Acts of kindness gone wrong

[Cloudywithachancee]

Just had a memory pop back into my head from when I was in secondary school. This was probably around year 10/11. A girl I knew’s mum died of cancer and the whole class decided to do a whip around for her. We raised £100+ thinking she would donate to cancer research or something similar. She bought a new pair of doc martens and then wore the unauthorised boots to school every day.
Everyones face was definitely 🙄 but no one could say anything obviously as her mum just died.

Has anyone experienced anything similar?

You gave her a gift and she was very happy with it. Doesn't seem to me like a good deed gone wrong at all. If you wanted the money to be donated to Cancer Research then you should have done so.

You don't have a whip round for someone and give them the money if you actually want that money to go to charity 🤔

She was right to buy the boots. The whip round was for her. If you wanted to do a charity collection, you should have done that instead.

I hope her DMs brought her a little joy at such a terrible time in her life,

Exactly.

I can't believe you were all 🙄 at the poor girl.

Poor girl - she obviously thought you'd all thoughtfully given her a gift to show you cared about HER.

If you wanted to donate to charity that's what you should have done. Anonymously.

This

Sorry op but I agree with the others. She thought the money was for her and she did exactly what a teenager who’s just lost a parent should have done. I hope she didn’t realise what you all thought about her! I can tell you from personal experience that losing a parent at that age changed you forever. Poor kid.

Also I’m sorry but when a teenager has just lost their mum to cancer, their first thought isn’t naturally to give money towards that charity because fuck it, your mum’s still dead.

If you wanted the money to go to a specific charity, them surely you'd donate it yourself in the person's name? Of course the poor girl should have used the money to treat herself!!

If that was me I would have kept those DMs even after they wore out and remembered with fondness how my class had supported me at such a dreadful time. A gift shouldn't be given with any expectations or unseen rules, as said above, if it was for charity you should have given it to charity, but I expect she found the DMs a lot more comforting

This was not an act of kindness but an act of virtue signalling followed by judgement.

Yeah, that's really weird having a Whip round for someone with the idea they'll then donate it. You either donate yourselves OR have a Whip round

Thread gone wrong I think.
If you have a collection for charity you give it straight to the charity surely? If you give some money as a gift to a bereaved person you'd expect them to use it as they wish to make themselves a little happier.

Good god, she was fifteen and her MOTHER had just died and you all rolled your eyes and talked about her behind her back because you disapproved or how she spent money you gave her???

That genuinely makes me feel quite sick.,

You should have given her a list of approved items.

Handkerchiefs ✅
Mournful CDs ✅
Silk flowers t✅

Generally I see this said when people placed expectations onto that kindness, completely taking away any kindness involved and making it a controlling action.

However I do know of a scenario (thankfully that I wasn't involved in ) where someone lied about cancer and raised money from others to use it for a holiday. They were proven to have had cancer at any point. That's bloody awful.

Otherwise if you give something to someone you have no right to place expectations on it.

This.

Exactly. You wanted her to behave in a certain way to make you feel good about yourselves.

Eh? Just adding my incredulity to the fact you all expected her to gift the money to charity!

a whip round for HER, when she had just lost her mum, and she spent it (as clearly 99% of people would judging by this thread) on something nice to cheer her up.

If you’d wanted to donate to charity you could have done that yourselves!

Are you sure this was an act of kindness?

How odd?! Surely if the money was to be given to charity you wouldn't first give it to the bereaved teenager to forward it on .

A whip round for a gift doesn't usually have conditions attached to it.

If you wanted to donate to a cancer charity you should have had a whip round for that.

I'm also glad she bought the boots.
For all you know she could have spent the rest of her life fundraising for Cancer research but that wasn't up to you to control. She was a teenager who desperately needed a bit of brightness in her life... it didn't go wrong at all.

If you wanted to donate to charity you should have done it directly. Good on her for buying the boots!

I hope her new boots brought some joy to her life.