My First Drug Deal

Post written by Pete Strub. Pete has become our first official UberWriter. You can find Pete’s column here every Thursday. Welcome aboard Pete!

I was involved in my very first drug deal tonight. I’m not quite sure if I’m supposed to feel excited, scared, appalled, or foolish. Probably foolish. Anyway, this article might not have much of a point, but I have to write about this. Just sit back and learn from my stupidity.

The scam: At about 8:45, I saw somebody walk up to the door and knock. I hate when people come to the door; no good ever comes from it (This is probably a good time to point out that I had forgotten to go to my church small group – guess I got what I deserved). I went to the door and waited to hear the story. He was an adult male, maybe in his 40’s, so I knew where this was going. Living in the city, we get door knockers two or three times a year looking for money and they are always adult males. The man began telling his story – he is from Buffalo and was at a job interview in the city, but his truck ran out of gas. By the way, I have never heard a money-begging story that doesn’t involve running out of gas. Do these people really think we are that stupid? I’d like to hear one of these guys tell a new story sometime, like aliens are holding his wife and baby daughter hostage and are going to turn their brains to mush like on the Hulu commercial if they don’t give them $20-30. The guy at my door, Greg, continued with his story, bemoaning the lack of friendliness in Rochester and explaining how he has been walking in the rain for three hours looking for someone to loan him gas money. Then he played the race card, complaining that white people in Rochester judge black people and assume they’re up to no good. At this point I wanted to point out that anyone who knocks on my door at 8:45 at night looking for “gas” money falls into the category of suspicious.

Key elements of the scam: The part that I find funny about the stories all of these guys tell is how all of their stories have the same key elements:

1. Establish credibility – Greg’s credibility was his job interview. Throughout the night, he continued establishing his credibility by pointing out how he was dressed well (but he apparently wore jeans to an interview), carrying a laptop bag (could have been carrying anything), and that he had served in the military (how comforting).
2. Create sympathy – Greg created sympathy by saying that he had been walking for three hours and nobody would help him. Personally, I would be much more inclined to believe him if he had been walking for 30 minutes. No idiot would just keep walking in the rain for three hours. He also created sympathy with the whole race thing. By complaining that people wouldn’t help him because he is black, Greg put me in a position where I would seem racist if I didn’t help him; this was actually a smart move.
3. Car trouble – As already mentioned, every story involves some sort of car trouble, usually gas, that will take somewhere between $20-40 to fix. Greg chose to say he was driving an SUV so that he could ask for $40.

My choice: As Greg is standing at my door, I have sized him up and I know that the whole story is bogus, but even in this situation I will frequently give the person money. I know that I probably shouldn’t, but I figure that it’s not going to hurt me to throw some money their way and maybe somehow that kindness will affect the person. I told Greg I would help him, but I didn’t have any cash, so I offered to go to the pumps with him to buy gas. This is the part I love. Nobody actually wants gas and I like seeing their reaction when I offer to actually buy them gas instead of giving them cash. Greg mumbled something about needing a ride, so I told him I could drive him to his truck. This is where I went wrong. The correct move in this situation is for me to get my gas can, go fill it, and bring it back to Greg, but I’m too nice. Greg and I got in the car and I started thinking about all of the things that could go wrong at this point. Greg could have a gun, he could be insane, he could have a plan to steal my car, who knows? Next time, I will NOT offer to drive anybody anywhere.

And it gets shady: I drove Greg to a gas station so that I could use the ATM to get money for him. At this point, I was expecting that Greg would take the money and offer to walk the rest of the way to his truck, but he stayed in the car and told me that he had a stop he wanted to make on the way back to his truck. Uh-oh. A stop? The guy wants me to make a stop now that I have given him $40? For some unknown reason I go along with it. It was probably fear. There was still that little voice in my head telling me that he could have a gun, so I drove where he told me to drive. It was pretty funny to see how well the guy from Buffalo knew how to get around Rochester. He was telling me street names to turn onto in advance. My heart sank when Greg told me to turn right off of University and we crossed over into the northern half of the city. I knew which streets these were. They are the streets that make the evening news. Greg asked me to pull over near an unlit house with a beat-down porch. He told me he needed to let a family know that he found someone to help him. At this point, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what was happening. I was dropping Greg off at a drug house. I, the schoolteacher, was pulled over in front of a drug house to be the getaway car for my new buddy Greg.

And it gets shadier: Why would I wait for him, you might ask? It turns out that Greg is pretty smart. As he was getting out of the car, he pointed out that he was leaving his laptop (drug bag?) on the floorboard of my car. As Greg disappeared behind the house, I started to think about dumping the bag out the window and driving away, but I had movie scenes of people firing guns at fleeing cars running through my head, so I waited and prayed. Hard. In a minute or two, Greg walked back from the back of the house and got back in the car. I noticed that he was sniffling and wiping his nose a lot when he got back in. Then he told me where to drive again and directed me to a street that was definitely not where he said his truck was parked – apparently he had forgotten his story. When he asked me to pull over this time, I had visions of this going on all night, so I asked what this stop was for and prepared to tell him that he had to get out, but luckily, he said that this was his stop. I breathed a deep sigh of relief, Greg thanked me for my kindness, and reached out to shake my hand, carefully keeping his bottom three fingers closed around something (whatever could it be?). Greg got out of the car and I sped away, looking for cops and suspicious cars in my rearview the whole way home.

So…: When I got home, I just felt stupid. I could think of numerous moments where I should have done something different. Most people would tell me I shouldn’t have helped him. They would say that I’m better off just saying “no” when people ask for money, but I know that I don’t want to be like that either. Before I met my wife, I rarely gave people money, but she changed my mind about that. She cares about people and wants to help them and she won me over, so I now I almost always help when people ask for money. Greg showed me that it’s not that simple, though. Not everybody deserves charity, at least not in the form of money. Charity should go to the broken-down, the oppressed, the beaten. When you help somebody who has hit rock-bottom, it is completely different than when you help somebody like Greg. When I gave Greg money, I was only making it worse. Greg is still pretending that he is o.k. He is still scamming people, trying to oppress and take advantage of others. Unlike Greg, the rock-bottom beggar isn’t pretending anything; he is just grateful that somebody would help him when he is at his lowest point. I will help that guy (and it usually is a guy) any day, but I will never help a Greg again.

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