The Daring Dufas wrote:
casey wrote:
I have always been a believer, in helping the less fortunate when I can.

This year, I feel like being Scrooge!

Our company usually "adopts" 2 families at Christmas. After having my
company not matching my 401, it was a hit to me. Same with having
wages frozen for 2 years, and having to take 10 days per year not
paid, plus giving up 5 personnel days a year. I'm short 3 weeks pay,
plus no 401 matching.

Our "boss" said the families we adopted needs cash. WTF?? I have some
extra food I can share, and a couple of new sweaters I'm willing to
provide. My boss says this is unacceptable. The families need to have
cash, so they can buy for their children. I have no idea what the
money will go for, drugs maybe? Besides, I don't have extra cash.

I contacted the Red-X. Said I have food & some new clothes to donate.
They said they have plenty of food & clothes, they need cash. This is
no joke, they actually told me this!

Helping the less fortunate? Since when have people decide what they
will accept as gifts? Bah Humbug, I don't need this crap.


I once worked for a company that participated in this United Way
organization. If all the employees contributed to the United Way
by having money taken out of their pay, the boss got his picture
in the newspaper and all the newsletters along with bragging rights.
I got my paycheck and saw that money had been taken from my pay
for United Way without my consent. I immediately put a stop to it.
I had superiors trying to cajole me into allowing money for United
Way to be taken out of my pay and I refused. Needless to say, I no
longer had good relations with the management and didn't stay with
the company much longer. I later found out that new hires had to
sign a statement allowing money to be deducted from their pay for
this Mafia,...er, charitable organization. This crap has been going
on all over the country in both the government and private sector
for many years.

TDD

Where I work, they bend over backwards in writing saying it is entirely
voluntary, and they don't actually sign people up without a signed slip.
But they sure do try to shame people into donating, with all the usual
peer pressure techniques like publicly passing out the slips, and
keeping running dollar totals for each shop, making a competition out of
it to see who can hit their target first. I do donate, most years, but I
write one check, and designate what charity I want to have the money.
(There are plenty of charities in the book that I regard as left/right
wingnut useless feel-good groups.) But I am not entirely convinced
designating who my donation goes to, means that the worthless ones get
any less. I suspect they tally up the directed donations, and just
subtract that from whatever dollars were designated for that charity in
the first place, so the undesignated donations flow to the politically
correct groups. (Sorta like lotto was supposed to ADD to school
financing, not become one of the standard sources for the money?)

--
aem sends...