Somebody finally snaps when approached by a Greenpeace kid

If I needed new canvassers, I'd go figure out where the PIRG folks had been intentionally stranded this time, and ask them if they wanted a better working situation.

I got some of my best people that way. The PIRGs are known at all levels and nationwide for their thoroughly abusive and exploitative work environments.

Even at the more professional level, my mom's neighbors were at various pirgs for years and were essentially fired when they got married in the early 90s because their spending time with one another and their desire for family simply were not tolerated in their work culture.

I twice turned down professional research work and was totally warned away from internships with them by people who worked for PIRG and Greenpeace and found their treatment of workers to be totally unacceptable. The idea is that you re working for a cause so you somehow magically don't need a living wage or any time to have a real life or appreciate what you are trying to save.

Perhaps their split into Environment Massachusetts and PIRG will help matters, and perhaps there have been some changes in the last five years as living wage and health care campaigns have come to the fore. We can only hope as they do good work - they just have a bad reputation amongst the 90s enviro set for winning by taking it out of the heart, soul, and flesh of their people.

With most of these canvassers (I did recently make an exception for the ACLU), I'm not sorry, won't be interested another day, and have no interest in helping them to move on to the next prospect.

I've done the canvass thing. It's rough, it's uber rough. These are people that care deeply about the issues that they're talking about. Some of the groups do commission type pay stuff, but Greenpeace at least does not. I know it can be annoying, I know you just want to get your lunch and vitamin water, etc, but please understand that they aren't out there to harass you or to con you out of money, they're there to do something to help change things they care about. Every day, we all subsidize huge corporations that are up to no good. Coca Cola (who recently purchased vitamin water, incidentally), does some really shady stuff. If those guys aren't there to ask you to help subsidize the solution, then would you? It's the only way, without the support of multi-million dollar advertising budgets, to reach out to the public. Think of it as interactive advertising, instead of the passive stuff that we all digest every time we open up a newspaper, magazine, or turn on the TV. So yeah, it might not be the best part of your day to have somebody try to stop you about global warming, but it's a necessary part of the political process, and just about the only option open to non-profit groups right now.