Just Like (a) Human

(Copied from my post on the [tag]Robinhood Fund[/tag] forums. I intended a short gripe there, and ended up putting what I wanted to put in my blog over there. For posterity’s sake, and for preservation purposes, it is also posted here in its entirety, behind the link.)

When homeless are sleeping in the same [tag]homeless shelter[/tag], you’d think they’d give each other the courtesy and watch out for each other.

While this holds true for most, there are still some disgusting idiots in these shelters, determined to do anything to take someone who is trying their best down a peg or two.

My case in point for the day is this:
I started a new, later than all heck shift with my employer (working 3:30 in the afternoon until 12:30 — after midnight, and after the city buses stop running. I get into the shelter well after one in the morning, and was given permission to sleep later than the rest of the gentlemen there (who are roused out of bed at four in the morning, and put out of the building by six), due to my full time job, and my effort in getting things together to get out of there.

When I went to bed, I plugged my charger into the outlet next to my bunk, put the [tag]phone[/tag] up there, and crawl up the side to go to sleep.
I was sound asleep in perhaps ten minutes, and dead to the world.
Enough constant noise at a quarter of six this morning woke me up from the sleep of the dead, and I go to close my hand on my phone.
It’s not there.
Neither is its charger.

I spent fifteen minutes going over that place, ringing the phone to listen for my unique ringer (Ikaruga: Metempsychosis), and can’t find it.
Some silly bungface had the balls to steal a phone from a working man while he sleeps, and I’m livid about this.

I tried to call Sprint, but I had to wait hours before I could speak to a human to try deactivating the phone (call centers weren’t open for two hours, and physical representation for three), and I won’t go into how MEH. the customer service was.

So, the good thing is, that phone can’t be abused, and I won’t be responsible for things happening to it now.
The bad thing is, I lost a LOT of data, including all of my friends’ phone numbers, AND the picture of my [tag]late mother[/tag] I had as one of the wallpapers.

The question is, though…
Why in the hell would a homeless person who already has little, steal from another homeless person in the same situation they’re in?

The guys that have been there a while all know me as a quiet, decent person.
I’d let you borrow my phone for a little bit so you could call and talk to your family without charging you a red cent.
If you needed something, and I had it to spare, I was more than willing to loan or give it to you.
Why take the one little thing that I held dear from me?
It wasn’t the phone itself that hurt so badly, as much as it was my access to the only picture of my mother I had available.

:-/ Thanks.