They recommend “volunteer” activities (and other go-curriculars) with an eye to what is going to look good to Duke or Colgate. And don’t bother unless you have a colorably “leadership” role.
Sorry, I am digressing.
I was just at my local Goodwill last weekend, and what they did have was a whole bunch of tripods for some strange reason. That seems kind of random. But if you need one of those for your cameras, they’ve got you covered.
But what I actually got was an FM radio (or more specifically, an alarm clock / radio / iPod dock for old style port, but I just want it for the radio part). I could have gotten a fairly cheap radio from some random Chinese company I’ve never heard of from Amazon. But I thought a thrift store seemed like the best place to buy old tech like that. They didn’t have quite as much as I expected; I was hoping to find an old boom box or something like that, but the only one I could find was missing its power cord.
But what they did have was a bunch of old iPod docks with the OG connector. And some of them were also radios. So I got this one, which actually works well for my purpouse (I just want to listen to NPR in my home office on the days I work from home), and it cost me a small fraction of what the cheapest radio on Amazon sells for. And it eliminated the impact of manufacturing a new one and shipping it from China, and it prevent this otherwise obsolete piece of tech from being trashed.
Summary
Nope. I think the average person vastly underestimates how common substance abuse is among the general population.
Non-addict homeless people usually do a good job of keeping themselves presentable so they don’t look like the homeless stereotype. They’re very hard to impossible to spot on the street or in a store. They are more likely to be couch-surfing (but they’re still homeless) or living out of a car/van/SUV (but they’re still homeless) than in a cardboard box on the sidewalk.
Moderating:
Please don’t assist with a hijack of a thread.
I hid it.
If you want to talk this far off topic, maybe try a new thread instead.
How to Reply as a linked Topic
Click Reply, in the upper left corner of the reply window is the reply type button, looks like a curving arrow point to the right.
Choose Reply as linked topic and it starts a new thread. As an example, you can choose GD, IMHO or The Pit for it.
That is actually the best method.
Shame on you. You’ve deprived some poor person who needed that iPod dock 
/s
I think you can tie yourself in knots over this (and I think you shouldn’t) - I’ve had people tell me (when I bought reduced items in a supermarket, on a video) that I should have left them for someone less wealthy than myself, but I think that’s silly - what if someone with slightly less money than me buys it? Do we tell them they should also not buy it but leave it for someone even less wealthy? - the logical extension of this reasoning is that the item - indeed, every item must really only ever be acquired by the most needy and poorest person on the planet.
In the case of reduced price food, if I didn’t buy it on reduction, maybe nobody would and it would go to waste,
Even for non-perishable items in a charity shop, if they remain unsold for long enough, they’ll be taken off sale and landfilled - that’s a worse outcome than someone buying them who hasn’t won the most needy person competition.
If you feel bad about saving money at charity shops, you can always donate some of the money you saved, or offer them a higher price than the ticket (I have actually done this when I found items I knew were seriously underpriced).
As a veteran in the food retail business, I can say two things about this situation quite confidently:
- If you don’t buy it, chances are it’s going into the “organic waste” stream
- The buyers of marked down food are only slightly below average (median) in income.
So I would say, buy away.
I don’t know much about the thrift store business, but I do know that my daughter’s college classmates with the $60 water bottles and $8 smoothie habits are big on thrifting.
My thrift store is (apparently) a for-profit venture, though they do imply that they buy merchandise from non-profits like Amvets, etc. I regularly visit two of their 11 locations.
I’ve spent a lot of time volunteering at thrift stores - mostly Goodwill (but also food banks, etc). I have worked on the floor and have also worked as a sorter (determining which brought in goods were worth putting out and which were trash).
There are low income people who shop there out of necessity, of course, but there are also other groups who shop there for their own needs. Goodwill shoppers are a subset all there own. While I worked there, there was a dedicated group of regulars who showed up every morning to prowl through the latest arrivals. They bought like crazy. I suspected they were garage sale-ers. Though they may have been hoarders - either way, they were not buying out of need.
This was in a moderately small town and the turn over there was huge. When I was working in back as a sorter I stood at the bins for a 5 hour shift working non-stop. It’s not like the non-needy could out buy the needy. No chance.
