Other Friday Stuff
Friday is my day down at the Charity Shop. This time a year ago I was there six days a week but I put a few noses out of joint, was asked to take a less prominent role and spend less time there, so I'm only there Fridays now. I get there about 9:00 to deal with the stuff that's left on the door step overnight. Usually it has been picked through; there are a couple of people in town who cruise past just about each night to go through what's been left and help themselves to anything that appeals. We know who they are because the lady who runs the shop next door is a friend; she lives in the flat above her shop and her bedroom over-looks the pavement.
From time to time a word is said to the ransackers and they back off for a while. They do actually shop in the shop as well, almost everyday in fact. I'm amazed by the behaviour of some people.
Yesterday there were quite a few bags and they'd probably been left out in the morning rather than during the night before because they hadn't been ransacked. I got past them to open the door and survey the state of the shop. The shop's run by a different person each day and everyone's notion of how the shop should be laid out and 'styled' is different. Me, I like clean and orderly. I'm not at all a fan of piling everything in and letting the customers pick their way through everything. So on Fridays, after I've made my way past the donations and into the shop I start the real job of clearing.
Some of it's aesthetics but a lot of it is at least semi-serious. We're not legally allowed to sell electrics or car/child safety without getting such goods certified as safe, and since we can't afford to do that those goods are turned away when we have the chance or thrown away when the come in anyway. There's a limit to the amount of stuff we can have lying around in boxes and buckets before customers (and staff) are at serious risk of tripping and coming to harm. Some of the people who work in the shop have no concept of 'duty of care'.
I regard this day of the week as my bit for the community. We recycle stuff, we offer people somewhere to purchase (reasonably) good quality goods at very reasonable prices, we sometimes offer staggering bargains, we provide a social environment for volunteers who are mostly elderly and might otherwise become housebound and isolated.
I'm not sure I'll be going back again. I had to take the offspring along with me, this being the school holidays. She doesn't mind too much because she's very out going and sociable and anyway knows most of the people who work or shop in the shop.
But yesterday one of the volunteers was rude to her. And yesterday I had such a job getting the crap that shouldn't have been put onto the shop floor out of the way before we opened. And yesterday I realised once I'd cleared the floor that the place probably hadn't been vacuumed since the previous Friday (and shortly after that something closely resembling a flea bit me!).
I did a check of the rails and what I found depressed me thoroughly. I found filthy and damaged clothes out on the rails, which is completely unnecessary because we're lucky to have lots of generous donors and get more quality goods than we really can stock.
We're in the midst of a heatwave and yet I found winter woolies and coats on the rails. An argument could be made for stocking a few such items for the benefit of people about to spend a fortnight or so in New Zealand or Tasmania, but an equally strong argument can be made for stocking what people are most likely to want in greatest quantities, and that when we've such limited floor and rail space, running a couple of winter woolies rails is simply stupid.
I found lots and lots of clothes that had no effort put into tadult clothes on toddler size hangers - that might sound petty, but there's no way of making a pair of ladies size 22 jeans look good on a hanger intended to hold something for a 12-18 month old baby.
Pressure is coming down from head office because takings are so much lower than last year. The reason takings are so much lower than last year is because so much of the time the people doing the work take such a slapdash approach to things. I was unpopular for doing things 'right'. When we put in that extra bit of effort we make the shop look more attractive and make people feel comfortable about spending that bit extra. Instead the solution to the drop in takings has been to put in less effort (less care over selecting what to sell and what to discard, less care over presentation) and raise prices.
I'm frustrated beyond belief. Instead of focussing effort on getting the shop right the energy available is dissipated in a range of more or less futile ancillary activities such as stalls at fetes in neighboring villages, a fortnightly 'car boot' and so forth. Some proportion of what's donated is set aside for one or more ancillary purpose and this has become known.
Some of the goodwill as evaporated: the same people who donate, buy (or their friends do) and there is some suspicion of the goods donated to the shop being taken out of the shop without being offered for sale. Not everyone who can get to the shop can get to outlying villages or the car boot. Any amount of suspicion is too much. Furthermore there's no control over or checking on the background of the volunteers, and there's talk in town about the amount of stuff the volunteers are helping themselves to.
A lot of the talk is peddled in the pubs, late at night and I know about it because the Fat Bastard brings it back and shares it with me. But such is his moral elasticity that he can repeat these tales in all their perjorative glory and still amble along at closing time to spend the next half hour, while I'm cashing up, going over the goods up for sale as well as any late donations for anything that might take his fancy.
Yesterday for example he left with a couple of videos and a pair of swimming trunks (well I'd have bought those for him rather than the alternative - for my sake as well as for the sake of the neighbors) and a set of six italian glasses. He didn't pay or offer to pay for those either. He just picked them up and walked out with them. I'll have to go back and settle up later today. He wanted to take a midi stereo system too, but I managed to pursuade him that it wasn't working properly. Mind you, the damned thing should have been in the skip rather than the shop in the first place.
In other news we went to the fun fair and had an awful time. Even the offspring admitted that it wasn't good. It was much smaller than the one that usually comes to town in September (to coincide with carnival) and there were few suitable rides for someone her age. Almost everything was either for much bigger kids (ie, proto-adults) or toddlers. She tried very hard to enjoy herself and ran through a good deal of my money in the process (on slide, bouncy castle and trampoline, plus roller-coaster and dodgems) then we went home and tried to sleep in this heat.
