Put A Nickel In The Drum...

If you don't know the rest of that song, you should.

Anyway, this story reeks of bad taste, bad timing, and...

Well, it's just downright



bad on so many levels:

Salvation Army using cardboard bell-ringers


BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (AP) -- There's a reason that smiling Salvation Army bell-ringer looks a little stiff this Christmas season, and it's not the cold weather.

Banned from Target stores and facing a shortage of holiday volunteers, the Salvation Army is using scores of animated, cardboard bell-ringers on a test basis to staff its red kettles at stores across the South.

Equipped with motion sensors, each corrugated cutout has a battery-operated, motorized arm that waves a silent cardboard bell. Anyone who draws near hears a loud, jingling sound from a speaker and a cheery "Merry Christmas, God bless you."

The cutouts, which bear the image of a uniformed Salvation Army officer, are being used at 200 Books-A-Million and Hibbett Sporting Goods stores in 14 states. The kettles are kept inside the stores to ward off theft, and volunteers gather up the donations every three days.

--snip--

"It's a fun approach," said Mark Brown, the charity's Birmingham-area commander. "Even as we were assembling them people were coming up and saying, `Let me put some money in your kettle."' LINK

Where to start?

Did you catch the not-so-subtle dig at Target Stores?

Target bans ALL solicitations, yet the fighting fundies have singled Target out as a corporate persecutor of Christianity.

Cardboard cutouts because there are no volunteers?

I'm not buying this obvious lie, and neither should you.

Those cutouts had to be presented, approved, designed, and ordered months ago, in order to have them available now.

Anyone who has ever recruited volunteers (and the Salvation Army has historically paid those bell ringers minimum wage) can tell you that there are millions of unemployed Americans right now who are more than willing to ring a bell for a few dollars.

Motion sensors and cardboard cutouts surely cost as much or more than the pittance formerly paid to human bell ringers. Of course, the SA will save $ in the long run, but at what civic price?

I want to know where these cardboard cutouts were manufactured.

I'm guessing China.

Gives new meaning to outsourcing this holiday season if I'm right, doesn't it?

What's next?

Cardboard Santas?

Heavy sigh.