Explains our submitter in New York: “This note is the result of a less-than-enthusiastic holiday food drive. Our office is a gray, lifeless place — what can one expect?”
(I don’t know…maybe some munchkins now and then?)
related: But what about Hawaiian Shirt Day?
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FILED UNDER: all-staff e-mail · guilt trip · office · thanks (but not really)
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138 responses so far ↓
#1
Kim
Yeah, I kind of agree with the tone of this note. I don’t know how big this office is but I assume if they are having a “food drive” it can’t be that small. 25 lbs of food for a food drive is a pretty poor showing. And don’t blame the economy. If you have a job, you can afford to bring a couple cans of food in for people less fortunate than yourself. Period.
Jan 27, 2010 at 10:04 pm rating: +44
#2
Marie
Giving money is FAR more effective than collecting food yourself.
Jan 27, 2010 at 10:08 pm rating: +6
#3
Groo
This note seems more disappointed than passive aggressive. It could have been MUCH snarkier,
Jan 27, 2010 at 10:11 pm rating: +16
#4
vickie
i’m particularly concerned for those affected by the elderly. that is unfortunate.
Jan 27, 2010 at 10:11 pm rating: +60
#5
whiskey
I have 3 cans of government pork from the food bank, who wants them?
Jan 27, 2010 at 10:11 pm rating: +4
#6
jetjackson
What do you mean methylated spirits and boot polish are not acceptable items!?
I even wrapped them together as a gift pack!
Jan 27, 2010 at 10:12 pm rating: +13
#7
eli
I call bullshit, #1. I donate on my own time and my own terms. That doesn’t intersect with work, and and no one has the right to expect me to take part, or give people grief for not donating enough. You don’t know what people can afford.
Jan 27, 2010 at 10:12 pm rating: +28
#8
Palomon
I wonder if the e-mail informing everyone about the drive was this inspiring.
Team 75 Pounds Under the 100 Pound Minimum!
Snarkiness can be hard to detect when it’s understated.
Jan 27, 2010 at 10:23 pm rating: +10
#9
Henry
I want to know what the three unacceptable items were! In school we used to take the labels off cans of dog food and write “Refried Beans” on it with a sharpie. They look very similar.
Jan 27, 2010 at 10:26 pm rating: +5
#10
GramPo
I pity those affected by homelessness but those affected by the elderly surely need the most help.
Jan 27, 2010 at 10:27 pm rating: +3
#11
Critical Grass
Not acceptable?
I didn’t know Lean Cousine was rejected even by people who can’t afford to buy it. My bad.
Jan 27, 2010 at 10:46 pm rating: +5
#12
Pterosaur
When I first read this, I thought, “75 lbs sounds good to me.” I had to read that twice to realize it was 25 lbs.
This note is so fucking passive-aggressive it forced me to do MATH to calculate my appropriate level of guilt.
Team I’ll Donate When I Damn Well Please.
Jan 27, 2010 at 10:55 pm rating: +26
#13
Canthz_B
I think I should recuse myself from this note.
I started a food drive at my former job about 15 years ago, and we had great success, much better than I’d hoped for.
It was supposed to be for Thanksgiving, but people just kept bringing food items in through Christmas.
I can’t stand to hear employed people say they can’t afford to give anything, then buy themselves $6 worth of Burger King for lunch each day.
I feel like if you’re that fucking broke you should be bringing bologna sandwiches from home.
I donate through my mom to her church’s food bank. I give to the United Way.
I give because it’s a good use of my resources and I don’t need anyone to have to ask me to do so.
I am a member of a community. I’m enough of a person to do my share to contribute to the overall well-being of my community. Communities are made up of the people within them, so the well-being of each, affects the condition of all.
You can’t say you live in a nice community if there are people within it who need help but cannot get it.
That’s the definition of a really fucked up community.
People are in need, and I’m fortunate enough to be in a position to help in some small way.
Small to me, but huge to the recipient.
I hate selfish people. I just hate them with a passion!
