On any given day, my local high street is lined with four to six people holding clipboards and standing in the middle of the pavement. They plant themselves in front of the post office and the giant Sainsburys (east pavement) and HSBC and Caffe Nero (west pavement) so that it's impossible to avoid them if you want to get to the tube station or do your food shopping. Sometimes they wear matching jackets (now I've made them sound like they're part of a cult-they're not). Should you make eye contact, they will lock their gaze on yours and grin manically as you walk towards them, and then, when you're within five feet, they pounce.
These are the chuggers, and I hate them. They work on behalf of large charities (Save the Children, Help the Homeless, Shelter, Cancer Research, etc) that can afford to employ people to stand out in the cold and assault strangers for eight hours. Their goal, with their handy clipboards, is to pitch the organisation to passersby and then securing people's direct debit details to sign them up for a monthly donation. It's officially called Face to Face fundraising, or 'F2F', by the charitable sector. The charitable sector prefers not to use the term 'chugger', for obvious reasons.
One of these. White dreadlocks not obligatory, but clearly encouraged.
'Hold on, you're saying that you hate charity,' you might be thinking. 'You're a jackass.'
But I don't hate charity. My mother has worked in non-profit development for the best part of the past three decades. I donate annually to a number of different causes. I spent a summer planting ebony saplings in an effort to reforest Mt Kilimanjaro. Soup kitchens, Adopt A Family, alumni donations, teaching English, giving away winter coats, you name it. You don't grow up in the San Francisco Bay Area, the heartland of liberalism, and hate charity.
My beef lies with the chugging method. If I mistakenly make eye contact with one of them as I'm walking down the street, a wave of genuine dread rolls over me. For the next hundred feet, I swivel my head wildly in an attempt to find an escape route (there never is-both sides of the street, remember?) or in the futile hope that I can pretend as though I don't see them, and maybe, just maybe, they'll let me by. But the chuggers never do, and as soon as I draw level with them they lunge-yes, lunge!- and shout, 'HELLO MISS HOW IS YOUR DAY COULD I TAKE A MINUTE OF YOUR TIME TO TELL YOU ABOUT [Large Charity X]!'
There are a few reasons why I find this so irritating.
1. I don't enjoy being shouted at. Unless there's a man behind me with an axe that's aiming for my neck and you're shouting, 'Duck!', I just don't see why it's necessary.
2. When I'm walking down the high street, I'm usually walking somewhere to do something I would like to get done in a timely fashion (if it's raining, windy or below 10 degrees outside, this goes double). Rarely do I, or anyone else for that matter, take a leisurely stroll down a busy city street.
3. In London, if a random jumps out at me, I naturally assume that he's got a knife and is aiming to either mug or stab. That momentary fear for my life, no matter how quickly it dissipates, does not leave me feeling particularly warm and fuzzy.
4. I already donate to charities of my choosing, and I'm not exactly thrilled at the idea of leaving my direct debit details with someone whom I've literally met on the street.
5. How is my day? Really? I would love to see someone stop in their tracks and give a chugger a blow-by-blow of this morning's carpool, how both the coffee machine AND the copier broke in the office, the lunchtime dry cleaning pickup, that super funny video of the camel being tickled!, and the conference called scheduled for 4 o' clock and watch the chugger act interested. Look, chuggers, you don't care, and I know you don't care, so, to put it indelicately, cut the crap.
Usually, I just fend them off by saying, 'Sorry, I'm running late', which is easy enough, but when you've gotten past one just to deal with another five on the same stretch of pavement, it tests your patience. Sometimes, frankly, I'm exhausted already and don't have the energy to deal with them at all.
There was one such day a few months ago when I was coming back from a long, difficult job assessment that had left me tired, downhearted, and rather certain that I wasn't going to get the job. My business heels had ceased to be comfortable several hours ago, and I was so excited about swapping my blazer and pencil skirt for my old Berkeley jumper that I debated calling a taxi for the 90-second ride home from the bus stop. Having pelted out the door that morning at such a high speed that all I had time to grab was a single carrot, I was also starving, and it was the thought of a fresh insalate caprese drizzled with olive oil that kept me going. Unfortunately, as I walked from the tube towards the giant Sainsburys, I realised that I was was heading straight towards a girl with a neon scarf, a clipboard, and a red Shelter jacket. Yes, one of them.
