A Boring Dystopia

You have observations, I have answers. 🙂 I have donated plasma on & off for idk 12 years or so. I know precisely how the system works.

Donating 2 non-consecutive days is for your own health; your body needs to recover & replenish what has been lost. This isn't dystopian. They pull up to 880 mL of liquid out of your body, most of that is water btw, but FFS your body needs time to produce more plasma. To heal your skin puncture. They don't care if you're upset, they won't allow you to ruin your health under their care.

I do not know your specific plasma outfit, be it Talecris/Grifols, CSL, or other, but you ought not get charged if you use your card at an ATM in the accepted network of ATMs. You get unlimited free balance checks & 2 free withdrawals of cash money per donation. With most ATMs, you can withdraw $300 max in one go. So here's what you do....fuck all the small stuff because it's a waste of time, multiple trips & whatnot. Let your balance build up to over $300. Withdraw $300 in one go. You will never be charged a withdrawal fee.

Additionally, if you have multiple plasma donation clinics in the same area, you can play them against each other for new donor fees. Get $700 in one month donating at one. When the new donor fees dry up, bounce & go to the other clinic & suck up their new donor fees. Stay true to the second one & stay away from the first for 5 more months, guess what, you're a new donor again at the first clinic. Rinse & repeat.

I feel you on the nickel & diming sentiment, it's true -- it can only, maybe, sometimes be overcome with forethought & investment. See the boots theory. It's expensive to be poor, some of my poorer friends pay so much more than I do for certain things. The same things. Usually they're buying out of convenience & not buying on sales, or in bulk. It breaks my heart, really.

Also pro tip, just be really positive & calm when you go in for donations. The staff is dealing with angry people, crazy people, dumb people, very smelly people, drug addicts, the desperate, the destitute...etc etc etc. Every single day. And if you give them any attitude (even if you've got a good reason!) & they decide to make it a problem for you, they can defer or ban your ass. It's solely their discretion. Think twice. Be nice.

are often also used to pay people who work at like McDonald’s

The fuck?

I used to sell plasma. I was already left wing and aware of American desperation, but that was about the bleakest shit I've seen. Ive been to chemo wards that are upbeat compared to it.

Shitty gas station job I worked at in my late teens tried to switch to those ratfucking cash cards and end paper checks. They claimed that the first withdrawal or use on the card from any location wouldn't charge us any fees.

I proved that wrong by trying to get my full paycheck out of the ATM we had in the store and got slapped with a 10 dollar fee. When my boss shrugged and said "Oh, well" I went home and looked up the state labor laws about these fucking cards. Turns out they weren't allowed to charge fees in my state at all and any use of such fees would be treated as wage theft.

Company changed their tune real quick when I threatened HR about going to our local daily and the labor department about it. Paper paychecks were suddenly an option again and everyone got a $25 bonus for whatever fees they lost. Fuckers. I quit three months later.

I drive Uber and see this shit and so much more all the time. It's such a bleak lens into how people are being forced to get by (read: just baaaaaarely). It's really, really wild out there.

Here in Germany at the facility I donate at, you need to wait two full days before you can donate again because your body needs the time to regenerate. While the toll on your body is smaller compared to a blood donation, your body still is at work to regenerate what's missing now. It's not a precaution that's put there willy nilly

It's wild this is a paid thing in the US. As far as I know, in Canada, you can only donate for free. Blood, plasma, sperm, doesn't matter. Can't be paid for surrogacy either.

Getting charged to check the balance seems...not legal? I dunno, probably not. Some politician that also owns a payday lending company would probably ensure that's legal.

I work in plasma, and deferring donors is by far the most difficult part. I had to send three people home just today for having out of range hematocrit. The look of devastation on their faces when they find out they're not getting paid nearly brings me to tears every time. Sometimes they get angry and yell at me, and I just let them do it until they tire themselves out because I know how desperate they are. I'm just thankful that I'm primarily a lab tech and don't have to deal with the donor side every day; I don't think I could take it psychologically.

Is that not for health reasons? Donating twice in a row like that seems like it would take a real toll on you.

I don't know why that's dystopian, if anything what's dystopian is that people are relying on doing this to support themselves at all.

This isn't new. Back when I gave plasma (almost 20 years now, damn) the two companies that did it here had to share donor lists to keep people from doubling up by going to both. Also, there were always large rocks in the bathroom from smaller people trying to get to the higher weight range to make more money.

I had one of those preloaded cash cards once, my credit union was more than happy to charge it the amount on the card and transfer that to my account, if there was a fee involved they must have eaten it.

It's called profit maximization.