The anonymous voice at the other end of the line to the Citizen’s Information Centre was upfront and helpful, but nothing prepared me for the scowl awaiting as I finally came up to the spittle covered screen separating me from the vision that was the permed, middle aged, cardigan woman, and with the potential to emancipate me from my Koka noodle hell and put me back in the realm of fresh veg. Cardigan woman tells me her computer system operates two tax years in the past, so it’ll be my mid-twenties by the time I can use up the accumulated PRSI credits from my patch work quilt of jobs. Forms and forms later, and after jumping dolphin like deftly through reams of hoops - I'm left to await confirmation of my SWA. A letter arrives a few weeks later: my summer is to be lived out on 13.50EUR a week. With so much privatized knowledge of miraculous scamming of the welfare system collected among my social networks, how the hell did it come to pass that I let it slip I was co-habiting with another minimum wage slave?

Skipping every good gig of the summer and forward a few weeks I’m scrounging the job websites for the ideal posting - the sort of employment where I can persist with my disdain for work and internet addiction, greeting the world with lethargy and hangover’s rather than service and cheer. It’s at this point that chugging comes in. At once every urban area's new social pariah, the industry of charity mugging grows at a frantic rate as the most visible method of fund-raising. For most of us awareness around chugging extends little beyond the daily shared avoidance strategies used when passing the fuckers. They approach with grins like five year olds all giddied up to the eye-balls on skittles, meanwhile their eyes betray their smiles, its clear they really just want the ground to open up and swallow them, while you promptly lapse into the same hackneyed tricks; pretending to send a text message, using your IPod to short circuit your hearing or just storming past as if they don’t even exist.

I’d been through the interview process for chugging once or twice before, for groups like Concern and Amnesty International, both of whom have in house fund raising operations paying over the odds of €14 per hour. A double team presents itself, one young and in training to take over the interview process, the other older and in control. Given the predisposition for slightly hippy-ish clothing and woolly jumpers, the NGO sector should be thankful the League of Gentlemen never caught wind of the potential for Legs Akimbo style farce. Subject to a hardly probing set of questions on motivations for wanting the job, I found myself getting into a rhythm about wanting to save the world, knowing I am doing something useful with my life before hitting a brick wall when asked to talk at random about something I’m passionate about, a natural surliness ensured this was as far as I got.

It’s Friday, 11am and mid-August, when a rather excitable character rings me offering me an interview at 6pm for a chugging role to start the following Monday. I make my way out to a small office for an agency in lower Rathmines, I'm told I already have the job before being rushed through the interview routine for bureaucratic purposes, by a stressed indie-boy in his late twenties. Three days later I’m rushed into a one day training session with a slightly overweight, rugby player turned charity sweet talker. I was to be transformed over night into a salesman familiar with the routine of “Stop! Pitch! Ask!” This was the corporate newspeak covering up the old routine of sales targets, a PLC-ing of charities, disguised among a chummy, “we're a gang, and a what do a gang have? Balls” mentality, clearly designed to sap away any individual intuition that this charity talk was a load of tosh and you were standing on the precipice of the world of cold selling. After eight hours of repeating sales routines, the next day I was bibbed up and out on the street and hoping no one I know would pass by.

Amidst a drought of employment a flat-mate ended up pushing these notorious charity scratch cards on a commission only basis for 1 Euro out of every 2 Euro made. This was really stretching the definition of charity with the money going to a well known private alcoholic’s clinic. On sunny days, we sat perched in Temple Bar and watched with a clinical coldness as his levels of aggression increased over the months, before climaxing in brazenly following people from one end of Temple Bar to the other. Thankfully chuggers fuck off when politely asked to. After all, charities don't want to tarnish their brand with harassing figures desperate to pay rent.

