Jul. 25: People are weird and mean

Today was one of my first official acts as a PTO board member. We all took shifts sitting outside the local grocery store, asking shoppers if they would connect their shopper cards to our school. Albertsons’ Community Partners program donates a percentage of shoppers’ purchases to area schools and it can bring in a pretty good chunk of change. This costs nothing extra to the customer; all they have to do to link their cards is give Albertsons their phone number and card number.

You’d think we were also asking them for vital organs.

It was funny and sometimes shocking to see how some people would avoid making eye contact with us as they went in and out of the store. I don’t think it would have made a difference if we had a sign that said WE ARE NOT SELLING ANYTHING. It wasn’t like we were chasing people down or grabbing their purses. They saw people standing behind a table outside a store and knew immediately they wanted nothing to do with whatever reason we were there.

Not everyone, though. Some people were super easy to sign up—parents and kids we recognized, and people that approached us to ask about the program. We loved those people. They were nice. They cared about the kids. They understood that this would cost them nothing. They made it all worth it.

But when Lovely Lori H and I took over for Dina and Sunshine, Dina told us about a guy who had actually come up to the table to tell them he wasn’t interested in whatever they were doing. She said OK, but when he asked about it and she told him it was to help the school, he said, “I hate kids.” What a shit.

I don’t understand people like that. My dad could be incredibly rude to strangers approaching him, but I’m quite sure that even under the worst circumstances he never would have said anything like “I hate kids.” What kind of a black soul does a person have to have to think that’s an okay thing to do? Again, I say: what a shit.

Lori and I had mostly amusing experiences with our crowd. One woman, who was yelling at her young granddaughter before they got to the front of the store, stood right next to our table while she continued to scream and mess with the kid’s little book. Lori and I were kind of watching her, I guess, because she looked up and screamed, “WHAT??!!” at us. Lori—fast thinker that she is—said, “Cute kid!” The old bat softened a little then, and asked what we were doing. Lori started to explain, and the shouter interrupted and said, “Oh, my granddaughter’s going to a private school. I went to public schools and they don’t work. Now I have to go to college to get my GED because I got such a terrible education.” She got such a terrible education, apparently, that she never learned that a zebra-print bra is totally visible through a white tank top.

James and Cassie took the last shift. They got more sign-ups than the rest of us, probably because of Cassie’s boobies. I say USE ‘EM IF YA GOT ‘EM.

We might do this again next month, and if so, I’ll have my push-up bra ready to stuff. Also, for those extry-assholey folk, my middle finger will be nicely manicured.

(… she said, just before she became the first person ever asked to resign from the PTO…)