Some Silver Has A Cloud Lining

Strategic Fundraising closing Springfield call center:

St. Paul, Minnesota-based Strategic Fundraising is closing its Springfield call center.

Some employees were told Thursday afternoon that they were out of a job, effective immediately. Communications Manager Jeremy Landon told the News-Leader on Friday morning that the office will be fully closed by Feb. 7.

This is a telemarketing fundraising operation: The people who call you up and will exchange decals for some charitable organization or association, and after they collect the proceeds, they give something like 15% to the organization on whose behalf they’re calling.

Believe me. I did this for the space of three weekends when I was twenty-two.

Hopefully, this is an indicator that the business model is collapsing and they’re all going out of business. More likely, though, it probably indicates they’re either moving these calls off shore or going to an automated system, which makes the whole thing even more annoying than it already is.

Still, it sucks for the employees if it was their only job. In my case, it was one of two, soon to be replaced by another job measuring car advertisements in newspapers for marketing research purposes.

And that, friends, is how I knew that my English/Philosophy degree was paying off. I was on my way.