They stand in line outside the homeless shelter I pass on my way home from work, smoking, most of 'em, waiting for the 5 p.m. opening.

I know many of them from stories I've written. They lounge in the public library where my mother used to work. They panhandle outside the newspaper office where I work, outside of the breakfast and lunch joint down the street, outside of the bar I've been going to for 20 years.

I'm predictable. I'm good for some change.

Today, there was a guy I'd never seen before, but I'm pretty sure I know his story.

He was young, clean. Usually that kind of guy just got bounced by a girlfriend, and he's not from here so he doesn't have family or friends he can stay with for a while. Those guys don't look concerned. They'll go back to her tomorrow, apologize, promise to straighten up. It usually works.

I know I'm supposed to hate them because they're smoking $7-a-pack cigarettes instead of putting that money toward a security deposit. I wish the poor would spend their money wisely, but I know it's hard to think ahead when you're waiting for the homeless shelter to open.

There was a heavily built woman outside today, wearing a bulky tan coat, smiling a little bit of a secret smile, listening to the skinny guy next to her, who may have been singing the old, sweet song. Then again, he could have been singing some much worse lyric. There are drug dealers working the streets round here and, after dark, the sidewalk in front of the library blooms with street whores.

I used to have bad jobs when I was a young man. It didn't make much difference that they were bad jobs either. I lived with my parents and was just earning college money.

Generally, there was a back door to the places where I worked, always made of steel with a very small window high up on the door. The window always had wire mesh embedded in the glass.

We'd stand out there and smoke on our breaks, a rough-looking bunch on some rough minimum-wage job, hotel maids and cooks, janitors, loading dock workers, whatever the job description was on the other side of that particular steel door.

I sang the old, sweet song out there a time or two and got a secret smile back. We all laughed and smiled out there on those 15-minute breaks that were always interrupted at the end by a boss. I don't remember why we laughed or smiled. We sure as hell weren't stupid enough to like the job.

And we looked, I know I looked, just like those people I see every day at the shelter. We couldn't really afford to smoke, either, though all of us smoked. We were foolish and untidy and those of us who weren't in school were probably going to be smoking outside some steel door for the rest of our lives. The last good thing we had before we went back in was that smile.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, "King of The World On $14 an Hour," is a collection of his best 2014 columns and is available for Nook and Kindle.