Jan 27, 2010 at 11:03 pm rating: +17
#14
Hmmm
Dear Boss,
Most of us placed our donations directly into the bin at the grocery store. So sorry we didn’t waste the time and resources to re-donate our items at the the office. Is your contribution to behave like an ignorant pious ass?
Jan 27, 2010 at 11:05 pm rating: +13
#15
Escape Goat
“There are three items which are not acceptable donation items.”
I am dying to know what these are.
Jan 27, 2010 at 11:10 pm rating: +7
#16
Ethnic Avenue
Frankly, I’m not surprised by the poor showing for the food drive.
If this place is anything like my old corporate prison, the last thing you want is to allow them to get credit for doing something good. They collect the food and claim to be helping the community–when they’re being complete a-holes to the employees, and not really doing anything but providing a cardboard box for the food.
The solution: donate somewhere else–anywhere else.
Jan 28, 2010 at 12:46 am rating: +9
#17
Richard
Food banks need money much more than food.
They can purchase a whole lot more food with your $5 than you could.
Food drives are a convenient way for people to feel good about getting rid of their crap.
Jan 28, 2010 at 1:50 am rating: +3
#18
Berty Jingle
So are they collecting food for those affected by the elderly? What kind of charity is that?
Jan 28, 2010 at 2:30 am rating: 0
#19
cptn hammer
I hate the homeless-
ness problem.
Jan 28, 2010 at 2:42 am rating: +5
#20
Lucy
We noticed when taking a shift as bell-ringers for the Salvation Army that those who look well-to-do give nothing.
It’s the single moms with kids, African-American families in the South who either lived through bad old days of desegregation – or had parents who did – who are the ones willing to spare their change or a few dollars.
My view: The affluent believe that all of the poor have character flaws, addictions or are lazy and it’s why they are poor, and so they don’t give. I wonder if after the finance industry melted down, and as management jobs blew up in this economy, and some of the affluent set’s neighbors’ McMansions were lost to foreclosure after job layoffs, if some of these same people will have a more realistic understanding of how easy it can be to wake up one morning having fallen from middle class into having nothing.
Jan 28, 2010 at 7:26 am rating: +1
#21
splint chesthair
I can’t believe some of you, giving people a hard time for not donating food at the office or at your favorite charity drive , or donating the wrong kind of food, jeez, no wonder people don’t donate.
Frankly, most of the time I don’t know anything about your fly by night charity drive. Is it spouting off political rhetoric or religious dogma as a condition of receiving the aid? I don’t know. You might be asking to donate to a front for Holocaust deniers.
I donate to charities and drives that I feel are in line with my values and provide the best value to the needy. Don’t look at me funny because I’m not doing backflips to donate to your pet charity drive.
Jan 28, 2010 at 7:26 am rating: +10
#22
Pterosaur
This seems less like corporate altruism and more like a PR/team-building/“we’re not as evil as we look” event. Why didn’t the company offer to match donations? Why didn’t the CEO buy a forty-pound case of canned goods at Costco to get things started and set an example? Why didn’t they split the office into teams to compete for who can collect more food?
Because management is full of shit and the employees know it. The company doesn’t give a damn about the poor and hungry. Management chucked a cardboard box in the break room to show their abused employees that they “care.”
I guarantee that the bitch that wrote this email donated a single dusty box of expired mac & cheese. I bet she made a big show of putting it in the damn collection box, too.
I would’ve mailed a big, fat check directly to the food bank to avoid participating in this corporate sham. By the looks of that empty box, I’m not the only one.
Jan 28, 2010 at 8:47 am rating: +9
#23
David
I hate it when people are “affected by the elderly.”
And punctuation ommisions.
