Feeding the homeless is volunteering....performing your job for free for a billion dollar corporation so they can use a few scholarships as tax breaks isn't.
I don't see Nike asking anyone else to work for them for free.
You'd be surprised.
Our team has been presented with what were essentially insulting "volunteer" requests from people at Nike on more than one occasion.
In the early 2000's, someone on the Jordan Brand team even went so far as to forward a message from a third-party firm that included a
script for us to follow to promote a contest or something. This was back when we were all still chipping in to keep the site ad-free, we'd already been told that our forums had become an indispensable source of market research, and yet apparently that wasn't enough. They expected members of our team to act as their mouthpieces, likely because they assumed we were all such big fans that we were, I guess, supposed to consider it an "honor."
In each such instance, the conversation abruptly ends the instant you demonstrate a functioning spinal column.
Nike's a big company with a lot of turnover (especially now.) It would be a mistake to attribute to it one consistent "voice" or attitude. Some of the people there came up through communities like ours and maintain great respect for them. Others just crowd-surf in on privilege and want to act like they built something. Unfortunately, yet unsurprisingly, it seems someone in that latter camp is all too eager to exploit the brand's cachet for free labor.
I'm glad to see them getting aired out for it, and hopefully it will raise awareness among fans, too, to be on guard for this.
I've seen people twist themselves into knots running errands for people at brands like Nike just in the hopes that they
might be considered for future employment.
Have some respect for yourself. Don't accept spec work from big corporations.
What we call "brand loyalty" is generally better described as exploitation.
True loyalty is reciprocal.
Why does the city ask for volunteers to hand out food to the homeless when they could just build more kitchens? Why isn't everything free on Amazon? Bezos is already one of the richest people in the world. Why do people finance cars when they got the money in the account? Those are nothing *** questions. The whole point of rich celebs asking for donations is because maybe, just maybe, someone else would like to help. Some people genuinely want to help and are not just doing things because it looks good.