Looking into it, chugging is a world with many nebulous traditions clashing. For the major charities it's simple. The donations they receive on an ongoing basis through direct debit allow for clean, efficient and long term budgeting as we had it drilled into our heads in training. Chugging is a method of direct sales and promotion rolled into one, lessons learnt from corporate promotion teams on visibility and engagement and on how to push a product in the face of a youth demographic. As one fund-raising company routinely points out: “while the average age of a donor on a charity database is 55, the average age of a person who decides to give regularly during a face to face communication is 29.” The model was developed in the early 1990's by the Austrian Andreas Leitner who had previously engaged in cold calling on telephones, before spreading the method to Germany, Switzerland and Italy, before hitting the UK with the company Dialogue Direct, last year it turned over €4 million.

On one hand you have charities seeking to raise money motivated by global or local concerns, and on the other you have private companies offering a service on a commission basis. Last year in the UK an estimated 690,000 people were persuaded by "chuggers" to give financial support to a charity, according to figures from the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association. At an average fee of £50 per sign-up, that suggests £34.5 million of donations going as income to the businesses. The big five are the Dialog Group Ltd, which runs the Face 2 Face Fundraising and Dialogue Direct agencies, Push Ltd, Gift Fundraising Ltd, Caring Together Ltd and Fruitful Fundraising UK Ltd. These are the commission sucking companies who's prominence has unleashed the current wave of anti-chuggger backlash prompting some of the more major charities to set up in house companies to do the work directly.

Feeding people my hook line of “excuse me, but do you know where the little people live?" Before rapidly proceeding into my spiel. The other option was pretending to be a tree, dancing or singing and fucked if I was doing that. There was a surprising lack of ignorance on the Dublin streets, there were in fact no blunt “fuck offs” and only a handful of goth kids muttering “get a real job” at a safe distance before tossing off to waste their mammies money on Marilon Manson shirts in Asha. Our location for the day was in and around the Central Bank, a turf much contested by the several homeless tappers who saw us preying on their market of soppy alternative types and American tourists hanging around Temple Bar, many of whom walked into my ploy forcing me to fob them off by immediately asking for money. This was selling a modern form of indulgences: this truly was a parallel world of “this week we have a special offer on children between the ages of five and ten suffering from polio, ten of whom you can cure for minimum of €19 a month. Take out a tax efficient subscription of €21 a month and that'll school eleven young girls left orphaned by parents with HIV, suit you sir? Well, step over here where you can purge your consciousness of guilt, and renounce your social responsibility all in one foul swipe of your signature and a series of numbers sent to your bank?”

The ad for the job sold it as “crazy or random” with the possibility of “work outdoors and do something different” and “make a real difference to your world” ensuring a constant flow inwards of young people seeking temporary work outside the humdrum of the McJob circus, while keeping some what in line with their own ill-defined sense of social justice. The others on team were indie types, or mushroom munching, psy-trance types clutching their Carlos Castaneda before heading off traveling again to some vaguely world music soundtrack. Judging from constant on-line advertising, there is a huge staff turnover in the “chugging” world. I did one day on the job, it was emotional prostitution, with a face physically aching from so much fake smiling. And then there was the weather, I’d been told in training that save for a hurricane Katrina style cataclysm we were never permitted to leave the out doors.

The buddy buddy-bullshit from the Carlos Castaneda reading team leader was nudging me to stay late, auto-reduce my hourly rate to somewhere dangerously below the minimum wage while keeping up the companies commission and I'm sure his own bonus. With such profits at stake and charity as the best motivational tool, its no surprise to hear that in New Zealand, there are claims that some chuggers are asked to pay a bond to cover an donors who pull out before a month before taking up employment. The next day when my alarm clock went off, I rolled over and went back to sleep - it was clear I needed to get off the streets and start pissing the general public off from a call centre instead.

Labels: Politics, Rant, Society

Sunday, November 27, 2005

€2:85 For A Tepid Chocolate?

