If it's enforced, it's more of a tax, isn't it? I thought the whole premise was that people are doing it out of altruism.
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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Etiquette expects that when you do a nice thing for someone you gain nothing more than a “Thank you” in return.
You can’t do “Pay-it-forward” as that places a burden on the recipient and your ‘gift given freely’ then becomes a task to them. Which is no gift at all!
Yeah people did this in drive thrus and thought they were being cute. It's real cute until the next person ordered 6x as much as you did.
A nice thing to do is to see a mother struggling to pay for her groceries and offering to step in and to put them on yours. Paying it forwards sets off a weird chain of guilt that is not as nice.
There's no reason that guilt would be absent from helpinghelp a specific person in need (like your struggling mother example). Plenty of people feel guilty taking handouts and will outright refuse help when they might need it.
As for the drive thru thing, I think you might be talking about something different than what I've seen/done, which is just paying for your own meal and the people behind you. There isn't any expectation for them to continue some chain, and in many ways it's a bit of an empty gesture (they are just taking that first person's goodwill and passing it to the next in line).
My interpretation of paying it forward is the premise of receiving something when you're in need, then, when you're able, to give something back. Not to the one who helped you, as that would be repaying a debt.
This reminds me of when i read about ancient norse gift giving culture years ago. Apparently it was expected that when you had a relationship like say a friend youd give them a gift, and youd get a gift back that was a little better usually. But it was considered really rude to give someone a huge gift that would be a burden for them to gift you something similar in return. Since the expectation was theyd give an equal or better gift back, and your placing this huge social burden on them to come up with something appropriate.
If it's enforced it kind of loses it's charm and appeal, no?
I own an LGS and during covid I had a lot of “paying it forward” and it created a LOT of extra work for me for very little pay out.
I had a friend from high school who now lives 2200 miles away. He purchased a game through my online shop and instead of shipping it to him he had me give it to someone local. That person bought a game, and did the same thing. This went on for two weeks or so. Everyone wanted me to do some kind of contest for their game. I was putting in 2-3 hours of work for $20 or so. After two weeks or however long it was, I gave up. I told the last person who bought it I gave it to a random person.
This was all during the lock down so I could not even be open at the time. I had to hand deliver the prize around town, or set up a place for them to pick it up. I loved the idea of it all, but it was not worth it on my end at all.
I think you touched on how to make pay it forward work: make it as low effort as possible.
In this case, while you had lots of work, the people "paying it forward" had almost none. Thus the chain was able to go for as long as you were willing.
Technically, "enforced pay it forward" is called credit. Your debt would then be "the amount you still have to pay forward".
Of course, this defeats both the spirit and the purpose of a pay it forward scheme.
You don't enforce it. You trust that the person will do the right thing.
If someone doesn't pay forward a favor of mine, then I just show up at their house.