Yesterday a kid came to our door "not selling magazine subscriptions or anything, just a few minutes of your time", so I gave him a few minutes during which he told his sob story (he's a foster kid, the government is paying his way through college and all his necessities, but if he earns any money during that time the government takes it), leading into, basically, he's selling newspaper subscriptions. As soon as I spotted that's where it was going, I interrupted and said I don't want to waste any of his time, and I can tell at this point I'm not going to be interested in what you're offering. And then he was a douche about it, which frustrates me because if I'd just been mean in the first place, said "not interested" and shut the door in his face, I'm sure he wouldn't have had any mean-spiritedness towards me at all. So I get thought ill of for being nicer than average, because I was willing to help out if he was doing a survey or something similarly harmless like he told me at the start.
But that's not really what aggravates me. What really aggravates me is that the kid is being exploited by some shitty company almost certainly lying to him about how they're going to do something for him if he sells their impossible to sell garbage. Which almost certainly amounts to, given how hard it will be to sell newspaper subscriptions, he's being paid way less than minimum wage, which in any context other than horrible high-pressure sales and lying that nobody wants, is illegal. Why the hell isn't this crap illegal? I don't have much ill-will towards the kid (the being a douche about it is annoying, but I'm sure he's had a horrible frustrating day trying to earn an imaginary buck so I'll cut him some slack), but I would absolutely vote for painful deaths for anyone pushing that bullshit onto kids. Whether his sob story is true or just part of the high pressure sales tactics he's been trained in (and I suspect the latter because he was clearly reciting a rehearsed script), either way it's utterly reprehensible.
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