"In your face" behavior?

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This was a common expression for tv announcers a while back, "in your face" action, crap like that. I never could figure out why anyone would want that. I do alright with euphemisms, really, but that one got plenty tiresome.

It's the fact that sometimes people are that way, that puzzles me. I recently avoided a grocery store because they had these kid-and-guy pairings peddling things at each entrance. I mean, I get that kids have fundraisers; I have kids, after all. But this always seems to be a scruffy looking young guy who does not always bear much if any resemblance to the child with them. Makes you wonder, y'know.

But I do not have trouble giving money. I am more than willing. I don't even have to know the cause. You start judging every person you give a couple of dollars to and you won't give anyone help... and I am a lousy judge. If I have it to spare, I'm willing to do it. What stops me is that I would rather give anonymously. It does the same good and the face to face moment that is so bitterly uncomfortable is avoided. A guy with one of those cans with a money slot, for example, isn't so alarming. I don't like being thanked much, for some reason, but at least it's brief. But I walked up to this grocery store and the guy on my side seemed a bit more energetic so I turned the other way after crossing the street and headed for the other entrance. Well, the guy I was avoiding starts yelling after me, "Hey! Excuse me! The door's over here!"

Well, no, mister, there are two of them.

I don't understand how anyone could stand embarrassing another person into giving them money. I don't refer to the genuinely needy and desperate... the reason I am willing to give the money whether or not I know if they're really in need. Just in case. No, I don't understand the people that decide it's an easy con and are willing to do it whether they need it or not, that make other people unwilling to give to anyone. The people who take a kid to a store in the cold in the dark of the evening and use them to work the sympathies of the shoppers.

Hey, it's that or the dad should have put his foot down and taken his kid home when it got dark and cold (one was wearing shorts). Anyway, that's my gripe... a lot like my other post about people using your first name to make you want to shop in their store more... I don't understand why forcing intimacy is supposed to draw me instead of alarming me, as it really does.

I feel a similar way - I don't like giving money to people asking for it. I was wondering why I am so reluctant to sign my name up on people's sponser sheets or donate a pound here or there, when I regularly send fairly large cheques off to various charities. I do feel I have more money than I need (have very few outgoings - no kids, house or car and earn a good wage) and feel a moral obligation to help people (on the basis that I am partly where I am due to luck, which could change), but hate being asked for money. I automatically say no whenever I get asked, to avoid awkward situations, although have occasionally gone back when I have processed what they wanted and realised it was a good cause (usually have walked half way down the street by that time).

To me, all this effort people go to to get others to give them a small amount of money is really offputting, but it must work on most people. If I feel awkward I will just walk away and they lose out, not be embarrassed into giving. I also don't like being seen to give by others or thanked, although if I am sending off a charity donation I like to know they have got the cheque - the effusive thanks (even in written form) I can do without - it is embarrassing and makes me feel ashamed for some reason (for being able to afford to give, or maybe because it makes the person doing the thanking appear servile and me somewhat superior and I dislike heirarchies in both directions). I am more likely to give to a homeless person if they don't ask and if there is noone else around to see me giving to them. Regarding the sponser forms, I think one problem is that I don't like owing people money - would rather give it then and there, but if the money is dependent upon them doing something, they shouldn't really get it until they have done it, so it ends up irritating me either way and I end up not giving anything.

If by "in your face" you mean direct, then I am relatively direct, but rarely intentionally rude. I am direct in the sense that if I need someone to do something, I state what I need them to do.

However as for pushy sales people, I don't stand for it. If I feel I'm being pressured into buying something, I'll leave and take my business elsewhere.

I once was hassled by a kid trying to get signatures for some school event outside of a K-Mart. I was in a bad mood at the time because I had just gotten into an argument with my mother. He was about 17 and asked if I would pledge $5 for some school based team thing. Whichever team got the most signatures (worth $5 each) won a trip to Hawaii. I told him I wasn't interested and he persisted. He did not respect me and back off and said "All you have to do is sign, you don't really have to pay the $5 because my group leader is covering that."

So now he was harassing me AND asking me to lie for him. He wanted me to sign saying I paid $5 towards sponsoring his team just so he could get the signature, when in reality, the team leader...someone's parent, was paying all of the money. I had a massive issue for this because when I did school fund raisers, I had to do it all myself and I followed the rules. We usually got prizes for getting the most signatures.

I never did because many times, a lot of kids parents would just make up signatures and pledge all of the money themselves. Those kids never had to go door to door and get yelled at by strangers who didn't care if an 8 year old didn't know what "no soliciting" means and they still got all of the prizes while the rest of us who followed the rules got nothing.

So, I went off on the guy....I mean I REALLY went off on the guy. I basically said how dare he harass me, ask me to lie for him, and told him he was screwing over all the honest people he was competing against, and I was going to call his school and tell them what was going on.

I felt a bit bad for yelling at a 17 year old like that, but the boy had to learn a few lessons.
1. Don't continue to harass people.
2. Don't ask people to lie for you when they don't want anything to do with you anyway.

I'm not a very big fan of that type of behaviour, either.