In Other Words

Brownie Points

I had never really though about working for a charity till today. I mean, I had in the sense of going off to some third world country where they barely have running water and teaching English there, but never in the country I’m in. Banana has talked about it (quite often, actually), but still I had never considered it. The two interviews today (there were two, I got that wrong in the last post) were both for charity organisations.

We had taken them out of the newspaper the day before. One we realised was for a charity, but not both. So we went and talked at both of them and I have to say I wouldn’t mind working for these companies at all. It struck me as quite satisfying to be working for those that really needed my help, rather then for some businessman who felt he needed another car.

Quite often that has bothered me about mainstream business. The fact that if we work hard we’ll make our bosses rich really eats into my motivation. The problem is that I’m not disciplined enough to do what needs to be done on my own. That always puts me in a bit of a pickle. When I work for myself I can’t get myself to do it and when somebody else gets me to do it I don’t want to do it. A mental rock and a psychological hard place, if you will.

Working for this charity might be a way out. If I manage to get myself to work hard there then I’ll be helping make the lives of those less fortunate richer. I am and remain a socialist at heart, so that sits rather well in my book (not to mention my soul). I mean I always have this intention of doing things for those worse off, but then I never really seem to get around to it.

I always put it off, really. Think there will be more then enough time later to help. I’m sure a lot of us are guilty of that. ‘I would like to help, but I can’t. I just can’t give anything because otherwise I can’t pay for gas.’ Gas is important, I’ll grant you that. The question I need to ask myself, though, is ‘does gas rank as a higher priority then a stranger’s health?’

Of course there is a bit of hypocrisy in that. If I work for these organisations then they will be paying me money. For instance, for the second job I would get no basic salary, but would get 50 dollars for every 30 dollars monthly subscription. That would mean that for the first 40 days of that person’s subscription they are only giving money to pay my salary. Only money earned after that would pay towards the actual charity.

Of course time society now deems our time too valuable to expect people to work for these kinds of organisations without being paid. Truth be told, the number of people that help out of the goodness of their heart are just too small in number to raise the kind of money these charities need. Paying people is the only way that they can have enough people out there raising money for their needs.

I certainly couldn’t afford to work with a charity if I wouldn’t get paid. That’s not out of cold-hearted cruelty but out of simple necessity. I think I made that more then perfectly clear over the last couple of weeks posting here.

The question then becomes, however, ‘am I really doing anything more charitable then the average office worker’. Yes I am working for a more charitable organisation, but do I get ‘charity points’ by association? I don’t know, but I imagine that I’ll have more than enough time for that if they offer me the job. I imagine that the people there might have some insights into that question.

posted by Symbol @ 18.1.05