We had a hectic schedule this past weekend, and our time was limited.  This is why we decided to eat dinner at a city restaurant called “House of Hunan” this past Saturday.

This particular restaurant has 3 other restaurants, and to my suprise, each has a different decor inside (one has a wall of steaming water), but I digress…  We had our meal, which was excellent, and since we dished out of the main plates onto individual plates, we decided to get some boxes to go to share with the people we were visiting! 

So, we are now walking on the sidewalk to our car, when I notice a very well dress, and groomed man walking on the sidewalk up ahead coming this way.  I thought to myself, that guys is not in a suite, but based on how he looks, I bet he just put some weekend hours in at one of the offices here in this small city.

He was almost to me (at this point my wife and kids were getting in the car) and proceeded to stop in front of me and told me he was hunger!  Well, the irony was that I had 2 huge boxes of servings from the restaurant…  So I took the top one and said here you can have this, nobody touched this food.  Well, at my offering, he kind of fumble there for a minute and said that he wanted to go up the street to eat?

At this point, my wife and kids were already in the car and we had to go, so I said I’m sorry, but I have to go, bewildered and confused, myself at that point.

Later, I thought about this, I’ve never seen someone looking for a handout that was better dressed, groomed and presented themselves in such a professional manner as this man did.  Today at work, I told one of my buddys and he said it could have been a con.  He said that his Dad told him that he use to see a guy asking for handouts daily at lunch, who would then redress, get in his cadillac and drive to work.  I wonder if this was such a man? 

Sometimes life hands out surprises like these that keeps you wondering…  If the man was so hungry, when did he at least consider the box full of food I offered?  I wonder if the man was testing me to see what I would do?  I’ll be thinking about this one, subconsciously, for quite a while!

In this scenario, what would you have done?

-MR