Jan 28, 2010 at 8:58 am rating: +1
#24
oi
aw, the comments! my heart is filled with raw emotions. my eyes are watering like a broken dam!
not!!
to donate or not to donate is a personal choice. just because it’s a good virtue you can’t bully people into doing it. everybody is here like oh I am totally broke but I do my good and you should be ashamed of yourself because you do not choose to donate. that’s wrong. by the same token vegans would get free pass to bash carnivores too because non violence is a good virtue too. i am not saying that people should have free rein to harm/steal/kill other people in name of nondictatorship but guilt/bully them even for doing something good is pushing too far. you are compassionate, good for you! donate your whole pay check, you might get fame out of it too. but you don’t have a right to dictate others’ choices.
hmm reading it, I sound like a heartless vixen but I can lie and make it better by saying, “oh I donate 15% of my pay check every month.” and on the top of that I am preaching that guilt trips and bullying people for whatever cause is bad. wow! my name should go in the book of history. but I won’t. do I go forcing my values on others? nope. I do donate whenever I feel like it and normally keep it quiet.
Jan 28, 2010 at 9:41 am rating: +8
#25
secondsout
BTW, the charity will be grateful for the 25 lbs of food that the office donates, even if they didn’t meet the 100 lb min for a scheduled pickup.
Jan 28, 2010 at 10:08 am rating: +2
#26
secondsout
When I was in college, we used to do a donation drive in the dorms where we would go through and collect toiletries to give to the homeless shelter. The students typically got promo samples of things like shaving cream, so they were plentiful. We had a few people donate KY Jelly, though. I guess the homeless need a little motion lotion, too.
Jan 28, 2010 at 10:12 am rating: +5
#27
mamason
Not acceptable donation items?
♫ All we are saying, is give peas a chance.
Jan 28, 2010 at 10:58 am rating: +5
#28
Aardvaark
I don’t understand food banks. Ours won’t accept home grown vegetables because they are perishable. They want big cans of beans from Sams Club.
Jan 28, 2010 at 11:12 am rating: 0
#29
bliffit
Some days it feels great to be self-employed! You may not know where your next check is coming from but you don’t have to worry about bending yourself around someone else’s corporate culture.
In my neighborhood the local Boy Scout troop collects for the food pantries. They drop an empty bag off one Saturday and will pick them up the following Saturday with no weight limits and no guilt trips if you don’t participate.
Jan 28, 2010 at 11:13 am rating: +1
#30
BonzoGal
I’ve re-read that email a couple of times now, and I really don’t see any passive-agressiveness in it. We do a food drive at my work and the people who donate always want to know how we did compared to our goal.
To those who don’t like being pressured to donate, that’s fine, it’s your right to choose when, where and whether to donate- but don’t freak out and claim “guilt-tripping” when an someone just states that the drive didn’t meet a certain goal.
Jan 28, 2010 at 11:38 am rating: +1
#31
marge simpson
“… Oh, the next time there’s a canned food drive, I’ll give the poor something they’d actually like, instead of old lima beans and pumpkin mix. “
Jan 28, 2010 at 1:16 pm rating: 0
#32
h3llc4t
I work for a large corporation that does food drives at least once every 2 months. Sometimes (depending on how cranky I am with my job) it’s easy to be annoyed with constantly being asked to donate or not follow through with making a donation. I try to stop myself and think: would I be able to look a person who needed that food in the eye and say “Sorry, I was too caught up in my own crap to donate anything”? Whatever my issue is, I can surely manage to do *something*. It just occasionally requires a little attitude adjustment beforehand. In the end, it’s not about whether I felt vindicated or wasn’t inconvenienced; it’s about whether someone got something that I had which they needed.
Jan 28, 2010 at 4:53 pm rating: +3
#33
Beckmann
Listen, volunteering is, in a way, a form of secular religion–each person should get to choose how and when and where they volunteer, and for what cause they volunteer. An office running a food drive is absolutely fine . . . but you don’t have the right to shame the office in this manner. People will either participate or they won’t. Just leave it at that. Who knows what charities people are involved with outside of work? Emails like this are the reason shows like The Office and movies like Office Space have such cultural resonance–people bring their sad, weirdo grievances/obsessions to work and force them on you, expecting you to participate.
Jan 29, 2010 at 7:23 am rating: +2
#34
That'sMe
“…but I am sure they will be greatly appreciated by those affected by homelessness, job losses, and the elderly.”
I think we’re all looking over an important part of our society – those that are affected by the elderly. Those people need our food donations.
Feb 4, 2010 at 4:53 pm rating: 0
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