Does this sound familiar? You need to restock your home, so you head over to the local Superstore to pick up a basket of items. You get there, and then stroll the aisles for your favorite products. You grab everything you need, and then you start chucking some things in that you really don’t need. You’re satisfied with your decisions and you head for the counter to check –out. You remove the items in your basket transferring them to the conveyor belt. The check-out person scans your items, your total appears on the LCD display, and then the check-out person asks you a question that’s some variation of this.
“Would you like to give a $1 to help fight Muscular Dystrophy?”
Really!
Let me tell you what I hear when that question is posed to me. “Hi asshole. I see you just spent $5 on Butterscotch Krempets, $10 on skin products (anti ASHY cream), and another $10 on pucks that you put in your toilet so that the water will be blue when you flush it. I should be asking you for $25 at this point, but because I know you’ll never give me that, would you please… pretty please, give me 1/25th of that to help fight this totally curable disease, that will probably never get cured because of assholes like you. “
Now...
I always say NO, because instinctively it feels like a shakedown. These companies incent their employees based on how many $1’s they can collect during their respective shifts. I feel justified because I donate money annually to, The March of Dimes, The American Heart Association, St. Jude, and Sarcoidosis Research. I give time to The Atlanta Women and Children Shelter, Hagar House, and the Center for Family Resources.
So I’m covered right?
Problem is… I still feel a little uneasy because it’s only a $1. A $1 is like giving nothing. I refuse to give it only on principle nothing more.
Charitable people hate being asked for things. It's funny because I could have just given my left testicle to cancer research 5 minutes before I entered Wal-mart and still would feel a little weird about not giving the $1 when being asked for it.
In the future I think I’m going to start saying NO, and then asking the clerk if he/she would like to give $1 to some fictitious charity group that I make up; like the “FreeBall Society.”