It's still hot even though we've got the pool up and six inches of water in it, or at least that's how much water we put into it last night. Something isn't right about this weather at all.
From time to time a word is said to the ransackers and they back off for a while. They do actually shop in the shop as well, almost everyday in fact. I'm amazed by the behaviour of some people.
Yesterday there were quite a few bags and they'd probably been left out in the morning rather than during the night before because they hadn't been ransacked. I got past them to open the door and survey the state of the shop. The shop's run by a different person each day and everyone's notion of how the shop should be laid out and 'styled' is different. Me, I like clean and orderly. I'm not at all a fan of piling everything in and letting the customers pick their way through everything. So on Fridays, after I've made my way past the donations and into the shop I start the real job of clearing.
Some of it's aesthetics but a lot of it is at least semi-serious. We're not legally allowed to sell electrics or car/child safety without getting such goods certified as safe, and since we can't afford to do that those goods are turned away when we have the chance or thrown away when the come in anyway. There's a limit to the amount of stuff we can have lying around in boxes and buckets before customers (and staff) are at serious risk of tripping and coming to harm. Some of the people who work in the shop have no concept of 'duty of care'.
I regard this day of the week as my bit for the community. We recycle stuff, we offer people somewhere to purchase (reasonably) good quality goods at very reasonable prices, we sometimes offer staggering bargains, we provide a social environment for volunteers who are mostly elderly and might otherwise become housebound and isolated.
I'm not sure I'll be going back again. I had to take the offspring along with me, this being the school holidays. She doesn't mind too much because she's very out going and sociable and anyway knows most of the people who work or shop in the shop.
But yesterday one of the volunteers was rude to her. And yesterday I had such a job getting the crap that shouldn't have been put onto the shop floor out of the way before we opened. And yesterday I realised once I'd cleared the floor that the place probably hadn't been vacuumed since the previous Friday (and shortly after that something closely resembling a flea bit me!).
I did a check of the rails and what I found depressed me thoroughly. I found filthy and damaged clothes out on the rails, which is completely unnecessary because we're lucky to have lots of generous donors and get more quality goods than we really can stock.
We're in the midst of a heatwave and yet I found winter woolies and coats on the rails. An argument could be made for stocking a few such items for the benefit of people about to spend a fortnight or so in New Zealand or Tasmania, but an equally strong argument can be made for stocking what people are most likely to want in greatest quantities, and that when we've such limited floor and rail space, running a couple of winter woolies rails is simply stupid.
I found lots and lots of clothes that had no effort put into tadult clothes on toddler size hangers - that might sound petty, but there's no way of making a pair of ladies size 22 jeans look good on a hanger intended to hold something for a 12-18 month old baby.
Pressure is coming down from head office because takings are so much lower than last year. The reason takings are so much lower than last year is because so much of the time the people doing the work take such a slapdash approach to things. I was unpopular for doing things 'right'. When we put in that extra bit of effort we make the shop look more attractive and make people feel comfortable about spending that bit extra. Instead the solution to the drop in takings has been to put in less effort (less care over selecting what to sell and what to discard, less care over presentation) and raise prices.
I'm frustrated beyond belief. Instead of focussing effort on getting the shop right the energy available is dissipated in a range of more or less futile ancillary activities such as stalls at fetes in neighboring villages, a fortnightly 'car boot' and so forth. Some proportion of what's donated is set aside for one or more ancillary purpose and this has become known.
Some of the goodwill as evaporated: the same people who donate, buy (or their friends do) and there is some suspicion of the goods donated to the shop being taken out of the shop without being offered for sale. Not everyone who can get to the shop can get to outlying villages or the car boot. Any amount of suspicion is too much. Furthermore there's no control over or checking on the background of the volunteers, and there's talk in town about the amount of stuff the volunteers are helping themselves to.
A lot of the talk is peddled in the pubs, late at night and I know about it because the Fat Bastard brings it back and shares it with me. But such is his moral elasticity that he can repeat these tales in all their perjorative glory and still amble along at closing time to spend the next half hour, while I'm cashing up, going over the goods up for sale as well as any late donations for anything that might take his fancy.
Yesterday for example he left with a couple of videos and a pair of swimming trunks (well I'd have bought those for him rather than the alternative - for my sake as well as for the sake of the neighbors) and a set of six italian glasses. He didn't pay or offer to pay for those either. He just picked them up and walked out with them. I'll have to go back and settle up later today. He wanted to take a midi stereo system too, but I managed to pursuade him that it wasn't working properly. Mind you, the damned thing should have been in the skip rather than the shop in the first place.
In other news we went to the fun fair and had an awful time. Even the offspring admitted that it wasn't good. It was much smaller than the one that usually comes to town in September (to coincide with carnival) and there were few suitable rides for someone her age. Almost everything was either for much bigger kids (ie, proto-adults) or toddlers. She tried very hard to enjoy herself and ran through a good deal of my money in the process (on slide, bouncy castle and trampoline, plus roller-coaster and dodgems) then we went home and tried to sleep in this heat.
It's still hot even though we've got the pool up and six inches of water in it, or at least that's how much water we put into it last night. Something isn't right about this weather at all.
posted by Enyo @ 9:21 am
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