How Not To Save the World

If you’re looking for a job and you hate people, working as a street canvasser is probably a bad idea. The idea quickly turns from bad to terrible when involving employment at a non-profit organization whose causes include so many liberal talking points that the whole idea resembles political parody taken to an extreme.

Hi, we’re against littering and cutting down trees and water contamination and animal testing and hungry children and disease and war and globalization and can’t we all just get along?

Believe it or not, such organizations actually exist. And scarier than their mere existence is that they hire people to hit the streets and ask you for money. On the surface, these canvassers may appear concerned with spreading their pseudo-revolutionary ideas, but all they really want is your cash. And sometimes, it’s just easier to give it to them unless you like it when your ears bleed. And bleed they will. You’ll be a bicycle riding, SUV burning, macrobiotic vegan with a head full of Nag Champa scented dreadlocks by the time these people are through with you.

Sad as that is, it is also inevitable. Unless you work for them for a day and get fired before your shift is over. Such was the case with my “friend.” My “friend” - who we’ll call “Matt” - decides “he” needs a job. A recent Portland, Oregon transplant by way of Los Angeles, Matt finds the Portland job market depressed and haggard. Like a thirty-something’s postpartum blues less the giving birth part.

Searching high and low and lower, Matt finds a street canvassing job posted in the paper. At last! Something worth his $100,000 college education! He calls, schedules an interview, arrives in a suit, and gets glares that scream “Oh shit, I think it’s the Man!”

Having assured the interviewers that not only is he not the Man, he is not even the woMan, Matt inches toward the self-denigrating mountain peak otherwise known as employment. After watching an embarrassing video (yes, VHfuckingS) about some liberal nonsense, Matt is hired. Show up tomorrow at 8:30 and be ready to change the world – one dollar at a time!

Next morning, Matt shows up. Weary of what the day has in store - namely accosting strangers in public places – he shows up nonetheless.

And here’s the best part of the story. Each member of the street team is given a t-shirt. Save the Whales, Save the Trees, Save Your Dignity, and Save the Children t-shirts all around! Except there were no Save Your Dignity shirts. Matt is lucky enough to get a Save the Children shirt. His favorite because the only thing he hates more than children is saving them and the only thing he loves more than dead, poor, hungry children is Irony. He puts on the shirt and then watches in horror as the street team’s leader instructs everyone to put their hand in and in unison shout “Let’s go help make the world a better place!”

Matt tried. He tried by going to the town square in his Save the Children t-shirt. He tried by saying hello to people who looked gullible. He tried by avoiding eye contact with those who knew better. And through his efforts, he didn’t raise a single dollar. But he did get some suspicious glares and he did get fired.