artfunk seems to have beaten me to the point, and gotten a whole lot more specific about it, too. But I was going to say...
I almost feel sorry for the model...this is not the model's fault, and it's getting a bad rap. It's the fault of the people at the top who are implementing it, who are so rigid and heartless and irresponsible about what it's really supposed to be about. And yes, I hold Phelps personally responsible for much of it; and I also think it's the responsibility of alumni like myself to call for it to be remedied.
So maybe this was a problem all the way back in the 80s, before I came on. It does seem to me that there was some kind of 'tipping point,' maybe in the late 90s, maybe just before we started street canvassing--that would explain how all these union drives have been breaking out everywhere. Maybe it was because by then, everyone who really cared and took their responsibilities seriously had just given up and left. Then it was just Doug and his "team," who were only too willing to let Telefund and GCI tip everything way too far...
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.
