As the grocery clerk scanned my purchases, he asked me if I would contribute $10 to the fight against Disease X. (The exact disease doesn’t matter.) I politely declined. He looked at me with a very slight air of moral superiority (possibly my imagination) then continued scanning my groceries.
After I paid, I heard him ask the next customer, "Would you contribute $10 to the fight against Disease X? I’m only three people away from getting to 100 today."
I compared the grocer’s approach to that of McDonalds, which has installed the little receptacles beneath the drive-through windows to collect change for the Ronald McDonald Houses, the company’s program to provide housing near hospitals for families of ill children. (And a good program it is, too.) But unlike the grocers, the McDonalds employees don’t ask customers to contribute.
In the cold and commercial world that I inhabit, my customers occasionally ask me to contribute to their favorite causes, and I usually send a small check. Similarly, I occasionally ask the people whose businesses I buy from to contribute to my favorite causes, and they usually send a small check. I am bothered by the grocer asking me to contribute to its favorite charity in a way that I’m not bothered by the change containers at McDonalds, or the coffee cans near cash registers elsewhere. Perhaps I’m bothered for the purely selfish reason that Disease X isn’t one of the diseases that has carried off the Laquedems, and therefore doesn’t concern me as much as those that have afflicted several of my relatives. Or perhaps I’m offended that the grocer, whose annual revenues approach $40 billion, wants to shame me into paying an additional $10 for which it will claim the credit.