The staff were pretty kind all around, facility was clean.
The dystopian aspect was how many people I saw denied, because they had donated yesterday. You can give twice a week, but have to wait a day in between. I saw at least four or five people get turned away, and they were all pretty upset. The line was extremely long - there are tons of people desperate enough to wait in line for hours to go through the painful process of having their blood sapped out.
I also got a preloaded card as my payment, which has a ton of fees associated with it - I’ll get charged if I use it at an atm or check the balance. I know these cash cards are often also used to pay people who work at like McDonald’s - it just seems like so much of the US is designed to nickel and dime the shit out of the poor.
Yeah - that’s what I found dystopian about it. That someone would be desperate enough to come back the next day to try again - it’s not even $50.
The real dystopian thing for me is that you guys get paid to donate blood. That is just insane.
Like, considering what US hospitals charge, plasma donors damn well should be paid. It’s a travesty that whole blood donors aren’t paid a penny. There should be a law that whatever a hospital charges for a blood transfusion, half of whatever they bill has to get paid to the donor. I’m fine with donation being an act of charity if the blood was going to be used for a charitable cause. But what we have now is that whole blood donors perform a charitable act…and then donate their blood to a greedy hospital that will charge patients thousands for the blood the donor was never paid for.
You only get paid for plasma. Blood can only be donated, not sold.
We don’t get paid for any bodily fluids.
I was reading it like the big bad government was preventing us from draining ourselves however we please for personal profit, and that’s a bad thing. I am not feeling well and my reading comprehension is clearly lacking.
yeah this is as dystopian as young me could’ve imagined actually. i know this because young me wrote a fantasy setting where blood (and specifically high glucose contained blood) was consumed as a magic reagent and poor people worked full time selling blood
Oh it’s more dystopian than that. You can’t make rent off it. Just groceries or liquor really. Or going out money. I used it for gas and keeping a social life