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Obviously there’s public water fountains that tourists can use instead, right?

Next to the public, gratis toilets?

Charging money for fundamental human needs like water and toilets is reprehensible.

I work at a bakery in the downtown area of a small but touristy area. Homeless people tend to come by relatively soon after we open and hang out in the winter months, because we open early first and it’s really warm with all the ovens going. I immediately became one of the favorite bakery workers for most of them through no intention of my own, just because most of my other coworkers are actively shitty to them. If they buy something, I treat them like any other customer and let them sit there as long as they want, just like I would a customer with a laptop nursing one cup of coffee for hours. Even if they can’t pay for anything, I let them sit down and use the bathroom as long as they want. We have outlets in the cafe for customer use, so I don’t have any issues with someone who can’t pay for a cup of coffee using one, especially when the cafe is otherwise empty, and I give people hot or cold water if they want it. Since I’ve been there longer, I’m now comfortable buying or comping them a sandwich and a cup of coffee or hot cocoa once in a while, but at the beginning I wasn’t sure if I would get fired for that, so I only offered water, a seat, and access to electricity and a bathroom. There are a couple of people who are disruptive to other customers or staff, and I don’t allow them to stay, but I don’t make that determination based on whether I think they look homeless or not.

I’m not trying to toot my own horn, because that’s literally just the baseline of how humans should treat each other (and even other animals, tbh). It’s depressing as hell that my unfriendly, autistic, foreign (I have trouble understanding people who are slurring, speaking a heavy dialect, or missing a lot of teeth, all of which are more common among homeless people) customer service is deemed one of the best by a whole demographic of people, just because other people are willing to deny people their basic needs.

Three of my regular customers who were homeless have died in the four years since I’ve been there, two froze to death overnight after not having eaten the day before and one went into diabetic shock during the day in public and no one noticed. This is well known at my bakery, and somehow many of my coworkers still don’t get or care that something that would cost them €0,24 could literally make the difference in whether a person survives or not.

Water is even more important in the warm months and it’s essentially free (plus every restaurant ever wastes more water in general operation than is actively requested by customers), which makes it especially galling that people don’t care enough about others to expend the slightest amount of effort for their benefit.

In their restaurant.