thedailywhat:

On Kony 2012: I honestly wanted to stay as far away as possible from KONY 2012, the latest fauxtivist fad sweeping the web (remember “change your Facebook profile pic to stop child abuse”?), but you clearly won’t stop sending me that damn video until I say something about it, so here goes:

Stop sending me that video.

The organization behind Kony 2012 — Invisible Children Inc. — is an extremely shady nonprofit that has been called ”misleading,” “naive,” and “dangerous” by a Yale political science professor, and has been accused by Foreign Affairs of “manipulat[ing] facts for strategic purposes.” They have also been criticized by the Better Business Bureau for refusing to provide information necessary to determine if IC meets the Bureau’s standards.

Additionally, IC has a low two-star rating in accountability from Charity Navigator because they won’t let their financials be independently audited. That’s not a good thing. In fact, it’s a very bad thing, and should make you immediately pause and reflect on where the money you’re sending them is going.

By IC’s own admission, only 31% of all the funds they receive go toward actually helping anyone [pdf]. The rest go to line the pockets of the three people in charge of the organization, to pay for their travel expenses (over $1 million in the last year alone) and to fund their filmmaking business (also over a million) — which is quite an effective way to make more money, as clearly illustrated by the fact that so many can’t seem to stop forwarding their well-engineered emotional blackmail to everyone they’ve ever known.

And as far as what they do with that money:

The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission. These books each refer to the rape and sexual assault that are perennial issues with the UPDF, the military group Invisible Children is defending.

Let’s not get our lines crossed: The Lord’s Resistance Army is bad news. And Joseph Kony is a very bad man, and needs to be stopped. But propping up Uganda’s decades-old dictatorship and its military arm, which has been accused by the UN of committing unspeakable atrocities and itself facilitated the recruitment of child soldiers, is not the way to go about it.

The United States is already plenty involved in helping rout Kony and his band of psycho sycophants. Kony is on the run, having been pushed out of Uganda, and it’s likely he will soon be caught, if he isn’t already dead. But killing Kony won’t fix anything, just as killing Osama bin Laden didn’t end terrorism. The LRA might collapse, but, as Foreign Affairs points out, it is “a relatively small player in all of this — as much a symptom as a cause of the endemic violence.”

Myopically placing the blame for all of central Africa’s woes on Kony — even as a starting point — will only imperil many more people than are already in danger.

Sending money to a nonprofit that wants to muck things up by dousing the flames with fuel is not helping. Want to help? Really want to help? Send your money to nonprofits that are putting more than 31% toward rebuilding the region’s medical and educational infrastructure, so that former child soldiers have something worth coming home to.

Here are just a few of those charities. They all have a sparkling four-star rating from Charity Navigator, and, more importantly, no interest in airdropping American troops armed to the teeth into the middle of a multi-nation tribal war to help one madman catch another.

The bottom line is, research your causes thoroughly. Don’t just forward a random video to a stranger because a mass murderer makes a five-year-old “sad.” Learn a little bit about the complexities of the region’s ongoing strife before advocating for direct military intervention.

There is no black and white in the world. And going about solving important problems like there is just serves to make all those equally troubling shades of gray invisible.

[kony2012.]

fuckyeahretailrobin:

We all know that Christmas music in October is horrible, but the regular music at my store is just as bad. 

If it isn’t something Glee has covered (thankfully it is the originals but I still think Glee is half the reason they get played anyway), it is a Britney Spears/NSync/BSB song from the 90s. One time they played an actual Glee cover which my manager and I had a good laugh over. 

fuckyeahretailrobin:

[Image Description: Background is several triangles in a circle like a pie alternating from true red, scarlet and black. A robin is sitting on his perch looking to the right.

Top Text: “see known problem customer approaching”

Bottom Text: “hide”]

She hadn’t seen me yet, so I quickly ducked behind a clothes rack.

The best part was my manager saw me do it, laughed, and said he would’ve done the same thing.

fuckyeahretailrobin:

[Image Description: Background is several triangles in a circle like a pie alternating from true red, scarlet and black. A robin is sitting on his perch looking to the right.

Top Text: “Coworker unhappy about current situation in life”

Bottom Text: “Create cliques among coworkers”]

Why do people even do this?  Yeah, it sucks being stuck at a minimum wage job until something better comes along but trying to make things look like high school is just stupid.  It’s seems some people can’t stand the idea of everyone being one large group and has to split things up into “cliques”.  Now that’s going to kill any sort of teamwork that is required by the job but oh no heaven forbid you’re working with neeeeeeerds.  Of course you also /need/ to have yourself a minion and act like you two are queens of the workplace.

fuckyeahretailrobin:

[Image Description: Background is several triangles in a circle like a pie alternating from true red, scarlet and black. A robin is sitting on his perch looking to the right.

Top Text: “HOW MANY PACKS DID YOU HAVE TO SMOKE”

Bottom Text: “TO SMELL LIKE THAT?”]

Most smokers are perfectly okay, but there are a few customers who I am pretty sure only stop chain-smoking in tiny, poorly-ventilated rooms in order to go buy more cigarettes.

fuckyeahretailrobin:

[Image Description: Background is several triangles in a circle like a pie alternating from true red, scarlet and black. A robin is sitting on his perch looking to the right.

Top Text: “Can I Open this?  No.”

Bottom Text: “Walk away and hear box opening up..”]

Images with descriptions will be queued before images without.

Had this happen today.  Told a guy three times he couldn’t open the box.  The second I walked away to help someone else, he opened it.  Intense stare down occurred.  On top of that his mom was complaining the whole time that they had to buy it since he opened it

fuckyeahretailrobin:

[Image Description: Background is several triangles in a circle like a pie alternating from true red, scarlet and black. A robin is sitting on his perch looking to the right.

Top Text: “I’m sorry, we don’t carry that item.”

Bottom Text: “But I bought one here last week!”]

fuckyeahretailrobin:

Seriously. My friends/family/customers that see me on my day off… I am not a walking listing of every item that Hastings has. (Note, Hastings is a movie, video game, CD, book, musical instruments, and random crap store. No one should know what all Hastings has.)

fuckyeahretailrobin:

This has happened to me twice. When they were leaving the kids kept saying, ‘where’s my ball? that lady took my ball!’