My company has a meeting for our board members monthly in the very early morning. We serve up continental breakfast. After the meeting, we usually packed up any leftover pastries and fruit back to feed the people in the office.

This morning, though, Tiffany, the Big Boss’ assistant, was determined to do a real good deed and give the lefovers to the bums instead. The place we hold them is only a block from our office. So here we were, marching down the block with all of our stuff from the meeting in carts and Tiffany leading the way with her boxes of goodies.

We started scanning the library park where the homeless usually hang out.

“Hey, right there. There’s a bum,” I pointed out.

“That’s not a bum. He has a suitcase with him,” said Celeste.

“He could be one of those newly homeless. They have suitcases. I’ve seen them.”

“But that guy has three, Oakley. That’s not a bum,” chimed in Tiffany. “But there’ll be one up ahead. It’s farmer’s market day. There’s always a bum here somewhere.”

We were now up at the street corner of the farmer’s market. Still no bum. We looked across the street. No bum there either.

“Goddammit! Where the hell are all the bums today? The day I decided to do good deeds and there are no frickin’ bums!”, Tiffany damn near screamed out of frustration.

“Oh, Tiffany. You can’t plan to do a good deed. It doesn’t work like that,” said my Boss. Also a Buddhist. “It just has to happen on its own.”

Without even thinking it, the following sentence fell out of my mouth.

“Ah, well, Tiff. Let’s face it. You’re just bum out of luck.”

[insert hysterical laughter here]

And so those leftovers instead traveled with us to the lunch room and fed a pack of hungry scavengers…er…coworkers.

And later on that afternoon when Celeste, the Boss, and I came back down to shop the market, there was a bum at the corner light. Go figure.

*UPDATE* I walked past the library park again this morning. Guess who’s sitting there on the same bench with 3 suitcases? Uh-huh. That’s right.