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Canberra Today 15°/16° | Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Griffiths / Pleasure at watching chuggers struggle

“Chugger – Licensed charity muggers with coloured tabards and clipboards laying in wait on every high street in the land to pounce on you and relieve you of your dosh by pressing all your guilt buttons and making you sign up to their cause.” – Urban Dictionary

SITTING in Garema Place for lunch last week I enjoyed a fun round of Chugger Bingo.

If, as a society, we’re going to allow high-pressure sales tactics to be applied by English backpackers, dredged out of Bondi hostels, to our citizens on the streets we may as well get some pleasure out of it.

John Griffiths.
John Griffiths.

It’s important to remember, when thinking about chuggers, that they’re not actually working for the charity emblazoned on their T-shirts. They’re working for marketing companies with complex systems of trailing commissions that eventually, often years later, dribble money to the charity after clipping your credit card relentlessly.

In the interest of full disclosure I note that 15 years ago, before the word chugger was even coined in 2002, I fell victim to a charming young lady on City Walk and have been giving $25 a month to Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) ever since, somewhere north of $4500 in aggregate.

I console myself for this moment of weakness with three points:

  1. This was a wholly new sales tactic back then and the idea that this charming, friendly and pretty young woman was playing me took some time to set in. I started the conversation thinking I was just going to hand over $20 and be on my merry way.
  2. By this time all the money I’m giving is actually going to the charity, not the marketing company.
  3. MSF are a truly amazing group, one of the most unremittingly decent forces for good in the world. You know your society is in truly deep trouble when MSF sets up a hospital in your town, but things would be even worse if they weren’t there.

No matter, having long ago fallen victim and having done some door-to-door sales work in my distant past, I do enjoy watching them at work.

The pair in Garema Place last week was ostensibly working for Amnesty International, which is one of those groups it’s hard to be against.

Somewhere there’s a person who thinks torturing political dissidents is a really good idea, but thankfully those people tend to keep their views to themselves.

The two chuggers were a study in contrasts. One was a tall, tanned leggy blonde in ludicrously short cutoff denim shorts.

The other was stockier with henna-dyed hair in braided dreadlocks.

The blonde was playing sales games that I imagine work better in cities that aren’t Canberra. Rushing up to sad-looking men and trying to take their hand was a favoured tactic.

She probably pitched unsuccessfully to 20 people while I was eating lunch. A couple she managed to get into conversation but the body language was going against her and after a few minutes they were backing away.

However, her colleague was talking intently to a scruffy looking young couple the whole time. A passerby actually joined in the conversation.

Finally, the high point of Chugger Bingo, the clipboard, was out and the victims were filling out their credit card numbers!

If it hadn’t been lunch on a work day I’d have taken a stiff drink in celebration.

One almost feels sorry for those in the safe, sterile Canberra Centre denied this sort of street theatre.

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Ian Meikle, editor

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