With original reporting coming to dominate over the action reports of old, Indymedia is getting better and better. On the quality of Starbucks, I was in there myself the othe day, after scanning the overhead menu for the cheapest item, I got served this middling sized cup of hot chocolate that was more tepid than hot with a great dollop of UHT cream mounted on the top of it for added authenticity. It tasted like frothy piss to be honest, except it had a €2.85 price tag, which is beyond excessive. A worry I have with Starbucks is that it will become a marker for prices across the scity, with other cafes using it as a watermark for their own prices.

One thing I can't understand is why there would be queues outside the door for such shite beverages. The bloke I was with paid out €1.20 for a pack of mature cheese and red onion crisps, with an advertising tag splashed across the front. "It's not easy to make proper cheese and onion, sometimes we weep trying." Fucking hell, why tell us bunch of paddies its so difficult to make a pack of Tayto when we practically shit them. As for the taste, it was like eating a compressed cheesy puff, with the sort of sizzling effect of sucking on a Meanie or any other similiar 10c pack of E numbers .

Labels: Indymedia, Rant, Society

# posted by antrophe @ 2:47 PM

(1) comments

Monday, October 31, 2005

Fuck the Garda

Last night I had the urge to punch a cop but due to the consequences of such actions I kept my fists to myself took down their numbers and swore I would make a complaint. Yesterday after a twelve hour shift James myself and a few mates decided we would drink a few cans before going into the gig to save money. We were sitting by the Liffey on the boardwalk chatting away. Every time guards walked by we would hide our cans and they would walk by without taking notice. But the last time guards walked by we weren’t so lucky, they noticed James' can under the bench between his legs and kicked it over. Then they had us stand up to search for more cans. They were being a bit thick and we were being a bit cheeky so they Section 8'ed us which means you have to leave the vicinity immediately or they can arrest you, but not before they took all our names, birthdates and addresses. James was asking them under what section they had the right to take our addresses, since as far as we knew we only had to give our names and addresses but not birthdates. Due to our inquisitive and less then respectful manner towards these pricks they started to get a bit more rude. One was questioning James asking where he worked. Our mate was saying “don’t tell him anything” but I think both him and I were on the same page and wanted to show them how we had good “caring” jobs and were not doley scum like they assumed.

The other guard was asking what part of America I was from, we had a hard time understanding that I was not from the states and had never lived there so instead of thinking ‘umm canada’ we decided to take a low blow and say so your from D4 then. He started to make fun of my accent and do a really bad American accent “Hey maaan” and so on. He was really pissing me off.

He then asked me where I worked, I told him a homeless shelter. He asked if it paid well, and then said that the homeless get paid well and was asking me how much they get a week, not in an interested way but rather in a manner where he could bitch about the homeless taking all the welfare money. When I asked why he cared he said that he works with the homeless aswell. Now this is were I get real snarky; I say to him “Oh right when you are beating them up and arresting them” oh course he went with it and said “yeah and I love it”

The blood is boiling!!! We left after making sure we had there number and calling then enough names . . .

While we walked off the board walk and onto the bridge there was this guy tapping, we warned him that he might wanna move on since there were two assholes heading his way that said they enough beating up and arresting homeless people. Low and behold the guards went right up to him and started to harass him. While they were doing that James went over with his note book and started to take notes. This actually shook them, one of them turned around took out his hand cuffs and started to run at us. We can take a hint and we ran off. Of course I opened my last can once we turned the corner ;)

Labels: Out, Politics, Rant

# posted by Reeuq @ 1:14 AM

(2) comments

Saturday, October 29, 2005

A day of fitness

My years living in Ireland have caught up to me, chipper food and pints are a bad combination. I noticed this year the full summer pasted before I realised it had really began. Being a Canadian we believe in a few things, tolerance, layering and seasons. You realise summer is coming and with out consciously thinking about it your foods change, your intake lowers and you disregard your hibernation meal styles for fruit and little else. Living in Ireland has kept me on a constant hibernation diet for the full 12 months. And my physical activity although includes daily biking and the occasional rock climb and swim is actually restricted to running from the cops on the occasional direct action.

