Does charity end at work?

The holiday season is just around the corner, because the Salvation Army has released their bell ringers to stand in front of our party store for eight hours a day.

Obviously, the Salvation Army does wonderful things, but they have in two short days burdened us with "employees" who are less than stellar.

I realize that a job standing outside in crappy weather isn't going to attract college graduates, or for that matter people who've never sucked a stranger's dick for crack, but these two guys were worse than I could have imagined. As a cashier supervisor I have enough dim-witted, drug-addled people to deal with without having more brought in from the outside.

The first day their bell ringer stood outside and chastised our customers. According to several accounts, he yelled "Oh, you can go in there and buy liquor but you can't give to the Salvation Army?"

Yeah, that's great for business. People just love to be shamed. Our store manager went out and told the guy his services would no longer be needed. Then the shamer came in and asked me for an application. By law, I had to give him one.

The next day they sent a different derelict. This man smelled like a combination of rancid luncheon meat and Beelzebub's urine, and had exactly 1/2 a tooth in his mouth. He came in, immediately disappeared to the bathroom for forty-five minutes, went outside and rang his bell for about an hour, then came in and announced "I don't want to stand out there. It's too cold."

It was about fifty degrees yesterday. This guy is no Sir Edmund Hillary.

He called the Salvation Army to come pick him up. And he waited. For hours. Outside. Without collecting any money!!! Occasionally he'd come in to use the bathroom, but he had to ask for directions EVERY SINGLE TIME.

I'm going to start selling flowers by the interstate.