I believe my local grocery store is slowly but surely becoming more anti-homeless. I shop at the same Fred Meyer almost every single day and have been doing so for a few years now. The other day I noticed the dining area had gotten smaller, a large section of it had been replaced by some kind of home decor display in progress. Then I noticed a sign, "Please limit your eating time to 30 minutes." It used to be 90 minutes not that long ago. I believe this is just another way to discourage homeless people from coming in order having a warm place to eat and relax for a little while. I don't know if it's because of a few bad apples over the years, or if Fred Meyer just doesn't want its wealthier customers to be scared off by a few homeless folk in the dining area, but every year it seems the store becomes less welcoming even to someone like me who isn't homeless. I used to eat lunch there and maybe charge my phone for a bit. That was back when the dining area had wall outlets, comfy chairs, and even a microwave accessible to anyone who so much as bought a soda, and some that didn't. Slowly things began to change. First the outlets were removed, and the microwave, then the chairs. Then came the new time limits and the shrinking amount of space to sit. It all happened at a glacial pace I think so people wouldn't put up as much of a complaint as they would if it had happened all at once, because this affected the housed customers as well as the houseless. Anybody could come their on their lunch break and buy some cheap microwavable food and heat it up instead of having to spend a bunch of money at a food cart or restaurant. It's not like the homeless people didn't buy stuff either, they bought all kinds of stuff! I guess their dollars weren't good enough for Fred Meyer's corporate overlords (they are owned by Kroger nowadays). I think each of these things they did was a slap in the face to all customers, like we don't want you here for more then a few minutes so we are going to remove any reason you might have to hang out and relax for a bit. It's really sad when you think about it, and I hope one day they realize how wrong it is and bring back the microwave at least! I mean yeah they had to kick out a few people out every now and again if they were being disruptive, but the thing is, they STILL HAVE TO DO THAT. Homeless people are still coming to have a place to sit for a minute, just now it's for 30 minutes instead of 90 and they can't heat up their food or charge their phones. Now the only place indoors in the entire neighborhood where they can even go and be semi-welcome is the Public Library. It's time for a little compassion folks. People think the unemployment rate is so low in America right now but the fact is the numbers are fake because they don't include all the people who gave up on looking for work. The economy is only doing good because of the unsustainable amount of money printing going on by the Federal Reserve. Rents are sky rocketing everywhere and we can't even let someone charge their phone and sit down for a minute anymore. It's disgusting. Thanks for listening to my little rant! Have a good day Steemians.
Photo By Matthew Woitunski (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