She was both louder than average and incredibly agile, darting from one side of the pavement to the other and letting no pedestrian pass without a shouted appeal. It was clear there was no way I could get to my tomatoes, basil and mozzarella in peace, as she clearly had this side of the street covered, and her Shelter cronies had the other side heavily manned. Caprese. Caprese. Caprese, I repeated internally, willing myself to go forward. I hugged exterior of the HSBC branch, but sure enough, there she was in a flash, hollering, 'HELLO MISS HOW ARE YOU TODAY CAN I-' I was so drained that I didn't even have the energy to make up some excuse, and simply walked on past.
There was a three-second pause, and then this girl yelled, at my retreating back, 'YOU DON'T HAVE TO BLANK ME, YOU KNOW!'
Had this been a film, I would have stopped dead in my tracks, slowly turned around, and said, 'WHAT did you just say to me?' I mean, really, if you're trying to get someone to give money to you is berating them the way to go? Did this neon-scarf wearing twit really think that was at all helpful?
Needless to say, she just fanned the flames.
Fast forward a few months to a bitterly cold, grey, damp excuse for a day. After lying low all afternoon with a very unattractive cough, I decided to make the trek to Sainsburys and buy some almonds for no other reason than I really wanted almonds. I bundled myself into a faded jumper, my sheepskin coat, scarf and a pair of black fleece-lined jodhpurs that are so thick they make my legs look considerably fatter. The look was not a particularly good one, but I had stuck my hand out the window to gauge the temperature, and I didn't care if I looked like the Yeti's ugly cousin so long as I would be able to brave the chill.
How I see my walk to the store
(Note: I make it sound as though it were five below zero and I live three miles from the nearest supermarket. In reality, it was probably about ten degrees and there's an enormous Sainsburys less than ten minutes from my front door. But I was having a rough time.)
My actual walk to the store. It's short. Like really short.
I was within a couple hundred feet of my precious almonds when I spied a tall guy in a black jacket holding a clipboard. Oh, please, just this once, let him not make eye contact with me, I thought. I was far too cold to deal with this. I didn't want to be outside a second longer than necessary. I scrabbled in my pockets for my phone or my iPod. No luck-I hadn't thought I'd need either. I craned my head at an improbably and uncomfortable angle in a desperate attempt to avoid his gaze, but it wasn't enough. The next thing I knew, there he was in front of me, enormous mad smile and all. He launched right into it: 'HELLO MISS HOW ARE YOU TODAY CAN-'
And, as I shivered beneath my ugly jumper and fat-leg jodhpurs, something inside me just snapped. I narrowed my eyes and told him, 'Not great. I just got diagnosed with TYPHUS.'
The second I said it, I was mortified. Typhus? What was I thinking?! Typhus, that disease often found in prisons and refugee camps and known as 'jail rot'. That disease extremely rare in London, especially in girls wearing Armani watches. That disease whose symptoms include rashes, stupor and delirium-not walking to Sainsburys to satisfy a craving for almonds. It was painfully, glaringly, spectacularly obvious that I did not have typhus.
Neither the chugger or I knew what to do. Still horrified, I ducked my head and quickly walked into the store as he stammered, 'Oh...erm...sorry.' I tried to keep it together as I selected the perfect almond option in the nuts aisle and shelled out a couple of pound coins. Okay, it was a shitty thing to do, but what's done is done, and it didn't actually harm anyone, I reasoned. But then I realised that, unless all of the chuggers had spontaneously decided to go home in the last five minutes, the guy would still be out there. Hopefully, in light of the awkward situation, he would just ignore me, because, really, who would actively try and exacerbate such awkwardness, am I right?!
My almonds and I had almost made it past and I was thinking of which film to stream when he struck. 'HELLO MISS HOW ARE YOU TODAY CAN-' Oh, holy shit. I sighed uncomfortably.
'Erm. I'm the girl with typhus, remember?' I mumbled. He took a step back.
'Oh. Right. Sorry,' he mumbled in return. We both fled.
Chuggers continue to irritate me for all those reasons listed above. However, I've since realised that there are better ways of fending them off than faking typhus, and, although it certainly worked, I still get the occasional twinge of guilt. Because I'm pretty sure, in religious circles, that sort of thing does indeed earn you a one-way ticket to hell.
