Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Is that ever true around here... This is a city where the charities are all staffed by middle-aged busybodies who feel like they want to fix things, but by squid, you'd better deserve it, and you'd better be properly grateful and self-abasing, and tug your forelock so hard it practically comes out by the roof.

Then the same folks volunteer to run the food banks, skim all the good stuff off the top, because "nobody would really want that anyway" (like the person I knew who worked at a church-based one and brought home an entire case of bottles of Welch's grape juice) -- read: "That's too good for them."

And then when the scam gets old, they complain about having "compassion burnout" and quit.

This is also why I hate most voluntarism -- in this town, a lot of it involves rich people with a lot of spare time and the income to pay for it (sometimes these lucky bastards will even get seconded from their jobs with big corporations to work on some "charitable" project or other, which means they're still getting paid) conning poor people into working for free. Don't give me a t-shirt and free pizza (which I can't eat anyway) at the dead-dog party, pay me minimum wage, dammit!