Well, I worked for 7 weeks in the summer of 1988 as a MASSPIRG canvasser (college summer job), and the job sucked.  Miss quota 3 days and you're outta there.  And doing the same awful "Hi.  Give us money." every single day.  I knew a couple of guys who, in the car on their way out to canvass, started discussion how it would be a lot better if we sometimes got briefings from our lobbyists and others working on these issues instead of the same money-raising practice, and that evening they were called in to the director's room and thoroughly dressed down.  (One of them told the director to go f himself and quit on the spot.)

The pay sucked, there was no real respect, and it partially turned me off of activism for most of a decade. (And turned me off of the PIRGs permanently.)

So things were pretty lame back in the late 80s as well.