Even Beggars Won't Choose It

I wandered all around the town until I chanced to meet
A hobo who was lookin' for a handout on the street
He said he'd take most any old thing, he was a desperate man

But when I showed him the [BOOM BA-BOOM], he turned around and ran!

—Phil Harris, "The Thing".

It's easy to be picky and choosy about the brand, make, prettiness, country of origin and such of something you want if you already have access to a million of it. If you don't, on the other hand, you're more likely to be desperate for it - especially if "it" is an essential need in your situation - and be willing to take whatever you can get. To paraphrase the old saying, beggars are hardly ever choosers.

Unless they're given this option. In which case, the beggars scream in terror, run the other way, and make it absolutely clear that the quality of this object so absolutely horrible that even people who desperately need it would reject it. Can be played for either laughs or drama, depending on the context.

Compare Even Evil Has Standards or Even Nerds Have Standards. Contrast Even the Rats Won't Touch It, which is specifically about substandard food.

Examples of Even Beggars Won't Choose It include:

Films -- Live Action

• In The Sound of Music, Captain Von Trapp tells Maria she must put on a better dress than the one she has on before meeting his children as their new governess. Maria states she doesn't have one, as she is a nun and when nuns enter the convent, their worldly clothes are given to the poor. The Captain then asks why she still has the one she's wearing now. Maria replies: "The poor didn't want this one."
• Chungking Express: When Agent 223, who has been collecting pineapple cans with a May 1 peremption date in memory of his girlfriend dumping him, tries to give one to a beggar on the night of April 30, the beggar lobs it back at him. "It's past its sell-by date! you keep it!"
• Inverted in Material Girls. The beggars would chose the beautiful Dolce and Gabbana clothes Hilary Duff's character donates to charity, but not many homeless people are a size 0.
• In The Muppet Christmas Carol, during "The Villain Sucks" Song "There Goes Mr. Humbug", when the vegetables on a market cart sing the line, "If he became a flavor you can bet that he'd be sour", the grocer quips, "Even the vegetables don't like him!"

Live Action TV

• In an episode of Seinfeld, Elaine sells muffin tops, and needs to dispose of the stumps (making them without stumps just isn't the same, you see). Both a homeless shelter and a garbage dump reject them.
  • Again with Jerry's car and its "mutant funk BO". The inside is SO smelly no one else wants it. He ends up leaving it at a curb with the keys inside.
• The Big Bang Theory mentioned this in an episode where Leonard is going to give a scientific talk at a conference and his non-nerdy friend Penny helps him pick out clothes. When looking through Leonard's wardrobe, Penny picks out several shirts and tells Leonard to throw them away and "don't even give them to charity. Seriously, you won't be helping anyone."

Music

• The Steve Miller Band song "Your Cash Ain't Nothin' But Trash" is all about this trope, as even a mugger won't take the protagonist's money.
• The Weird Al song "Drives Like Crazy" is about a woman whose driving is so bad, "even hitchhikers just say no".
• The page quote comes from "The Thing", a song sung by Phil Harris. What the titular thing actually is is never revealed -- a bass drum beat plays instead of words whenever it would be named -- but whatever it is, it's so unwanted that the singer is unable to enter Heaven with it in his possession (apparently, he could take it with him, and didn't have a choice about it).

Web Original

• In The Guild a homeless person tries Vork's "found object stew" and rejects it in disgust.

Western Animation

• In an episode of "SpongeBob SquarePants" a guy who hasn't eaten for days crawls into the Krusty Krab begging for food, but when he was offered some he rejects it because the Krusty Krab lacks "pizazz." He then crawls away still begging for food... service... atmosphere!
• The Garfield Show: In one episode, Garfield tried to get rid of an accordion of Jon's but his effort to give it away only result in it getting quickly returned. Heck even trying to ditch it in the lake prompts a mer-man to swim up and throw it back.
• The Simpsons doubled as a Take That to their old sponsor Butterfinger where Chief Wiggum tried to throw the candy into fire only for it to be thrown back, unharmed. "Even the fire doesn't want them" Wiggum comments.
  • The Treehouse of Horror III segment, Clown without Pity, Homer drops the curse Krusty doll down a bottomless pit, followed by a mobster dumping a body, and a guy dumping a box full of naked photos of Whoopi Goldberg which was throw back at the third guy.
    • In the same episode during the story, Dial 'Z' For Zombies, Homer offers himself to the zombies only for them to turn away from him.
  • In the first "Treehouse of Horrors", Marge finds a portal to another dimension and Homer throws an orange to see if it would take anything. Suddenly, a ball of paper is presented to them with a note.

 Quit throwing your garbage into our dimension.

• An episode of Daria features the Fashion Club collecting clothes for the homeless. They invoke this trope, assuming that the homeless will have standards of clothing as high as their own, and reject nearly everything they are offered.

Real Life

• The implied insult whenever somebody rejects another by saying "I wouldn't date you if you were the last man/woman on Earth".