I'm Just Raising Money For My...

Riding the subways in New York City I’ve for years seen tons of kids selling candy bars at all hours of the day. At first, they claimed to be raising money for their basketball teams. Then that got ridiculous, so some kids started to come with the real and just say that they weren’t raising any money for their team just trying to make some money for themselves. As it evolved, some more kids tried to put more of a public service spin on it, saying “we’re trying to do something productive with ourselves and not be out there robbing and stealing”, a plea that always seems to imply a threat. Keep me off the streets and out of your pockets. The kids are invariably “urban” (hip hop dress, black and Latino) and nine times out of ten speak in a dull robotic monotone that makes their pitch especially creepy. Other kids claim to be raising money for a senior class trip though I would think that wandering the subways between 9 AM and 3 PM on school days might jeopardize their chance of even being allowed on that trip. My favorite was the kid who departed from the script and told me that this was my “opportunity to transform an entire generation.” Who knew some overpriced Snickers could do all that? I almost bought a piece of his candy out of sheer admiration for his theatrics.

But I never buy candy from those kids, not because I think that they’re untrustworthy, but mainly it pains me to see young kids using their time in what seems like such a colossally wasteful way. They sell candy for a $1.00 apiece and probably get it 50 cents wholesale (I have no idea who their suppliers are), I think they average selling 1 piece of candy per subway car I see them in (this is actually generous because a lot of their cars are zeroes) and their whole pitch takes about 2.5 minutes (30-second spiel then walking up and down the car), assuming maximum efficiency they can hit about 24 cars in an hour and maybe make $24 in gross sales, $12 net split among two kids (its always two-man teams) I figure 6 bucks an hour. Admittedly, this is better than flipping burgers for minimum wage and this is all take home (something tells me this income doesn’t get reported to Uncle Sam). But this doesn’t the factor dead time waiting for subways. (I’d love to interview one of these kids as an economics study, this sounds like some shit that Stephen Levitt would do, maybe someone did, if so let me know-I didn’t find anything when I Googled it).

I also wouldn’t be surprised if all my numbers are pretty off and this is actually even more profitable, especially if they do what any good salesperson does and play law of averages and pitch to as many people as possible to get to those yes faster. When I did door-to-door sales, it was all about getting through nos. Every no brought me closer to the next yes, I just had to keep it moving to get paid.

But it’s the opportunity cost of their time that gets to me. Even this is profitable from an accounting standpoint (cost of candy versus price of candy) the cost of their time away from school and other meaningful learning pains me. Getting back to money it’s a pretty negative impact on their future earnings. So while I its cash now, judging by the gear the kids are wearing I think that the money is being invested in stuff that depreciates pretty quickly in value.

If that wasn’t bad enough, because the scripts are so cookie cutter I wonder who the central brains behind this are. It reminds me of the deaf Mexican women selling key chains in the subways in the 90s. It ended up being some slave ring and the sweet women trying to sell us pencils and key chains were immigrant slaves being abused and beaten. Incredibly, when the ring was first busted, I read that each person was supposed to sell 100 pieces a day or face a beating. Selling a 100 of those little shit trinkets in one day on the subways is a fucking insane workload; I figured you’d have to put in 15-hour days to find all those sales. I was horrified when I realized how centralized and organized it was, for the benefit of a few. While I don’t think some candy kingpin is abusing these kids (though who knows?) a centralized system for this probably means big profits for that one person (or people) running this shit and peanuts for these kids.