I was gobsmacked! I couldn’t help it, the calculator came out.

“I hate to piss on your parade,” I said, five minutes later “but at one signee per day for £3.50 a month, you’d need to work for 35 days straight, or seven full working weeks to bring in enough revenue from initial payments to pay your wages for a single day. To put it another way, the one person that you sign up today has to maintain this direct debit for just shy of three years before what you did today becomes profitable for the charity that hired you. I fail to see how this is a good thing you are doing.”

Two days later, my housemate returns from a second shift ‘chugging’, “we are raising awareness” she says, “increasing the public brand visibility of the charities we work for”. Sure you are, you’re raising my awareness of the fact that people in nylon tunics are to be avoided; you’re raising my awareness of the depths to which unscrupulous agencies and cash strapped students will stoop; you’re raising my awareness of exactly how much voluntarily donated cash intended for charity use gets siphoned off into the pockets of middlemen and smooth talkers. I fail to see how this is a good thing!

If you really want to donate to a charity, do it via their website.