Every day I lose a little faith in humanity, not that I had a whole lot to begin with. I will preface this by saying that I work at a grocery store, and it's miserable. Our managers force us to harass the customers to donate to whatever the charity of the month is (Breast Cancer, Muscular Dystrophy, etc), which I've always hated doing. I feel like a whore begging for money like that, but in the back of my mind I tried to justify it by saying "it's going to a good cause at least." It wasn't until I uncovered the truth behind the pressure to get high donation rates that I was truly infuriated. I learned, after some investigating, that these grocery companies collect donations for profits. How could you profit off of donations to a charitable organization, you ask? Tax write-offs. You donate the cash and these big companies get the reputation for "raising over 7 million dollars for prostate cancer last month!" and also a nice, fat tax-write off. One day I'll escape the humiliation and mediocrity that is working at your local grocery store, and hopefully it's soon.
On the flip-side of things, I've also noticed how greedy the consumer is in comparison to the corporation. Our managers encouraged us to ask the customers if they would like to "round up their change" (i.e. making a grocery bill $1.67 to 2 dollars by donating the $0.33 to the charity). Surprisingly, my success rate for getting donations skyrocketed, but I still noticed that some people were adamant about keeping every penny they could, even when it was for a (supposed) good cause. I had a customer today that told me she didn't want to donate the remaining 13 cents to breast cancer research, but when the change spit out of the change machine she forgot to pick it up and left it sitting on the counter.
My relentless soliciting for donations exposed humans in their true light, greedy and selfish, constantly trying to screw one another over in order to have the most wealth. Unfortunately, I don't think we could ever revert back to a society that doesn't require currency of some sort and tap into some of that leftover ape DNA. Pic sort of related because I love Marilyn Manson's use of the dollar sign resembling a swastika because it's so true.
