Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Tuesday

The first part of today was pretty standard. Lunch was all right, and I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary on the way to my community service. The full time volunteers were in a meeting with some board members the whole time we were there, which limited what we could get done, since we had some questions. Regardless, I was still able to get some stuff done. (read as, we were dumped onto this organization who doesn't really have the time to train and manage us because they were contacted the day before we got there, and now we're more of a burden then anything else)

Today’s interesting event was on the subway ride home. Between two stops, someone got up and started rattling off a speech, asking for donations. They were (apparently) from some homeless aid foundation type thing, and asking for donations (15 cents) and signatures. The signatures were supposedly to help get funding from the city.

I thought that his pitch was pretty good, so I gave him the spare change in my pocket (16 cents) and signed his paper. Most people in the car gave something, many people dropping dollars into his manila envelope.

When we got off the subway, Adam told me that the guy was a con artist. I had suspicions, but didn’t think that the small amount I gave was a big loss. As we talked about it, I realized how that kind of an operation could be really successful. The people have a captive audience, first off. Second, as soon as one person gives, there is peer pressure for others to donate. And finally the whole thing took less then three minuets, in which I would guess he made ten dollars. He could easily keep working his way up and down the cars, and never have the same people in a train twice.

So I lost a little bit of money, its something that I won’t likely do again. I know that donating money is always best done to a reputable organization (Red Cross, for example), but this guy really had me going (he rolled a 20). In any case, 16 cents isn’t bad for a learning experience.

2 Comments:

Blogger Captain Shar said...

Heh...Philly. You heard some of our opinions of the teachers there, right? Anyway, the roof is good. Stick with the roof. Me and Matt and Liz had more fun up there than anywhere else, pretty much.

9:21 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"...But this guy really had me going (he rolled a 20)."

...

I weep as I perfectly understand that statement. I weep even more as I see it as a clear and concise explanation.

1:11 AM  

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