Does anyone remember JWs and their barter system phase? I was thinking of this the other night. I remember when I was pretty young, the JWs doing the barter thing where a JW would clean a restaurant and they would get their meals covered or they would clean a dry cleaners and they would get their dry cleaning done in exchange. I also remember as a kid thinking it was strange and asking why they were doing it and I was told that it was because in the New System that was how everything was going to be. If a person was a plumber, they would come over to the house you took over from the dead worldly person and fix your pluming and if you could sew you would mend the clothes you took from the dead worldly business person.
Barter system?
by looking_glass 6 Replies latest jw experiences
-
-
garybuss
I can't remember barter. I remember the Witnesses asking to borrow my truck and trailer and appliance cart frequently. Don't these people live in the same place over 6 months?
One guy borrowed everything we had to move and he returned the truck filthy dirty inside and out and out of gas. He worked for a printing company and they had prints of aerial photos of the city for sale for $8.00 and I asked him if he's pick one up for me and he said: "No!". Guess who didn't get my truck next time he moved. -
OUTLAW
WBT$ already has a barter system in place.."Join our Religion or Die!"..Thats not really barter now that I look at it..More like BlackMail..LOL!!...Yes I remember being taught we would barter in the New System.."If I cut your lawn,will you scrub my dogs ass?"..LOL!!...OUTLAW
-
Brigido
I remember the "barter system". I remember hearing this as a kid at the field service meetings. It was said that if people
didn't have money for the mags then you could barter them off for a bar of soap or a can of soup.
-
kitten whiskers
I remember the field service barter too. Where we lived, soda cans had a deposit on them. when you returned them to the store you got 5 or 10 cents. I remember my mother trading a broke householder the literature for their soda cans! sometimes they would even trade garden vegetables for the literature. This was back when you paid for the literature before placing it in service. You just had to feel you were getting back what you had paid at the literature counter! I remember being embarassed by the whole procedure. Especially riding around with a gross bag of soda cans in the car!
I also remember a very talented young artist telling me she thought in the New System there would be a building where you would take the goods you had the talent to make (rugs, paintings, blankets, quilts, ceramics) and trade them for something someone else had made. I envisioned a museum like atmosphere where you could take home the beautiful works of art!
Times have certainly changed in the organization. I grew up around a completely different generation of people than are there now. Hmmm. Just reminiscing. (this was late 1970's-mid 80's).
-
garybuss
Oh, literature sales barter? I sure remember that. We worked a lot of rural isolated territory and there wasn't two dollars in the whole county. We'd take boxed dry jello mix as our trade of choice. We took a bale of straw on trade and once when we were at least 100 miles from home with at least 6 of us in an old jalopy in July my uncle took two live chickens on a book.
Once he took a rabbit. He's made rabbit stew out of em. Once I ate a pan fried rabbit and stewed tomatoes and I had the water shits for a solid week. -
juni
Gary, sounds like you got more than you bartered for!!
I, too, remember the barter system for placing literature if they didn't have $. It happened in the ' 70s mainly for me. Canned food items, soaps, whatever. The same reason as was given here for bartering. That's how it will be in the "new system".
Juni