Gimme Gimme
Time to hop onto my soapbox.
Pharmacy Chick was grocery shopping the other day, a chore she HATES to do. In fact, I think for somebody whose drugstore is in the same parking lot as a grocery she has a pathetic amount of food in her house. I am one of those buy-tonight’s-dinner-this-afternoon kind of person. Therefore I am in and out of the store on quickie shops…which means I am in the checkstand more often than the once a week or once a month shopper. ANYWAY,
As I was checking out, the clerk asked me if I would “donate $1, 3 or 5 for our annual food drive?” How about $0 I am thinking… But being the nice person that I am, I donated a dollar. As I was walking out to my car, I started to linger on this interaction not because I was now out of a dollar, but because of the commonality of this event. EVERY time I grocery shop, they ask me for money. Each month its for something different. Its the malady of the month, or Jerry’s Kids, Katrina Victims, Diabetes, Heart disease, Food Bank, Easter Seals, you name it.
I have my own charities. I am not a tightwad. I send significant amounts of money to the non-profits and church of MY choosing. Personally, my heart breaks for unwanted or abused animals and pets and my checkbook donations reflect that.
By the sheer number of national fundraising events, prostate and breast cancer research has to be flush with cash compared to “less popular” disease states. Don’t get me wrong, none of these things are bad. I am sure every charity needs the money, but its the UNENDING requests that are getting to me. A jar on the counter? fine, I may drop some change in it. But I am getting tired of being asked ” would you like to….give give give?”
I’d like to offer some suggestions to these fundraising stores:
1. Know who gave. I’d love it for once if we got some “I gave” pin so somebody might know to quit asking. It gets old to be asked every time I shop. I am not a scrooge. But I dont think customers should feel they have to donate to a charity everytime they buy food.
2. Give us shoppers a break: Must you have a charity drive EVERY month of EVERY year?
3. I’d prefer the tax break thanks: If you imagine hard enough you can see that every store probably has a big cardboard check that 4-5 people get to stand behind when they hand over the cash to the charity. Snap Snap goes the cameras and look at us! WE gave all this money!….but in reality, they didn’t really give anything, thousands of anonymous shoppers did. If anybody knows how this works, please share, I’d really like to know who gets the tax breaks on all these $1 and $5 donations collected over the year by major retailers.
Anybody else like to sound off on this subject? Am I wrong? Does anybody else get tired of this? Any better ideas?
Happy Halloween by the way! Watch out for those kiddies–so every trick or treater gets home safely.
Tags: being a brat, just griping, non pharmacy stuff | |