Charity bag packing at the supermarket

VOLUNTEER--- You must be one of a kind, I can say in all honesty if I give any of the multitudes of bag packers any spare change, it's with the understanding they keep well away from my shopping. Buying groceries costs enough as it is, without arriving home with what can only be described as extremely damaged goods, which you have been stupid enough to pay some "BAG PACKER" to ruin for you. It is high time that supermarkets limited these bag packers to once every ten years, and that would be once too often for my liking. It can be called whatever you like, but it is still barefaced begging.

I run a voluntary group. I've just spent 28 hours bag packing over xmas and new year gaining funds vital to our survival. We are a youth group but dont allow kids to pack. We make sure adults pack. We are experienced at it and do not crush peoples bread or smash their eggs. Frozen in one bag, bread etc another. The soap powder, bleach etc seperate. No bag too heavy. We dont sulk off if someone doesnt pay. Indeed customers get a trolley packed then say sorry, no change. We reply thats ok. Then you get somebody with only a loaf and a pint of milk giving you £1. If anyone doesnt want their bags packed then we step aside.

I'm 15 and I'm tring to raise money for me to go and help out in an orphanage in Kenya for a month. I need to raise what works out to be £60 a week for the next 18 months, which as Im sure you'll all agree is a lot. Im too young to get a job to raise these funds and one of the ways I can raise it is by packing bags at sainsburys.

Most people wouldnt mind giving 50 p donation, but if you dont want to give it - dont. I'm going to be poacking bags very carefully to make sure that everything is okay and quite often - no you cant pack your bags by yourself - especially if its a big christmas load. Then you end up spending a lot longer at the supermarkets and delaying everyone else behind.

It isnt balckmailing behaviour - if you dont want to give to charity its quite simple say "no thank you.". The fact that you are calling us "beggars" is really quite insulting. I would like to see you spend your afternoons and weekends off packing bags in order to make money for charity.

Really its quite simple: if you dont have the money to spare, or you dont want to give to chairty then dont. Nobody is forcing you. But dont complain about not having enough money or you being skint in the economic crisis because the people who really dont have enough money or enough food, water or shelter are the ones that I'm collecting for in Africa.

Today I was waylaid in Sainsbury's by a group of rude,overconfident, grammar school boys who were asking if you wanted help with your packing.
This was so you would make a donation to their "Rugby trip to South Africa". I refused and got glares all round.

I do donate to several charities of my own choice, but do object to this form of blackmailing you into feeling guilty, by standing there at the checkout as your shopping is being scanned. I think it should be stopped, as I know of an elderly couple who have stopped going to their local supermarket because every week there was a different group of scouts, dance troups, brass bands, schools, football teams, drama groups, gymnasts, and a million different things, all begging for cash. Pensioners, many of whom do not have a lot of disposable income, should not be put in the uncomfortable position of having to say no to having their shopping packed by a load of beggars.

I think your being unresonable they are doing this for a good cause and if you need one of theses charitys one day then you will want people to be donating a few pence. I know for a fact air cadets do not ask for any money they do it out of kindness. If you do not want to help them out just say no thank you its as simple as that.

It's kind of like blackmail behaviour, really in your face. I just tell them straight I dont give money to charity. Also beggars always asking for money, how annoying! A bloke in his mid twenties approached me in a car park asked if I could lend him £2.00. I think they rely on intimidating people as a lot might be scared to refuse. He for sure wasn't borrowing it. They used to ask for ten pence or so now just go for the jugular. I just say no as bluntly as they ask me. Dirty so and so's wanting my hard e

I haven't yet had this experience, but if I did, I would say loudly and proudly 'P*** O**' to any so called charity worker offering to pack my bags at a supermarket checkout.

Then I would write a letter to their manager and their head office asking what they were thinking by allowing this?

What next? Charity workers from the cats protection society standing in the pet food aisle - if you pick up a tin of cat food they'd pounce on you for a donation?

Charities today are not living hand-to-mouth. They have vast reserves in their bank accounts invested in stock markets around the globe. They own vast tracts of land and huge portfolios of property. They salary their directors on a par with city bankers and they beg for donations through heart-wrenching television adverts that are quite sickening.

They enjoy tax and business rates advantages that disadvantage regular traders yet behave more like profit motive and profit making companies than you would beleive.

A particular SuperCharity, that are cancer nurses, and who now promote themselves using television, had collected funds in my rural village for many years. When my mother got breast cancer, we called these people. We were told that they didn't operate in our rural area and so couldn't help, yet they had collected MONEY here for all of my life.

The local charities came to help my mother, and support my devastated dad.

So, DON'T GIVE to SuperCharities, DO GIVE to Local Charities.

Charity Begins at Home..... Give to your local hospice charity, your local animal charity, whichever charity it is, Keep your donations local.

If these SuperCharities bother you in a supermarket, tell them to sling their hook, complain to the manager and make a fuss.

Remember, SuperCharities follow corporate plans, local charities care about local people.

I've been in the situation where I had to back pack to raise money for an expedition to South America, and I didn't really mind when people didn't give you money, just as long as they said thanks and maybe showed a bit of interest in what we were collecting for. What really annoyed me were some people who thought they could get away with putting in a one pence coin and walking away without a word. That showed real cheek; it would have been better if they didn't put anything in at all! But I do see where this gripe comes from, in our supermarket there are loads of charity bag packers and you do end up giving a lot of your money away to them. I think you just have to make the decision about whether the cause they're representing really deserves the money.

SKINT LOW PAID WORKER, you must have pretty low self esteem if you don't have the guts to say "no thanks" to a charity bag-packer.

ANGEL OF DEATH, no, I'm unemployed!

Skint, well said. Nicko is probably a banker anyway. Charity begins at home so these do gooders who return home to their nice houses and clear consciences can frowl right off!

TO NICKO, Nobody is saying anything about them giving up their free time to raise money for their cause, it's about the way they make you feel like you have no right to say no to them, when you are standing there with barely enough money in your hand to cover the meagre items you have selected to try and feed your family. Everyone does not have a huge income, and what money they do have has to be stretched around. If you've got more than you need, give the collectors some on my behalf , if it makes you feel better.