I have sort of talked about this briefly before but I think it's worth talking about it just one more time (in a little bit more detail). About every three months the grocery store collects donations for local organizations or charities. They raise money by making all of the cashiers ask every single customer to donate a dollar. In fact, technically, a cashier can be "written up" if they don't ask each and every single customer who comes through their line if they would like to donate a dollar. They play it up as being a caring, charitable business--a corporation that really cares and is giving back to the community. The organizations they have raised money for are the local food bank, the local children's hospital, they collect money to "support our troops" (I'm still not really sure where the money goes when it "supports our troops")...Now you may say to yourself, "The grocery store is raising money to help support local food banks or to fight cancer--that sounds like wonderful thing! This grocery store must really care about the community! In theory these charitable contributions being made by a corporation sound like a nice thing and you may ask yourself, "who on earth would object to something like that?" As a cashier who is supposed to/forced to ask for money, I object to that. Here's why...
1) In my spare time I have volunteered at a local food bank. I have done walks for charity. My grandmother has donated both time and money to charities she supports. My sister volunteers in her spare time. I have friends who do volunteer work. My point is that if someone wants to support a charity or an organization that they feel does good work they can certainly support those organizations on their own (whether they want to volunteer their time or make a financial contribution). Many people choose to support a charitable group or volunteer in their community but they certainly don't need a cashier at the grocery store asking them for money.
2). It's basically entrapment. These customers are a captive audience. They are forced to go through the checkout line. It's not like they can avoid the cashier asking them for money by walking away or going somewhere else. And so often there are parents who come through my line with young kids. They have just bought $100 dollars (or often more) worth of groceries. They have kids to clothe and feed, they have bills to pay and after they have just spent a large amount of money on groceries I'm supposed to ask them for more money? That makes me very uncomfortable...
3)It's the economy stupid! Money is tight for so many people right now. The cost of groceries and other basic necessities goes up exponentially every year. Now I know that a dollar isn't a lot of money--most people have an extra dollar or two to spare. But I know the feeling of living paycheck to paycheck and trying to balance a budget and make ends meet--then you have someone asking you to donate to what seems like a really worthy cause and you feel guilty having to say no. I think it puts the cashier and customer in an awkward situation.
4). And the final reason I have such a problem with this is that there's very little accountability in this process. The cashier collects the money for the grocery store to donate but then what? I have no idea where this money is going. Who gets the money? After we collect the donations how is the money being distributed within the organization? Does the organization get 100% of the money collected? Now I'm certainly not suggesting that funds are misappropriated or that the money collected doesn't go to the named charities but there are some unanswered questions that I have. So I decided to do a bit of investigation...stay tuned for what I found out...
No comments:
Post a Comment