The staff were pretty kind all around, facility was clean.
The dystopian aspect was how many people I saw denied, because they had donated yesterday. You can give twice a week, but have to wait a day in between. I saw at least four or five people get turned away, and they were all pretty upset. The line was extremely long - there are tons of people desperate enough to wait in line for hours to go through the painful process of having their blood sapped out.
I also got a preloaded card as my payment, which has a ton of fees associated with it - I’ll get charged if I use it at an atm or check the balance. I know these cash cards are often also used to pay people who work at like McDonald’s - it just seems like so much of the US is designed to nickel and dime the shit out of the poor.
It’s wild this is a paid thing in the US. As far as I know, in Canada, you can only donate for free. Blood, plasma, sperm, doesn’t matter. Can’t be paid for surrogacy either.
Yeah, but the snacks are great. But I miss the pre-covid era of soup and Cookies by George.
Getting charged to check the balance seems…not legal? I dunno, probably not. Some politician that also owns a payday lending company would probably ensure that’s legal.
Might be because the ATM doesn’t belong to the bank, so it charges non-partner bank fees, as opposed to the card itself charging people to look at the balance?
I work in plasma, and deferring donors is by far the most difficult part. I had to send three people home just today for having out of range hematocrit. The look of devastation on their faces when they find out they’re not getting paid nearly brings me to tears every time. Sometimes they get angry and yell at me, and I just let them do it until they tire themselves out because I know how desperate they are. I’m just thankful that I’m primarily a lab tech and don’t have to deal with the donor side every day; I don’t think I could take it psychologically.
I got deferred years ago because a batch test including my sample came up positive for hepatitis (I forget which type.) I immediately went to my doctor and got tested. I had no risk factors, so the doctor was confused, but they ran the test anyway. It came back negative.
But the center said I was deferred for life, without a chance that I could ever donate anything again. All the plasma they had taken from me had to be destroyed. It was heartbreaking, and I’m still confused how they could defer someone permanently for something that wasn’t even in their own sample.
Is that not for health reasons? Donating twice in a row like that seems like it would take a real toll on you.
I don’t know why that’s dystopian, if anything what’s dystopian is that people are relying on doing this to support themselves at all.
I did it twice a week the entire time I was in college. Yes, it very much does take a toll on you.
Yeah - that’s what I found dystopian about it. That someone would be desperate enough to come back the next day to try again - it’s not even $50.
The real dystopian thing for me is that you guys get paid to donate blood. That is just insane.
yeah this is as dystopian as young me could’ve imagined actually. i know this because young me wrote a fantasy setting where blood (and specifically high glucose contained blood) was consumed as a magic reagent and poor people worked full time selling blood
I was reading it like the big bad government was preventing us from draining ourselves however we please for personal profit, and that’s a bad thing. I am not feeling well and my reading comprehension is clearly lacking.
You’re right. But the payment card is definitely dystopian and designed to maximize fees from the users for every aspect. It should be required by law that these businesses give alternative options for receiving payments, or remove any sort of fees.
Most prepaid cards such as prepaid visas can be checked for free on the site, no? That has been my experience anyway…
Its not VISA prepaid card, theyre talking about the scammy shit that places like fast food or grocery stores try to use to pay their employees.
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/are-there-fees-to-use-a-payroll-card-en-403/
ohhh, so a slightly different thing that is basically like a regular debit card account, but a bit more predatory? Got it. Ewww
When I used to donate there was an option to transfer the funds from the card via ACH. Of course, ACH is slow as hell and another big problem of its own.
Paying people for donating parts of their body is obviously a recipe for disaster. What they observed here is a general growing trend in the US of poor people having to use blood donations as a means of survival. Its not donating if you get payed for it, its selling. OP sold their blood and is rightfully upset that people are so desperate that they try to sell unhealthy amounts of blood.
Another thing I noticed is that you can’t donate if you are on PREP or PEP. The info screen says that you shouldn’t discontinue those meds to donate - but if you are in the situation where you need food, what’s the choice going to be there?
Idk how it works in the us but in Germany you can always anonomously order them to destroy your sample afterwards (you get a little number which is accociated to your sample but not your person). So If you’re reallx desperate you could just lie about that, give the blood/plasma, take the money and have it destroyed afterwards.
Clip from a documentary about this stuff: https://youtu.be/HsvdHYd8BMg?t=1539
The 1-2 minutes after this timestamp are enough for me already and it gets so much worse the more you read about this topic.
Often the blood doesnt even go to actual people and instead is used by pharma companies for research unbeknownst to the donors, while actual hospitals and blood banks are running out of blood.
Paying people for donating parts of their body is obviously a recipe for disaster.
Is it? The alternative is domestic shortages. In fact, while most of the rest of the world doesn’t pay its donors, but it happily accepts blood products derived from US donors (paid or not).
“The US, with 5 percent of the world’s population, supplies more than 70 percent of the entire world’s plasma used for plasma therapies, and over 80 percent of ours. It is able to do this because in the US, donors are paid.”
