Ben Shegog | Contributing Writer
It slightly throws the people working for Concern International on the streets of central Dublin when you ask them whether they have a minute to talk. Although their replies are more friendly than the ones they’re used to receiving from the pedestrians around us, none of them are able or willing to talk about the work they’re doing. Instead, they are swiftly and smoothly referred on to their uniformless ‘team leader’ who appears out of the crowd on Grafton St who’s much happier to answer any questions.
Concern International is Ireland’s largest aid agency which owes its high profile status to work in Haiti after the earthquake, Biafra during the war back in the late ‘60s and more recently with some of the 1,000 Syrian refugees arriving in Lebanon every day. Despite this international presence most Dubliners are more likely to recognise the charity from their encounters on the street with one of Concern’s smiling, clipboard-wielding representatives trying their hardest to start a conversation.
The debate over what charities like to call ‘face to face contacts’, (who have increasingly become know as ‘charity muggers’ or ‘chuggers’) has been ongoing for the past decade. The massive industry which generated over €153m in the UK alone last year has remained controversial since its introduction in the late 1990s. A quick Google of the word ‘Chugger’ brings back a whole wave of articles debating the increasing number of ‘charity muggers’ on the streets of all major western cities.
I wasn’t expecting him to talk about how awful or demoralising it was as a job, but it still felt like he was talking in set phrases as he repeated the word ‘fulfilling’ every couple of sentences, and avoided answering questions on wages and commissions, even claiming to ‘sort of like the rain’
There are thousands of columns and blogs dating back over the last decade discussing the morality, the effectiveness and the irritation caused by these overly enthusiastic, day-glo clad individuals. Because of the ongoing media interest the arguments for and against this form of fundraising are probably quite familiar by now; is it moral for someone to be paid to emotionally blackmail people on the street? Are they an important link between an increasingly apathetic public and the massive percentage of the world suffering from hunger, health problems or emergencies (the three areas Concern International identifies as its focus)?
Instead of rehashing all of these arguments, I thought I’d go and talk to some of the Concern workers to find out what it was like. Having wandered around Dublin for a few hours (probably one of the few times someone has actively searched for a charity mugger) I had to resort to a Facebook status asking for people to contact me when they encountered one. It didn’t take long for someone to point me in the direction of the Gaiety Theatre.
Sadly, none of the Concern workers were interested in talking. Nor was I allowed to take any photos of them. Instead I talked to the young Brazilian who was running the team of five workers. He seemed interested in the article and enthusiastically answered my questions about an average day for him and his team. Irritatingly, talking to him was a little like talking to the Concern homepage. I wasn’t expecting him to talk about how awful or demoralising it was as a job, but it still felt like he was talking in set phrases as he repeated the word ‘fulfilling’ every couple of sentences, and avoided answering questions on wages and commissions, even claiming to ‘sort of like the rain’. The one admission he made was that Concern had a very high turnover rate of employees, and that the job wasn’t for everyone.
Although this was frustrating, it was understandable. In an industry where positivity and energy are of great importance, you can hardly blame him for not wanting to present a negative image of his current employer, and to be honest, he probably didn’t want me taking up any of his team’s time. To try and get a more detailed version of what working as a ‘charity mugger’ was like I decided to turn to some of the Trinity students that had worked for Concern or other charities with a presence on the street. Fortunately, lots of people had a friend who’d been attracted to this kind of work either for philanthropic reasons or by the high wages.
“I only worked for them for three days, during which I got paid for three hours each day (at perhaps €11 per hour), even though I had to show up to their headquarters at four o’clock, and I wasn’t finished until nine. After three days, I had spiralled into an insane grumpiness and I just walked in to give them my notice; couldn’t bear another evening of it to save my life. Although commissions were quite generous, I never made more than one ‘link’, as they call it, so I didn’t receive anything extra. The thing I hated the most about it was that it was so ethically problematic. My team leader was the same age as myself, he was incredibly enthusiastic but quite abrasive. He would basically tell lies, especially to the elderly, trying to convince these people in their homes that he had personally seen poverty-stricken children being turned away by the government. It was all ridiculously sensational. He had no real understanding of poverty and was astounded when I admitted that I would have found it difficult to spare the €12 a month for charity myself. In addition to this, the experience of knocking on people’s doors was very invasive, and I found it difficult to summon up the wiles to persuade the (mostly elderly) people, who often had trouble getting to the door and who sometimes thought I was a relative, to part with their pension.”
“Well, first off I probably wouldn’t think of myself as a charity “mugger”. Actually, working my current job as the corporate slave of the judges, lawyers and big businessmen of Dublin town as a waiter and bartender is a hell of a lot less soulless than being paid to try and raise money for charity. I worked for Focus, the biggest and most effective charity for the aid of the homeless in Ireland, who had a strict code of ethics but a definite standard of practice among their employees. I would definitely work for them again! However, I think there should be ethical standards of interaction and Garda vetting. I think that I learned more about the world from a month or two in that job than any time spent behind a bar.”
“I worked as a door-to-door fundraiser for concern for about a month during the summer. It was by some distance the worst job I’ve ever done. It’s a near impossible task of staying chatty, informative and convincing while dozens of doors are slammed in your face and you’re told to fuck off a hundred times a day. While the money was good, and everyone I worked with was great, the job was just too bleak to stick with longer than a couple of weeks. I needed the money then, but never again.
