Why I'm reluctant to donate to the local food shelf.

I'm reluctant to donate to the local food shelf. It's because I leave near a small town. A small town of around 1,300 people, and five bars. A small town where almost everybody know almost everyone else.

I used to bar tend at one of those bars on weekends to make a little extra money. Many times I'd watch the regulars from behind the other side of the bar and I would wonder. I would wonder how some could afford to be in a bar all night.Not all the regulars, but some of them.

Smoking, buying rounds, ordering bar pizzas, playing the same song over and over on the jukebox, night after night. I knew some of them didn't have the best jobs, or even a job at all. Yet they could drop more money at the bar than I could with a decent full time job and working part time as a bartender for them.

When I'd see some of the regulars of the bar leave the food shelf with bags of donated food, a light bulb cam on. Saddest thing is, with it being such a small town where everyone knows everyone, the volunteers at the food shelf knew they were being taken advantage of. But as the volunteers said "what can you do, there will always be people like that who'll take advantage of the system."

I know what I can do. Not donate to a charity that isn't going to do something to make sure it's resources go to those who truly need it.

That is pretty cold hearted of me, I do fully admit that. But it's not as cold hearted as spending all your money having fun while taken donations from others to feed yourself and family.