I think it was a bottle of Miller draft, dad let me have a sip when I was 15 or so. It tasted so gross I stayed away from beer and alcohol until well into my 20’s, I just couldn’t understand why people drank that stuff.
Eventually realized not all beer tastes the same haha.
In the U.S. older people still get by fine without all this stuff. I have family that still has a landline, nothing else, so I guess maybe that’s #3 in your list. It does mean they physically have to go to places to get things done (e.g. physically go to a bank).
Older people don’t care as much about social life beyond visiting/seeing the people/relatives they’ve always been seeing. A smartphone isn’t required for that.
In the northeastern U.S. I’ve mostly learned to acknowledge them, don’t give anything, and move on with my life.
Not sure if it’s bad luck or what, but nearly every time I’ve tried to be nice and offer them something it always backfires. I’ll be passing by with some food and they’ll ask me for some, I give them some and then they tell me it wasn’t enough and to give them all the food I was carrying. Like WTF?
Another time I actually had some change on me so I gave him some and he said it wasn’t enough money and started following me, wanted me to go to an ATM so I can take out more money for him. I was forced to tell him to stop following me or I’d have to call the cops.
I have even more stories like that… going through those motions repeatedly it feels like the homeless have taught me not to give to the homeless. But hopefully your experiences have better outcomes.
With tips I generally do 20% across the board so a bartender would get 20% just like a waitress. And it’s always better to have a happy bartender :)
That said I’m also in the northeast U.S. where everything is expensive so it sort of makes sense that the tips aren’t going to be cheap. Maybe I’d rethink the tipping if I was somewhere else less expensive.