need bus fare to get home. They might even ask you to lend them $2. Sure, let’s set up a payment plan over five years. They will probably take anything you give them, but, like the men, will reserve their most effusive thanks for folding money. I’ve never seen one whose personal service could possibly interest me, even if I cared to spice up my social life this way. I do not.

Now let’s consider this situation from the business operator’s position. While most of the supermarkets offer carry out service without charge, none provides a doorman. Probably because no one truly needs his car door held open while he or she enters or exits. Car doors these days have an uncanny way of staying open themselves, an ability which has made the unofficial greeter technologically obsolescent.

Reminds me of Hong Kong. The fancier establishments were still paying young (10-12 years old) boys wearing what I assumed was colorful local garb to pretend to operate automatic elevators. Department stores in Tokyo still employ white-gloved young women as greeters. Come to think of it, so does Wal-Mart. Oh, not young women with white gloves of course — too politically incorrect — but actual live people with white hair.

Perhaps that leads us to the answer. Is the shopping public in need of actual human contact in its day-to-day dealings? Are people so repelled by having to press 1 for this and 2 for that they would gravitate to stores offering doormen and other personal services in the parking lot? Would these independent operators be willing to clean themselves up each day, appear at set times, perform according to established regulations, and accept their compensation from the store rather than the hapless shopper? Probably not. Too much regimentation. Probably few could pass the background check. After all, this is a good disguise for terrorists scoping out a possible job.

No, it would never work. Itinerant bums who force their services on you would not likely be worth the minimum wage and would not want to trade their freewheeling lifestyle for a corner office or a corner of the median. Whether they are too antisocial to accept even this minimal regimentation in exchange for a regular income or just too dedicated to the elusive charms of financial independence as they see it, most are not really prospects for  any kind of employment. This is what they call freedom. Each to his own.

One day, I engaged one of these alternative lifestyle practitioners in conversation. He explained he liked the freedom he had. “Look at you,” he said. “All dressed up to go work to make money so you can go work and make more money. And if you’re lucky, someday you may get to retire and take life easy. I’m doing that right now.” It seemed as good as any plan the Obama administration had for me so I gave him $10. It was the least expensive financial advice I had ever bought.

 

Contact Lionel Waxman at territorial@waxmanmedia.com or visit his website:

www.newflashpoint.com.