The thing is I use to be so fit, in my high school year book this one girl Stephanie wrote to the most athletic person I know. And although my concentrations have been side tracked by politics I still have goals of doing triathlons at some stage of my life. At the rate I was going I was going to have to become a born again athlete in my fifties for that goal to be realised.

So yesterday I took the dreaded first step and went to the gym. There is this gym across the street from my gaff that I have been eyeing the past nine months of living here and now with only three months left to go on the lease I am a proud owner of a St. Catherine’s health club membership.

I put on my surf pants I bought for Thailand and my space invaders t-shirt and I was good to go. I walked into the gym with confidence and looked around with the air of gym knowledge I walked straight towards this piece of machinery that I have never used before and jumped right on. The equipment is the strangest thing that they have at gyms, its kinda like you are cross-country skiing but you can go back and forth. Everything was going ok, I put in my weight, age, length of time and choose the cross training program.

Everything was fine till three mins in when it says peddle backwards. What how do I do that? I stop and awkwardly move my legs in a way that becomes a smooth backwards motion but wait how do I keep my feet attached to the peddles. they keep sliding back, at least when I was going forward they would slide to the stopper in front but this is madness nothing to stop my feet from sliding off this thing, I put all my weight on the peddles hoping that that pressure will keep them in one spot. Then I start to notice I'm sweating; good its working, the calories are flying off I'm getting fit.

But damn it I'm sweating all over this crazy machine and don't have a towel to wipe it off. It had been years since I had been at one of these places and I have forgotten the etiquette of the gym. I see a sign that says sweat towels are mandatory and that they are on sale at reception, but alas I have no cash so I leave traces of my sweat an the hang rails of all the equipment.

Next is the running machine, these things have always scared me, I mean how do you get on and how do you get off. I start slowly hoping to just be cool and not fall on my face. I notice this clip attached to the hand rail. It seems that you clip in on your t and if you fall it will pull out the clip that causes an emergency stop. This safety device seems more dangerous then falling yourself. The string is long so you have to be nearly off the thing before the emergency stop and then with the sudden change in speed you are sure to fall on your face, I put it on anyways and see what the deal is. Twenty mins later I’m well into this running thing, watching Sponge Bob on TV and doing an eleven min mile. In my excitement my pumping arms accidentally hit the control panel and the whole thing shuts down thinking I just fell. The look on my face when I stumble to halt must have been classic.

A gym disaster I am, but its been two days now and who knows where this health surge could lead.

Labels: Rant, Society

# posted by Reeuq @ 6:52 PM

(0) comments

Man is the new middle east

Men are the original terrorist it would seem. The fear tactics used to protect women from this dark stranger in the alleys or even from the cunning, good looking manipulative man on the streets in the day resembles the paranoia during war times gone past or newer anti-terrorist propaganda. The idea that we need to be on guard 24 hours day and walk around in a constant state of fear places the women as a constant victim as a week vulnerable entity that needs to be in fear of her life and existence. Someone who needs to look around every corner, just counting down to that moment when the ‘predator’ will smell her weakness and attack.

This is not to take away from so many women’s experience of violence but to rather look at where the sexual violent power dynamic lies. It’s in the home, in among friends and partners. This is again not to say that women should be walking around in a state of fear waiting for the moment for there loving partner to turn around and rape then. It’s more to say that we shouldn’t fall into the role of victim walking down the street or at our parties and safety tip for women lists is as damaging to women’s self of self and feminism as the violence that women experience.

The following email is beign forwarded around, of course it was generated in the states the place were fear tatics replace rationla thinking at all levels. It would be like consulting wilderness survival guide to figure out how to deal with paper cuts. So check it out your self . . . very scary




Safety tips for Women

We can now add to the list of victims the retired 77 yr. old TCU professor from Ft Worth whose body was found last week in Oklahoma—and the 11 yr. old in Sarasota, FL. Because of these recent abductions in daylight hours, refresh yourself of these things to do in an emergency situation...This is for you, and for you to share with your wife, your children, everyone you know.

