Bell-Ringers

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I hate this aspect of the holidays.
They watch you go in and out of the store. You don't know whether to smile at them or ignore them. Sometimes they talk to you. You feel like a jerk if you don't contribute. If you do contribute, there's all the stress of that little social interaction. Go to several stores, and you get to repeat this experience x number of times.
What do you think of bell-ringing?

I pretend like I'm an NT and I fail to see them . . .

Or I pretend as though I'm deaf and can't hear them. And if you don't look at them, it's even more plausible.

Have they started irrationally early this year?
One time at a mall, we paid a bell-ringer a few dollars to stop ringing for a half-hour so we could go about our business.
They have a good cause but it hurts my ears and brain.

Must be a US thing, I take it you mean someone ringing a bell outside a shop...

There was one outside the dollar store the other day.
Considering that a lot of the people who shop there probably qualify to receive charity, I thought it a bit inappropriate to be asking them to donate. Go hit up the people coming out of Best Buy with PS3s and giant HDTVs.

ahh - the charity tin rattle, except its against the law to actually rattle the tin these days in the UK.
Not nearly as bad as the paid 'volunteers' who are intent on getting you to sign up to there charity by direct debit. They earn ~£8.00 an hour, money which could be spent elsewhere.

I ration out my change. I figure it this way, I'm going to have this offensive amount of change swimming around in the bottom of my purse anyway. So, I collect it in a baggie in my purse and then when I go into a store and the Salvation Army is there, I give them a small bit out of the baggie. It doesn't hurt me and I figure it does help someone else. I don't mind it. It's just a part of the holidays here. Usually once you are in the store you're safe from the incessant ringing anyway and more annoying things take over to assault your senses. I hate the girls in department stores that squirt you with s**t without asking, myself.

The did start obscenely early this year. Everyone did. As soon as Hallow's Eve was over they started on Christmas. Retailers are nuts.

Good idea, I need to start keeping change on me.

I always feel really bad walking past them, too, and have sometimes gone into long-winded explanations/contemplation to figure out how much to donate or whether or not I should. It doesn't sound right to me to tell them "I donated the other day", because who cares whether or not I did, lol, they need it to help people.

lol, it half-tempts me to stand outside and ring a bell to collect donations for people who cannot afford autism assessments or therapies for their children. The bell would drive me nuts, but I think it would be a decent cause seeing as there are a lot of us who just kind of wait it out because we cannot afford those things.

I too regularly give out the shrapnel from my pocket though. Its so awkward to use small denominations of currency in a shop - you get given nasty looks.

yeah, I hate that they don't like being paid in small amounts. It's silly-it's all money regardless, but people don't like to have to count if they can avoid it...

I have been on the needy end of the bell so to speak. Not bell ringing but the recipient of the money collected. So, I guess I feel like we all should give because we never know when we might be the ones who need that charity. As I said, giving a small amount is still giving. If everyone gives a penny it adds up to be a hell of a lot of money.

I just feel like it's my personal duty to give what I can because I may need someone to be kind to me in the future. Really I think of it as a karma thing. If I give, then someone else will, too. It's like that commercial. Do a random act of kindness, get a random act of kindness. Then someone who sees you do the random act of kindness will perform one themselves. It will be a cycle. Hmmm....that was awful optimistic for an Aspie, huh?

I still believe it.

I wouldn't say that is too optimistic for an Aspie We all have different personalities and nothing in the criteria states that we must be pessimistic

What they're doing is a good thing, but the constant guilt trips are not so great. They are out early this year; I saw one at IGA and one at Kroger.

I feel bad not giving them anything, but I can't give them something every time I go into a store. I also feel bad if I give them something but it's not much (I put all my spare change into a college thing anyway); anything less than five dollars seems miserly to me, even if I know better.

I don't know what to do with them anyway. They're people, so they presumably have feelings, and it's cold up here, so they must be cold as well. Yet they're standing there collecting money for charity, so they're sacrificing some things (ie, heat, comfort) to help others. The decent thing to do would be to smile or nod at them, I think, but then they expect you to give something, which doesn't always work out. And it seems mean to just ignore them.

Situations are confusing sometimes.

I just say nicely that I can't... lots of people can't.

My anxiety level spikes when i see them. I always try to keep a little change in my pocket around this season, just in case.