I think the help provided by anyone who shops there far out weighs any perceived slighting of the low income shoppers.
If I understand correctly, most of what gets donated doesn’t end up going to someone who needs it. Which just shines a light on our consumption habits more than anything else. I buy my clothes new but expect them to last for years. I’ve got a pair of leisure pants I’ve had 15 years. So I don’t really think I’m part of the problem there. But I’m part of the problem in other ways. I feel like I’m always getting rid of stuff. And that’s even after I got rid of half my stuff.
Makes you think.
Sometimes people make up their own ideas about the intentions of various programs.* For example, Goodwill doesn’t operate their stores to provide the poor with inexpensive goods - they operate the stores to raise money to support their mission
Goodwill Industries empowers individuals with disabilities and other barriers to employment to gain independence through the power of work.
Hiring people who work in those stores also contributes to that mission.
* And they are sometimes ridiculous. My sister has a habiit of complaining when her nieces and nephews apply for affordable apartments in housing lotteries. She says “those are for poor people” . Nope - not when the rent for a studio is over $3K and the income range for one person is $122,400.00-$147,420.00. $122K isn’t poor anywhere. There are of course less expensive apartments, but they aren’t all for poor people
What that tells me is that perhaps the thrift stores need to pay attention and mark up the sorts of things that those girls are likely to buy. Not so much that they won’t buy it, but more than what they’d otherwise be priced at. Pricing what the market will bear, in other words. Those girls might not want to pay $30 for a cool thrift top, but they might pay $15, even if the store would have priced it at $5.
Of course, then you get into the whole argument we’re having here- would raising prices to make money then somehow deprive someone who needs that top? Who knows. But that would seem to me to come back to what the mission of the thrift store is, and how they’re willing to get there.
If you want to see the problem with a carbon arc searchlight, visit a Goodwill outlet, where all the Goodwill stores in a given area send the stuff that doesn’t sell. We have one in our area where my wife will sometimes shop, and it’s a real eye opener. They’ll bring out bins of stuff, all mixed up. Clothing will be piled in with household goods, sports equipment, home decor, you name it. Shoppers (including my wife) will descend on the bins like hyenas to the slaughter. After about 20 minutes, the bins are taken back, where anything left is baled (clothing) or binned (just about everything else). According to the staff, the bales get sold overseas, while the bins end up in landfill. The quantities are just mind boggling.
Taking the OP a step further, maybe by volunteering, I was depriving the disabled a job? Though at the 2 locations I volunteered at, there were no disabled that I was aware of.
Pretty much my experience, except we didn’t allow patrons to pilfer through bins… not that that stopped them.
Not sure what you mean by pilfering. Everybody has equal access - to the extent they can elbow their way to the bin, that is.
After paying their corporate officers.
I think thrift stores are like any other charities. The amount that actually goes to the people they claim is from near zero to quite a bit.
I just saw a video on Zac Rios channel that was a collection of Tic Toks showing products at Goodwill (remember donated so GW got for free) that they charged more than the retail price.
The bins are set to the side with signs that say “NO CUSTOMER ACCESS”. If you go digging through them before items are set out on the shelves, where the honest patrons purchase them from, I consider that pilfering. YMMV.
If your method of charitability is to teach people new careers then, in essence, every cent paid is to a person working for Goodwill. It’s still a charity though, since the students were able to attend for free. Or if they’re giving out food, then the money goes to farmers and cooks, not to the homeless. But, the food is free.
You would really need to dive into their finances to determine whether it all seemed truly charitable or not.
I once helped at a community rummage sale that was held during the summer, in an elementary school gym. (It was a long time ago; IIRC, one of the people on the committee worked there.) A boy who happened to live across the street, who was probably about 10 years old, checked out what was happening and ended up helping out a lot, mostly taking things out to people’s cars. To thank him, we let him take anything he wanted at the end, which I’m sure his parents were thrilled about LOL. He carted off a pretty good-sized box of stuff that he didn’t consider junk.
That Goodwill often charges more than retail is yet another reason why I don’t shop there. THAT is definitely a case of ripping people off.