Monday, October 05, 2009

Pointless conversations...

A man called me today about Great Ormond Street Hospital. Yep, I agreed with him, lovely hospital, very good work, blah blah blah. Then he came out with:

"Right, so can you give us £20 a month?"

I actually laughed out loud at that, and had to explain that I would love to but having no money at all would make it quite impossible.

"I quite understand," says man, "blah blah blah, lovely hospital, sick children, now how about giving us £10 a month?".

So again I say, would love to, maybe in a few years, but impossible. Sorry.

"Oh ok," says man, "blah blah blah REALLY sick children, I am sure you appreciate just how SICK they are and how much they and their parents are suffering. How about £3 a month?"

Me: "You can keep asking but I still have no money".

By this point I was quite cross, was he going to keep going till we got to 1p a month or something? Maybe if I'd kept going he would have agreed to give me £20 a month instead. I hate being made to feel poor, and explain why I have no money. He should have given it up at £10 and said "well if you could contribute whenever you feel you can that would be lovely". Instead he's made me really cross, but at least they won't keep ringing me up now asking for money. Whoever trains these people to ring random numbers and ask for money really has the wrong idea, keep going on and on at poor people who have explained why they can't help you is actually having the opposite effect. Barnardos actually launched into a graphic description of child abuse to me one Friday evening and it was only afterwards I realised how offensive they really were - how do they know I haven't been affected by awful things and their idiotic attempts to get donations had stirred it all up again? Grrr. I am learning to be rude to cold callers but I really wish I had told that one where to stick it :)