Were the McGlothlins pitiable or contemptible? Was Hess cruel or simply unafraid to say what others thought?

The morning of the first confrontation, in November, Hess, a man with a crew cut and hands scarred from years of work, slept until noon. His moving company had done a big job the day before, and when he awoke, he noticed he was nearly out of dog food, so he left his house, a brick ranch atop a steep hill. After collecting the dog food from a grocery store, he saw Tyler’s father, Dale McGlothlin, a former coal miner living on disability, holding a sign along the side of the road. “Need donations to help to feed my family,” it said.

Hess pulled over. He offered him food, then told him he could do him one better: Would he like a job? McGlothlin, whose arms had been damaged in the coal mines and who hadn’t worked in more than a decade, declined the offer, and Hess drove off, outraged.

Living at the center of an opioid crisis, and in the aftermath of a decades-long surge in the nation’s disability rolls, Hess had long perceived a resistance to work. He had seen it when he couldn’t find anyone to hire who could pass a drug test and had a driver’s license. Or when someone complained they couldn’t find work, and he knew fast-food restaurants were hiring. Or when he saw someone claiming a disability despite having what he thought was a mild condition. He would come away thinking he worked 60 hours a week — despite a thyroid condition, despite two bankruptcies, despite the depressed local economy — not because he felt like it but because that was who he was. And now here was another person who didn’t want to work — he wanted a handout, a concept that so angered Hess that his Facebook profile picture was an outstretched palm with a large red strike across it.

He drove home. He emerged a while later with his own sign and returned to the intersection. There, Hess stood beside McGlothlin, who he said had told him he could make more money panhandling than working, and raised the sheet of cardboard.

“I offered him a job,” the sign said. “And he refused.”

He posted a picture of it on Facebook. “Many of you know I am very pro work,” he wrote, recounting what he had done. “I made up my own sign and joined him. PLEASE SHARE.”

Dozens did. Then hundreds. Then, to Hess’s surprise, the incident quickly spread to thousands of Facebook pages across the region, exposing frictions that have become common in scores of communities reshaped by the historic rise in the number of participants in federal disability programs. A Washington Post analysis of government statistics found 102 counties, where, at minimum, about one in six working-age residents receive either Supplemental Security Income, a program for the disabled poor, or Social Security Disability Insurance for disabled workers. These are places — primarily white, rural and working-class — where once-dominant industries have collapsed or modernized and the number of people who are jobless or receiving public-assistance benefits has soared.