I'm so aggravated by people asking for blood drives at my university Oh, not the idea of it. Because that's great. Being able to donate something to help others, often in life/death situations is amazing. I love it. I'm so proud of people who donate blood. But I can't.

And when I pass by their little huddle while they downright harass students and tell them I can't, the one guy in particular goes: "Wwwwwooooowwwww, really?" See, I've /never/ liked that guy; he always has been a pretentious jerk. So I turn around, look him dead in the eye and say: "I f-cking can't." He just kinda looks at me and shakes his head. Of course, I'm not going to divulge my medical history to some punk who personally ruins the day of hundreds of students passing by him by aggressively getting in their faces and asking for donations. (The medication that I had used could cause birth defects in pregnant woman's babies and I still haven't passed the mandatory wait period yet. Of course, I'm not going to stand there and shout that at him while the rest of his little flock of yellers turns and listens to me).

The terrible thing? it's not just this dick who does this. Literally, everyone of the student volunteers who give their time to our local blood bank when they set up those cool donation trucks pulls this kind of shit. I'm actually kinda embarrassed when I see that the blood truck, motor home, thing has come to campus because I know that all of their phlebotomists are so sweet and kind. You know, I understand how difficult it can be to find new donors or rare blood type donors and that sometimes you need to be aggressive... But this kind of shit does NOT fly for me.

IDK. I just wanna know if I reacted well to him and if I'm justified in being so goddamn irritated by him.

Ugh, I'm sorry you have to deal with people like that :| My school does blood drives as well, and they'll ask people to donate but they're not rude about it. You would think that they would be trained to not be pushy since it is kind of a personal thing. Giving blood is great, but it is a procedure that some people may be uncomfortable with or unable to do.

I think I've had the fortune of not running into these kinds of blood donation groups. I also feel that tactics like that tend to turn people away rather than entice them to donate blood and it's donating blood. It's not exactly the same as buying pastries or t-shirts, some people really can't give blood or other people can't take the blood they have even if they wanted to donate (such as in the case of those with HIV).

The only situation I can think in a similar vein is when members of a religious organization come to campus or some public venue to in the best case scenario: preach their word and hand out books and pamphlets (some people find this equally offensive as the worst case scenario but I've gotten some good language practice from receiving pamphlets in another language. These people generally aren't particularly offensive and highly avoidable). In the worst case scenario you get something akin to the Westboro baptist Church parading around preaching hate and decrying that everyone and their cat is going to go to Hell. I've seen both variety for all kinds of religion.

There is definitely a wrong way to approach these kinds of people, no matter how offensive they get and as tempting as it might be to wallop them in the head ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYGcn8wd-fk ) , it's ultimately not going to get anyone anywhere.

I'd say you reacted pretty well given the circumstances. :)

Although I am curious... is blood really in that high of demand in your area that they need people to be that aggressive to get donations or are these all less than ideal volunteers who are essentially bored and have nothing better to do? :-/