After reading these 9 crucial tips, forward them to someone you care about. It never hurts to be careful in this crazy world we live in.

1. Tip from Tae Kwon Do: The elbow is the strongest point on your body. If you are close enough to use it, do!

2. Learned this from a tourist guide in New Orleans. If a robber asks for your wallet and/or purse, DO NOT HAND IT TO HIM. Toss it away from you....chances are that he is more interested in your wallet and/or purse than you, and he will go for the wallet/purse. RUN LIKE MAD IN THE OTHER DIRECTION!

3. If you are ever thrown into the trunk of a car, kick out the back tail lights and stick your arm out the hole and start waving like crazy. The driver won't see you, but everybody else will. This has saved lives.

4. Women have a tendency to get into their cars after shopping, eating, working, etc., and just sit (doing their checkbook, or making a list, etc. DON'T DO THIS!) The predator will be watching ou, and this is the perfect opportunity for him to get in on the passenger side, put a gun to your head, and tell you where to go. AS SOON AS YOU GET INTO YOUR CAR, LOCK THE DOORS AND LEAVE.

a. If someone is in the car with a gun to your head DO NOT DRIVE OFF, repeat: DO NOT DRIVE OFF! Instead gun the engine and speed into anything, wrecking the car. Your Air Bag will save you. If the person is in the back seat they will get the worst of it. As soon as the car crashes bail out and run. It is better than having them find your
body in a remote location.

5. A few notes about getting into your car in a parking lot, or parking garage:

A.) Be aware: look around you, look into your car, at the passenger side floor, and in the back seat.
B.) If you are parked next to a big van, enter your car from the passenger door. Most serial killers attack their victims by pulling them into their vans while the women are attempting to get into their cars.
C.) Look at the car parked on the driver's side of your vehicle, and the passenger side. If a male is sitting alone in the seat nearest your car, you may want to walk back into the mall, or work, and get a guard/policeman to walk you back out.

IT IS ALWAYS BETTER TO BE SAFE THAN SORRY. (And better paranoid than dead.)

6. ALWAYS take the elevator instead of the stairs. (Stairwells are horrible places to be alone and the perfect crime spot. This is especially true at NIGHT!)

7. If the predator has a gun and you are not under his control, ALWAYS RUN! The predator will only hit you (a running target) 4 in 100 times; And even then, it most likely WILL NOT be a vital organ. RUN, Preferably ! in a zig -zag pattern!

8. As women, we are always trying to be sympathetic: STOP. It may get you raped, or killed. Ted Bundy, the serial killer, was a good-looking, well educated man, who ALWAYS played on the sympathies of unsuspecting women. He walked with a cane, or a limp, and often asked "for help" into his vehicle or with his vehicle, which is when he
abducted his next victim.

************* Here it is *******

9. Another Safety Point: Someone just told me that her friend heard a crying baby on her porch the night before last, and she called the police because it was late and she thought it was weird. The police told her "Whatever you do, DO NOT open the door." The lady then said that it sounded like the baby had crawled near a window, and she was worried that it would crawl to the street and get run over. The policeman said, "We already have a unit on the way, whatever you do, DO NOT open the door." He told her that they think a serial killer has a baby's cry recorded and uses it to coax women out of their homes thinking that someone dropped off a baby. He said they have not verified it, but have had several calls by women saying that they hear baby's cries outside their doors when they're home alone at night.

Please pass this on and DO NOT open the door for a crying baby

----This e-mail should probably be taken seriously because the Crying Baby theory was mentioned on America's Most Wanted this past Saturday when they profiled the serial killer in Louisiana. I'd like you to forward this to all the women you know. It may save a life. A candle is not dimmed by lighting another candle. I was going to send this to the ladies only, but guys, if you love your mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, etc., you may want to pass it onto them, as well. Send this to any woman you know that may need to be reminded that the world we live in has a lot of crazies in it and it's better to be safe than sorry.

Labels: Politics, Rant, Society

# posted by Reeuq @ 6:50 PM

(0) comments