NYC PSA:

[conuly]

This January, come give blood and get ice cream – on us.

Comments

[frandroid]

I was wondering why they would be giving ice cream in January, but I see it's a coupon to get ice cream from the store, so the store is generating foot traffic during a slow business month... Clever. :)

[conuly]

Oh, if you have the freezer space ice cream in January is great, you can bring it home on the train without it melting all over the platform.

[shadowkat]

I don't know the New York Blood Drive has just about turned me off of giving blood ever again. (I gave in December). They call me weekly, no matter how often I block their calls. They've been doing it since I gave blood. They really know how to turn people off of donating blood - I'll give them that, no wonder there's a shortage. You give? You get rewarded by a barrage of annoying phone calls. (And it is not healthy to give blood more than twice year - according to the New York Blood Donation Center's own documentation.)

[conuly]

No giving them my real number, got it.

[crystalpyramid]

That's cool! Maybe someday I'll be able to donate blood again. Last time I did, my eldest was 6 months old and it was hard carrying her after donating. So I need to be past the ages where I need to haul the kids.

It draws my attention to the fact that ice cream is now 14 oz "pints" though.

[conuly]

Not Ben and Jerry’s!

[shadowkat]

Really don't. They'll drive you insane. And don't tell them you'll be open to giving blood again.
They are ruthless.

[conuly]

Meh, at some point when they were younger the kids signed me up for a ridiculous number of things and I'm still fending off spam calls over a decade later. I don't even answer them, I just autoblock when new unknown numbers pop up.

But I'll still take your advice to keep from making it worse.

[chanter1944]

I question the 'unhealthy to give blood more than twice a year' claim, seeing as the accepted interval according to at least two nations' reputable blood services is between 56 and 80 days.

[shadowkat]

Well, they called me to donate again within ten days. So..

[chanter1944]

Often, though I can't speak for your particular situation or services specific to NYC, that's somebody on the calling end falling down on looking up information about a given donor before they dial. I've had it happen to me, on the order of 'Oops, now I see X or Y detail in your chart, sorry about that.'

[shadowkat]

I told them, they ignored me. They aren't looking at charts, they are just spamming folks with calls. There's no order to it. It's more - lets call everyone who gave us a number as much as possible and guilt them into donating blood to us. I didn't know they did this until now. I get the need - but telemarketing is a sure way to talk someone out of doing something not into it. I don't understand why folks don't get this? People do not like to be called randomly and repeteadly on the phone and asked to do things.

[bibliofile]

I remember a news story one about how ice cream shops in Boston sold more ice cream in winter than they did in the summer. Don't have any recent numbers, though. People can be weird.

[frandroid]

It's possibly calorie-loading to face the hardship of winter. :)