Uncharitable

Yesterday I spoke to my friend who had the rather large baby and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it was rather a traumatic birth and what has followed hasn’t been that great either. She is normally a very positive person, so it was rather strange to hear her sound rather low. Anyway, I’ll give her a call later in the week to see how things are going.

I was feeling a bit bugged about something at work last week. All of the managers had put in some money to buy drinks for people at the work Christmas meal. There was money left over at the end and our boss sent us an e-mail to say that there was quite a sizeable amount of money for each of us to reclaim. One of the other managers replied and said to give hers to charity. Then another manager replied and said to do the same with his and the next day another manager said to do the same with hers. Each person copying everyone else in. There are some who have not replied at all, one of whom is me. I was rather miffed by this though. I feel that it has created a certain social pressure for everyone to say that the money should be given to this particular charity, and I don’t feel that my giving to a particular charity (or not) is anyone else’s business. But I also don’t like public shows of ‘generosity’ like that (not that I am doubting the sincerity of the gesture). For myself, I rather believe in a “giving in secret” philosophy because if you do otherwise it can call into doubt whether you are giving for the sake of the giving itself or for some other form of ‘reward’ e.g. recognition from others. So it rather irks me to see it being done in this way. I gave the money for the purpose of being used for drinks for colleagues and now find that I will have to ‘break ranks’ to reclaim the money that was not used. So sometime this week I shall attempt to get the money back, but without looking like some complete miser. Bah humbug.