This guy at Safeway, who sits in the front of the store giving away free shit if you donate some spare dollars to a certain cause, has been greeting me and saying salutations to me 3 times a week for the past five years. That means we have interacted 6 (in and out weekly) . . . for 52 weeks . . . for 5 years. That's right, he's asked me for a donation 1560 times in the last 5 years (of which a few times my wife has broken down). Yet, this mutha fuck'n guy at Safeway, each and every time acts as if he has never seen me before. In his world each encounter is the first and he's just a good ol' guy trying to help some folks out for the cause.
Don't get me wrong, I love this guy! But let's face it . . . he's a senior citizen Safeway nickel and dime the people robot. I don't even know if his eyes actually work. Some days I just want to give him a big hug and then slap him like the old man bitch he is, saying, "It's not too late! For God's sake, you're old and wrinkly, but it's not too late! You don't have to be a Safeway robot. Use your eyes (if they work) and think about what you're doing. Live a little. Awknowledge the people who walk through the door. They're not the change in your basket. They're the hard working middle class and they've got problems too. They can't give you 5 dollars 1560 times over the next five years because they wouldn't be able to feed their kids. You know the kids, who are our human future. We don't want them to turn out to be some Robot Grandpa without eyes who begs for corporate charities using the idea of humanity to nickle and dime the people who are already being fucked over in a million different ways.
Ironically, the guy at Safeway is only a part of the experience. First you want in, he asks you for money, then you shop and when you get the the registrar the credit card machine asks you if you would like to donate to a cause and then the cashier asks you if you'd like to donate to another cause and then you walk out the front door where the Grampa Robot doesn't even remember he talked to you five minutes earlier and he asks you to donate for the same cause he asked for when you walked in.
If you add the 1560 times the grandpa robot approached me and the 1560 times I was approached by the credit machine and the tellers that's 3120 times I've been approached for my spare change at Safeway. That's a lot. Now I'm not saying that I'm against charities or that I don't want to contribute, but what I am against is the idea that the charities have taken a play from the American corporate machinery playbook. They're "nickle and diming" us to death. What's worse is they're using guilt to drive the sale. I've felt guilty at Safeway over 3000 times in the last five years. That's sick.
Hell, I just wanted to buy some unhealthly shitty food sold from corporations that are trying to kill us so they can turn a buck and then sell us some medicine at the in store pharmacies (to remedy our bad diets)!
