The price of guilt has just gone up.
There I was, fumbling for my Air Miles card while moving up the checkout line at the local liquor store, when the usual exchange took a small bounce on the ledger.
"Would you care to donate to the children's hospital?" the clerk asked. Something was missing – no mention of "two dollars," as had always been the case previously.
Somewhat puzzled, I asked: "How much?"
Turned out this particular outlet is now offering three options – "two dollars, five dollars or 10 dollars" – and, of course, a fourth option that goes unstated but is very much at the crux of any such discussion: "No."
It was probably just coincidence, but this happened on Tuesday, the day after "Cyber Monday" and three days after "Black Friday," the new North American metaphors for greed, gluttony and goofy spending. It is also the second year in which various groups have sought to promote, without much apparent success, that the day after Cyber Monday become "Giving Tuesday."
Not as in "giving up," which is how many of us feel, but as in "giving back" – presuming there's anything left to give.
The Liquor Control Board of Ontario – in this particular case a suburban Ottawa outlet – is hardly alone in cash-register soliciting. Other provincial alcohol outlets do it. Canadian Tire does it for its charity that helps youngsters get involved in sport. Various stores and chains have their own causes, both local and national.
The most effective, however, has to be the liquor line by the very nature of its composition. Who wants the people lining up behind you to hear your whispered "No thanks" when you are holding a basket of $20 wine bottles – yet you won't give up a lousy toonie to help save a sick child's life?
Those making their way past such cash registers take the experience in vastly different ways: Community spirit? Helpful encouragement? Welcome reminder? Bullying? Entrapment?
"It's a monopoly," one annoyed friend says, "and because we have no choice but to go there for certain things they have no right to shame us into giving money. When I go to a concert at Massey Hall the ticket takers don't sell me lottery tickets."
Polls, unscientific as they might be, suggest Canadians generally have a lukewarm to negative reaction to such requests – and no doubt a good many clerks are not fans of the "cash-register touch" either. Public Inc., a company that works with fundraisers, even warns on its website that "customers are telling us they're tired of the charity checkout guilt trip." The company is offering to redesign, free of charge, the charity pitch for a major Canadian retailer to prove that it is possible to have happy customers, happy clerks and happy charities at the same time.
Good luck with that. Canadians are obviously not against giving. The last Statistics Canada survey found that in 2010 we gave $10.6-billion to charities. The average amount per donor was $446 – or 223 toonies at the liquor store cash register, if you prefer – and women are more likely to give than men, religious more likely to give than non-religious, Westerners more likely to give than Easterners.
Canadians are, however, also suspicious – and increasingly so in the age of Internet and long-distance telephone calls from people who pretend they are on a first-name basis with you but cannot even pronounce your name.
There is, as we speak, a chart spinning through the e-mail that purports to tell the truth about the various charities we are expected to support. It details how much out of every dollar donated actually does anything positive, how much certain CEOs make in a year – even what some of those charity heads are driving. No idea whether any or all of it is true, but it plays to our deeper suspicions about some of the pitches we are expected to field, particularly at this time of year.
The chart is careful, by the way, to applaud a healthy list of charities that are as pure as the snow that is starting to fall – none so saluted as the simple Salvation Army kettle.
That such suspicion exists has, not surprisingly, led to many wondering if operations like the liquor monopolies or chains take our loonies and toonies, turn them into a cheque worth hundreds of thousands that is then given to the charity with a copy forwarded to Revenue Canada in search of a tax break.
Both the LCBO and Canadian Tire swear not, as have other such operations in other parts of the country. Ontario's 640-store liquor operation has no taxable income and could not, therefore, claim a break even if it tried. Last year, a spokesperson says, it was able to pass on $8.2-million to such charities as the United Way, MADD Canada and various children's hospitals – a 24-per-cent rise from the previous year.
And given that there is now an option to more than double the usual request, likely to rise again this year.
As it does indeed go to a good cause, so it hardly seems worthwhile to gripe about the asking.
But they might consider offering Air Miles just to smooth the transaction.