Just imagine if he had a twin brother. What would HIS name be?
“Anal”?
Prissy schoolmarm: "Oral Seur, you have afilthy mouth!"
My company attached pledge forms to paystubs two weeks ago-- and about half the office immediately tore them off and tossed them in the recycling boxes.
But I still get to see the UW poster every time I pee (nice placement there…), and I’ve had the chance to read through the list of all the agencies they help-- and had the chance to spot that they list every charity three or four times.
Nobody here will ever ask why I haven’t donated, but if so, I’ll tell them that I give my charity dollars directly to the groups that I support, thus eliminating overhead.
Years ago, my company gave us all Christmas presents each year. They were always high quality and greatly appreciated. Because the contributions to UW were falling off, probably because of all of the UW scandals, the company anounced they were giving (the money used to buy our) Christmas presents to the United Way Campaign! I hate the United Way! They already have several years worth of my Christmas presents. I think I have already contributed more than my fair share.
My company is really big into everyone donating to UW too but I’ve resisted their efforts to take my money. There is a check box on the form that says “I have no contributation for UW this year” and that’s the box I always check. There are other worthwhile charities out there that will use my money and other donations to benefit those who really need it. That’s where my donations go. I really liked reading the links black455 provided. Really opens your eyes up to the greed of some people.
Someone made the comment earlier that if an employee didn’t donate to UW their raise might be affected. While I think that could be true I’ve worked here for almost 5 years and have not donated to UW once and it hasn’t affected my performance reviews. I would think that that kind of information would have to remain confidential and your supervisor couldn’t find out about it. My UW form goes to one of the committee members so my boss never even sees it. The committee is pretty sneaky about letting everyone know who has and hasn’t donated though. Those that donate get these nifty little certificates that say “Thank You” (in Spanish but I don’t think I’m spelling it right… Muchos Grasias?!?) so I guess if people don’t see one on my desk they’ll know I didn’t donate… shame on me. :eek: :rolleyes:
Well, unfortunately the UW campaign is not restricted to the for-profit world. I worked for a jewish Federation agency, and we had the joy of the JUF campaign, followed closely by the UW campaign. Since I was earning so little that I was eligible for most of my agency’s services, I chose not to donate (actually, that, and my mom had worked for a UW agecy when I was little, and they cut her budget by 80%, after which she was unemployed for quite a while. Plus I prefer to donate directly to small, local charities with missionsrather more controversial than what UW funds, and that’s my business.)
The Director of HR visited, called, and wrote me letters giving me specific deadlines to “join with my colleagues in the team spirit” and contribute to UW. I told her that my charitable contributions were my own business, and that the Jewish concept of tsedakah (charity) is ideally anonymous, and so I intended to do my own thing. (Colleagues suggested taping a nickel to the pledge card and sending it back to her, but by that point, it was a matter of principle for me.) Needless to say, the politics at that place generally sucked big rocks, so I quit shortly thereafter for a better job. I don’t like people telling me exactly how I should help humanity; I can decide that myself.
My company has also chosen UW as their charity of choice, and we just got through with the big annual pledge drive. They also have a goal of 100% return of the pledge cards, and we are strongly encouraged to return them no matter if we donate or not. I felt a LOT of pressure to donate even though I didn’t want to, so finally I put $1 in the envelope and got the little sticker for my badge so everyone would know I “donated”. Figured it was the easiest way to appease everyone.
Oh yeah. We had those lame badge stickers too. So much for anonymity.
Haj
If only the UW coerce-a-thon were restricted to one or two weeks a year. I get as many as three emails a day from the rat-fuckers here begging for money. It got to the point where I was replying to every UW email “please remove me from this email list.” I got an email back stating that since the UW uses a distribution list there’s no way to remove individual employees. Bullshit, because the UW has its own distribution list with a separate title. When I pointed this out, my email got forwarded to the V.P. of Human Resources who said:
So now I’m a “bad citizen” because I request that my company not dun me for my hard-earned money on a daily basis. I had involved my boss in my attempt to free myself from these grasping creeps and I showed her the above email, which prompted her to refer to the veep as a “dumbass.” Everything from United Way is now routed to the trash, but unfortunately random people send out UW shit under their own ID as well so it doesn’t get rid of everything. Fuckers. Evil bastards. May they all rot.
Mtgman, the United Way campaigns I’ve seen (three counties in two states) have designated-gift programs where you can target part or all of your pledge to a particular member (and in most cases non-member) charity. And the overhead is minimized for such contributions – the one time I inquired, it was 2% of the gift, effectively to cover the cost of printing campaign literature and passing through the funds to the recipient charity.
About 75% of my wife’s and my contributions, through the state and federal joint campaigns (run by civil-service volunteers with UW staff support) and through UW, were as designated gifts.
Designated Gift is a scam. They can just give a bit higher of a percantage from the general fund to the other charities and a bit less to yours to cover the difference and in the end it’s the same. Give the money directly to your charity of choice and they can save the 2% processing fee.
I still maintain that solicitation, especially heavy handed solicitation, is entirely inappropriate at work.
Haj
Not to meantion the failures to deliver the earmarked funds as noted in the stories linked to above.
Avoid Satan’s Charity and give directly to the charities. That’s what I do now. Fool me once. . . .
:mad:
The thing that bugs me the most is the level of attention given to just this one campaign. We get other charitable solicitations throughout the year (especially around Thanksgiving and Christmas) and don’t get me started about the PAC donation letters sent out annually. But each of those are generally a single email or letter saying “If you’re interested, here’s how you can participate.” I can handle those because I get to choose how (or if) I want to participate. I can also submit a form to get personal charitable donations matched by the company. But no other campaign gets 2 weeks worth of undivided attention, automatic payroll deductions, and statistical analysis on how many people participated.
I thought it went like:
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee – I know it’s in Texas, it’s probably in Tennessee – that says, fool me once, shame on … shame on you. Fool me … You can’t get fooled again.”
Man, don’t make me go “knu-clure” on you!
Posted by Scylla:
Wahhhhh! You had a “decline to pledge” bubble. I feel cheated. Mine only had spots marked:
[list=n]
[li] Give![/li][li] Give More![/li][/list]
Hmm, guess the blurb about their overhead and decent financial records was propaganda or misinformation. Thanks for the clarification.
Enjoy,
Steven