“The only countries that don’t rely on American plasma donors are countries that also pay donors for plasma, including Germany, Austria, Czechia (the Czech Republic), and Hungary. The commercial plasma sector in these five countries together makes up more than 90 percent of the entire world’s supply of plasma for plasma therapies.”
Many countries have laws preventing offering money for blood donations. Canada, for example, is one. Knowing this, as an American, Canada is where I donate blood to help our Canadian brothers and sisters. I’ll say that this has been more difficult that I expected though. The Canadian Blood Services location in the border town I’m closest to in Ontario stopped taking whole blood donation and only does apheresis, which I’m not interested in. In Quebec, I had some troubles donating at Héma-Québec as the questionnaire required name and address, but only listed Canadian provinces. The helpful worker there put in her own address under my name so I could donate.
Its not inherently bad, but when 15-20% of the countries population is below the poverty line, then yes, it is a very bad idea.
Its not inherently bad, but when 15-20% of the countries population is below the poverty line,
By 15-20% you mean 11.1% (or possibly a bit higher)?
then yes, it is a very bad idea.
Further, your response sounds like its just to my rhetorical question of “is it?” without any recognition of the future policy you’re implying of banning paying for blood. Let say you get your way and paying for blood products in the USA is banned as it is in most other countries immediately. More than 70 percent of the entire world’s plasma used for plasma therapies is now gone. How many lives has your policy cost in the weeks and months from patients around the world going without these and dying? What is your plan to not only deal with aftermath of your policy, but create an alternative that would prevent future suffering and fatalities for scarce supplies?
Damn… NZ is every two weeks for plasma, and they can’t pay you.
I had one of those preloaded cash cards once, my credit union was more than happy to charge it the amount on the card and transfer that to my account, if there was a fee involved they must have eaten it.
I didn’t know they could do that. What do you ask them for to do that?
If you can get two PayPal accounts going I have always sent the cash to myself that way
This isn’t new. Back when I gave plasma (almost 20 years now, damn) the two companies that did it here had to share donor lists to keep people from doubling up by going to both. Also, there were always large rocks in the bathroom from smaller people trying to get to the higher weight range to make more money.
At my local plasma center, the staff are rude as hell and clearly don’t give a fuck about anything but their next paycheck. All they do is gossip on their little airpods all fucking day while BET plays on the big TVs overhead. I overheard them talking shit about me the first time I donated and caught them all staring at me with these goofy ass grins while standing in a group from across the room. In their predictable incompetence they fucked up my arm because I was having an allergic reaction to the chloroprep they use before sticking, and of course none of them cared enough or were even fully conscious enough to notice the slowly developing rash until it was too late. I didn’t think anything of it because here in the south there are nasty bugs and parasites of all kinds everywhere and just living here is a miserable itchy existence most of the time. Even walking in the backyard for a few minutes leaves me with red itchy spots all over my ankles. Anyway, the rash finally got so bad that they were actually forced to do their fucking jobs for once and use their brains. They put in my file that I’m allergic, but it’s been a few weeks now and they still won’t let me donate again until the red spot goes away. It’s just barely getting to the point where I think they’ll let me, we’ll see on Monday. But there seems to be a bit of scarring obscuring the vein now which hopefully won’t be an issue. Knowing my luck I’m probably screwed in some way no matter what, as is the case in every other area of my stupidly infuriating life.
It’s called profit maximization.
It’s really amazing how expensive being poor is.
I pay interest on my credit card loans, I pay late fees on things like electricity and my internet. The interest and late fees and all that other shit would be enough to start saving up for home.
Gas station food and energy drinks are expensive as shit, but sometimes when you are working two jobs you just want a fucking slice of pizza and enough caffeine to make it through the next shift.
I can at least manage my apartment, and can pick up a third job once school starts up again - but being in these places where I see people who are poorer than me and lack the ability to understand how to navigate the world - who don’t have a college education/the ability to read/the ability to speak English - what kind of sick and evil world is this?
I was having just this conversation with a friend of mine the other day. There is a level of net worth that once you hit it, it becomes exponentially harder to get out of poverty than someone who isn’t poor. And absolutely no amount of money can help them because unless you can stop the churn, all that money will just go toward the black hole of fees and other expenses.
A profitable one!
I’ve never heard of McDonald’s employees getting paid in preloaded cards, is that true? I know plenty of people do it to avoid taxes but McDonald’s is a major employer and that’s pretty damn illegal
Pay cards are pretty popular among a lot of employers.
I know I read a ProPublica article about how fucked they are a while back, but both DDG and Google don’t seem interested in helping me find it…
But yeah, a lot of big retail/fast food places will pressure you into taking your pay as a pay card. These pay cards usually charge you for things like checking your balance or using an ATM.
Ah, ok. I’m guessing the law is that pay cards can’t be the only option then
Yeah - as a result of the investigation I read 10 years ago which has mysteriously disappeared from the internet, there was a push to force employers to also offer direct deposit.
I remember around the same time being pressured at Kohls to use the damn pay card.
Ok so I went digging and found some things. It must not have been ProPublica piece but it WAS widely reported -
