Rules and policies are an important part of making it so a food pantry can operate effectively at scale – but if we get too attached to a given way of doing things, some of the people who need our help the most can fall through the cracks. This story comes to us from John Arnold, who was at the time the executive director of Feeding America West Michigan.

Our Food Bank has a small staff and back in 1993 it was even smaller. As a result, sometimes there was no one available to answer the phone when it rang, so pretty much any of us in the office area who heard a phone continue ringing to the third or fourth ring were apt to answer it.

I did that one Friday morning and found myself dealing with a man who sounded to be about my same age, who reported that he had been laid off from his job at one of our big local companies – a company whose employees believed their jobs would be secure forever. He had pretty much spent all his money and as such he now had no money, had no food, and in fact had not eaten in several days. He was justifiably apprehensive that he might be dying over the weekend as a result of not having food because he was severely diabetic.

He was extremely upset, extremely frustrated and frightened by his situation and was crying as he told me all of this. I tried to reassure him as much as I possibly could that he absolutely would be receiving food assistance yet that day, but I explained that we don’t normally receive these kind of calls and so it was going to take me a couple of minutes to figure out a game plan for getting him that food. So, I again asked him to try to calm down as much as he could and be reassured that he would be getting some food aid, and would he give me his address so that I could figure out what pantry or pantries he might be near.

He did, and I was able to track down that he lived only several blocks from one of the large pantries here in Grand Rapids that people are referred to when they call the United Way’s information and referral service. It just so happened I had an updated sheet on what days and hours those pantries were open, and I saw that that one was open on Fridays. That was a pretty amazing set of happy coincidences, that he was near one of those big pantries and that it was open that day. I went back on the line with the caller and told him about the pantry and that he should get over there and explain his situation, and that they would undoubtedly supply him with food.

I didn’t think there would be a problem, but just in case, I asked him if he did run into any trouble to please call me back, and I’ll be darned if about thirty minutes later he didn’t do exactly that. This time he was even more upset than before. He was so upset in fact that he could not explain why the pantry had refused to serve him. All I was able to get from him was that indeed he had gone to the pantry I had directed him to, he had asked for help, and he had been refused help.

That made me pretty upset too, and I promised him that within the hour he would have food delivered to him if I had to bring it to him myself. I was fully prepared to do that if it turned out to be necessary, but before I went out and loaded my car full of food, I asked him to let me put him on hold for a moment so that I could call that pantry and find out why they had refused to serve him. With my reassurance that he would be getting food, even if I had to bring it to him myself, he was OK with that. So I put him on hold and I called that pantry, which is one of the better known and better respected of the food pantries in Grand Rapids, and I asked them, “Why did you refuse to serve this gentleman that I referred to you?”

Without batting an eye, they explained to me, “On Friday we serve repeat users. We do all of our new client intakes on Tuesdays.”

Appalled, I demanded that they immediately drop whatever they were doing and assemble a wonderful array of food and deliver it to that man’s house. Although they had apparently not understood the seriousness of that client’s need for food, they did apparently understand what the consequences were going to be if they did not do as I asked them to. So they did deliver food to this gentleman, and began serving him as they ought to have in the first place.