So not too long ago, while at work, I was told that we had to sell “gold hearts” with our purchases. Whenever a customer came, we greeted them with the following

: “Hi, how are you doing today? Would you be interested in donating $3 to the Children’s Variety Fund?  The money goes to children with disabilities and needs.”

Now aside from this getting extremely repetitive after eight long hours, it was for a good cause, so I didn’t complain. After all, I wasn’t losing anything by asking and some needy kids were winning.

Now, as I went along with my night, I sold to roughly one person every 45 minutes. That’s if I was lucky. Throughout the night I heard so many excuses it made me want to throw up:

“No, I don’t have any more money with me.”

“Aw, that’s nice, but my mom already got one.”

“I already donate to charities.”

Well, that’s how it goes. Whenever I was denied, I simply put it aside and went on with what I was doing. Sure, I thought, these excuses were all pretty lame, but who knows. Maybe they were true. Besides, nobody was being obnoxious about it, so who cares?

That is until one man came up.

I said my little spiel and waited for his reply, but instead of saying anything, he just stared at me. I repeated what I said, afraid he didn’t hear me. Yet he just continued to stare.

“How dare you,” he finally said to me.

Needless to say, I was a little shocked. I wasn’t really sure what to say exactly, so I just waited. He proceeded to then yell at me, in front of everyone, that I was very rude for ever asking that of someone, especially in the middle of a recession. Now it wasn’t this that really bothered me, it was what he said next:

“Someone needs to give me something.”

Had I heard that right? Give him something? He looked fairly well off. After all, he was nicely dressed and was spending $9 for a movie ticket.

That’s when I realized something.  I shouldn’t have been taking this selling so carelessly. There were kids out in the world who didn’t have anything. Who would give anything to be able to see a movie or be able to have the things this man had.

I came to realize that while we may hear it all the time on the news or see it on TV, but we don’t really take this sort of thing too seriously. We brush it off and don’t think about it again. Sure, it’s sad but it’s just the way it is, right? Wrong.

There are things you can do. Things everyone can do to help someone else in the world. Whether it’s going to work on a house, or donating $3 to children, people can actually help out.