What I have been doing
On Tuesday, I got a job. Today, I quit that job. So this is a tragic story, the kind you know the ending before you start, like Romeo and Juliet.
I got a job with a fundraising company that works for the children's charity Children International. What I did was stand out in the Loop every day asking people to sign up to sponsor a child in a poor country. To do this they have to give me their credit card number. Yes, to a random person on the street. It's really hard to get people to do this.
But by far the hardest part is getting people to stop to talk to you in the first place. The following rules apply:
1) If you are wearing a SUIT, you will not stop
2) If you are a WOMAN UNDER 30, you will not stop (or any woman of any age, if fashionably dressed)
3) if you are holding a STARBUCKS cup, you will not stop; you do not have the 70 cents a day to better a poor child's life
Finally, if you DO stop: you are starving and unemployed and couldn't possibly have the money.
Also you are a sounding board for everyone's opinion on poverty, and what we should do about it. "Why should we feed their kids for them?" "We shouldn't be sending money, we should be sending birth control!"
I'm not bitter. They're just not paying me enough to lose my faith in humanity.
I got a job with a fundraising company that works for the children's charity Children International. What I did was stand out in the Loop every day asking people to sign up to sponsor a child in a poor country. To do this they have to give me their credit card number. Yes, to a random person on the street. It's really hard to get people to do this.
But by far the hardest part is getting people to stop to talk to you in the first place. The following rules apply:
1) If you are wearing a SUIT, you will not stop
2) If you are a WOMAN UNDER 30, you will not stop (or any woman of any age, if fashionably dressed)
3) if you are holding a STARBUCKS cup, you will not stop; you do not have the 70 cents a day to better a poor child's life
Finally, if you DO stop: you are starving and unemployed and couldn't possibly have the money.
Also you are a sounding board for everyone's opinion on poverty, and what we should do about it. "Why should we feed their kids for them?" "We shouldn't be sending money, we should be sending birth control!"
I'm not bitter. They're just not paying me enough to lose my faith in humanity.