I have experienced the worst summer job in the history of hot weather. I was a street canvasser.
Let me amend that statement, I was a street canvasser for a grand total of 8 hours, 3 of which were spent preparing me for the humiliation that is street canvassing. In my 5 hours of supreme vulnerability, I managed to convince 2 people to each donate 20 dollars to the ACLU. Again, I need to amend that statement (I sense a trend here). I convinced one person to donate 20 dollars, the other 20 came from a friendly Jamaican woman who worked in the Chase bank that I was standing in front of who, when I informed her as to why I was standing on the street with a clipboard, offered to give me 20 dollars if I started an account with Chase. I gladly accepted. Simply the stat that I managed to stop only 13 people in 5 hours, 2 of whom actually felt compelled to donate money should send anyone a message about the nature of this job. And I have a winning smile.
For 5 hours I became that high pitched whining on the streets of New York that you ignore on your way to more important things. You would think that I would have some compassion for the sad souls who struggle to wince out a smile with every "Hi, do you have a minute for the environment?" Yet all I can say when they flag me down and cast aside my fairly blatant attempt at avoiding eye contact is "Sorry, I'm late for work".
I think it's an innate human desire to preserve our own privacy that allows us to completely ignore and sometimes demean these perfectly nice people attempting to instill a desire to give money to a cause. Although, I have come to realize, long after my short yet validatingly miserable experience, that it isn't the people that are being ignored, but the concept of canvassing. They are, and I was, simply a tool for carrying out the idea of free advertising for causes. While, yes, they are just doing their jobs, their jobs happen to infringe upon the integrity of my personal space bubble. Canvassers have just as much right to petition on the street as I do to ignore them. It's nothing personal.
-Written 7/15/08
1 comment:
I've definitely struggled with this one. At one point, I became very defensive, and started handing out chapters of Ralph Nader books to anyone who solicited me on the street. "Hey - it's my personal cause - read about it!"
Then I became mean, and started sniping back to the Save the Children folks with "Sorry, I don't have kids".
Now, I am nice about it. I stop, make eye contact, and then either ask them what they are "selling", or politely tell them I am not interested. But I am social about it, whereas I used to be very anti-social. But they take that as interest, and then they latch on and keep walking with you and THEN, it usually turns into a 30-minute conversation and their supervisor starts lurking in the background to see what's up. No joke. But the conversation is usually good, and I generally don't mind having interrupted my day to meet a new "friend".
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