Originally Posted by kane

I used to work at a large tech company and every year they did a fund raising drive for the United Way. They would bring everyone into the big auditorium and the United Way guy would give his speech then the managers would talk about how important this was. As you left they handed you a piece of paper for you to fill out and give to your manager telling them how much you wanted taken out of your next check and given to United Way. I didn't fill it out because I wasn't going to give anything. There are some large charities I believe in, but this is not one of them. I'm sure United Way does some very good stuff, but I feel they give too little of the money raised to actual charities.

So I didn't fill out the paper and when asked was told I wasn't donating. I was called into the managers office and my direct manager as well as her manager were there. They asked me if I would just donate even a few dollars because they want to get as many people as they can donating. I told them I can't bring myself to give money to a "charity" who's CEO makes 800K a year. I also told them they should be ashamed of themselves for pressuring people like this because there were a lot of people who were donating who couldn't afford to, but felt like they would lose their job or get overlooked in the future if they didn't.

They weren't happy with me, but I was on my way out of that place and didn't really care. From what I understand over the next few years enough people complained and stopped donating that they changed it up and made it a much less formal thing and more anonymous thing.