Charity by Proxy

Isn’t it wonderful that large grocery store chains have huge cardboard boxes at the exits for customers to make food donations? “Please drop your canned goods here to help feed the hungry.” How generous and caring of a facility that houses, sells, and profits off of food to allow customers to buy it, and then turnaround and donate it in the very same building that originally owned the merchandise to begin with.

There is nothing more touching than taking credit for the generosity of others. I mean, can you imagine how fulfilled *Stop & Plop, *Shop Wrong, or *HJ’s must feel when they deliver those bins of food to a homeless shelter and receive accolades for their charitable donation? The “donation” of food that they earned at least a 50% margin on before they turned around and gave it away despite no longer being the actual owner of it; the “donation” that, in essence, was a donation from customers, to the store, that the store turned around and gave away as if they didn’t make anything off it. WTF?

Call me crazy, but can’t the grocery store skip the extra step of getting others involved and just make the donation themselves…directly from their own “stash”? Wouldn’t that be charitable? Wouldn’t that be generous? Wouldn’t that make some friggin sense considering the fact they kind of have the market cornered on food-supply? I don’t know anybody who has more food in their possession than a grocery store or restaurant.
Speaking of restaurants and charity…I was at the *Cheesecake Storage Unit recently. After my meal, the waitress handed me the dessert menu. How delightful to see that they too were riding the “feed the hungry” train. Do you know that they were so kindly willing to donate twenty-five cents from each slice of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Chocolate Cake Cheesecake to charity? Gosh, they are soooo generous for creating this over-indulgent, diarrhea-inducing tower of sugar (that could feed a village), and sending a whole quarter from the sale of it to a place that doesn’t even have running water. So, after gluttonously stuffing your misshapen, vacuum-like face with a frivolous seventy-nine layer cake filled with chocolate, caramel, marshmallow, and blood diamonds, you can feel so good about yourself knowing that, of the twelve dollars you spent to put you one bite closer to convulsing into a diabetic coma, twenty-five cents of it is going to charity. “Hey Ethiopia, guess what we did for you? Rather than just sending you actual food, we created this outrageously humongous piece of cake that everybody but you can eat. Here’s a roll of quarters. Don’t spend it all in one place (like the divot in the road with the small collection of rainwater; or on that grain of rice you’ve been eyeing).”

Here’s a thought: How about sending the actual cake to feed the hungry? Better yet, how about opening a Cheesecake Factory in one of these countries? Can you imagine how long the wait would be?

*names not changed to protect the guilty; names changed in an attempt to be silly