More than once i talked about how taiwan has a "receipt lottery" which basically means every sales receipt you get has a number on it and for every two months there is a drawing. You can win anywhere from 6 bucks to 333,000 dollars. Not bad for something you had to buy anyway.
But where there is money, there is always people willing to take your money. Many charity groups have boxes in places like convenience stores where you can just put the sales receipt you just got. Then when the time comes the charity group collects all those receipts, checks if any of them won, and then gets to keep that money.
For charities it's a pretty good deal, because most people are willing to give away a receipt since usually it's worth nothing. But it's a pretty bad deal for volunteers. If you are in Taiwan and decide that you want to help people in need by joining a charity, when you get to the charity's office they are going to say, "Welcome, in the other room are millions of receipts, you can go in and record the numbers." If you say that's not really what you expected to be doing, than they will say you can go out into the street and try to encourage people to give you any receipts they may have in their pockets.
That's what is going on in the picture above. It's a group of volunteers asking for receipt donations. Usually this kind of group is out on weekends and they will sing chants to encourage people to donate. To their credit they are usually very lively, and most people I knew did this at some point when they were in high school.
But this all brings up a good question, I think. Would you give away a free lottery ticket that you get every time you buy something?
