You didn’t, but I did in the post to which you responded. And left off the ‘outlet’ part of my post.
great to think of others. as someone whos worked in charitable thrift store, heres my opinion.
they receive way too much stuff for you to be worried about there being enough for needier people.
youre welcome
If you watch dumpster divers on YouTube you’ll see lots of them diving in thrift shop dumpsters.
Seems they throw away a significant amount of stuff.
You’re not going to get a “corporate officer” of any competence to work for less than six figures. That’s the going rate these days, and frankly, that’s the very low end of the pay scale for those folks. It’s like complaining the cost of renting store space is more than $100 a month.
True. On the other hand, sometimes we have to deal with reality as it is rather than as we want it to be. Corporate officers are NOT volunteers. Competent ones cost a certain amount, and that is set by the market in our economic system.
I haven’t plunged into the financial analysis of Goodwill but for charities what matters I’m told is the percentage of money that funds the actual charity, not necessarily how much the CEO or CFO makes.
For me, the donating is to get rid of stuff I don’t want any more. When I had to downsize I gave a lot of the books to a local used book store that doesn’t pretend it’s a charity, it’s strictly a for-profit store, because I preferred those books not go to a landfill (at least not before a chance to make someone else happy). When I’m off-loading stuff I don’t want or need anymore I’m not over concerned about someone else making money off it.
When I’m shopping I’m looking for good deals for me. If I don’t like the price of something I can move onward. I’ve been poor to the point of needing to buy clothes at the thrift stores, I frankly didn’t care about the socio-economic status of my fellow shoppers. Those places get so many clothes donated it’s crazy.
My most recent visit to such stores where they were selling electronics didn’t let you try them out in the store but had a 7 day refund policy on them for not working. All other sales were final, so I guess they essentially let you test them at home.
So… they want to be a corporate board member?
Here is a thread I started 5 years ago on exactly this point:
Sorry, if I was confusing. Here is what I meant:
Shoppers are like hyenas to the slaughter (with new merchandise) = Pretty much my experience
Descending on bins = Except the stores I volunteered at didn’t allow access to bin shopping
I was basically agreeing with you, not sure why this upset you so, but I hope this clears it up.
It does. Didn’t really upset me, I was just trying to clarify my experience, and you noted that our experiences, while similar, are different. No problem!
Why? There’s nothing that says you must or even should charge less than retail. Proper pricing is what the market will bear, and if for whatever reason, it’s worth it for people to pay more at Goodwill than Wal-Mart, then great.
Everyone wins. Literally. The people buying get convenience of some sort, and Goodwill gets more money- specifically more than they’d got had they priced it at or below retail.
The flip side is that if they price it more than retail and it doesn’t sell, they should evaluate their pricing, like any retailer should do on a regular basis.
Scholarship applications are just like resumes; they’re essentially a marketing document for YOU. There’s a certain amount of embellishment that should be expected on both, as with any other advertisement or sales document.
It’s the job of the selection committee/hiring person to evaluate all that.
Although the suppliers of Walmart are involved in a for-profit system from top to bottom.
People who drop off at Goodwill profit nothing, and are motivated by the belief they’re helping the less fortunate (and yes, “please take this old junk off my hands,” but not primarily). Especially nowadays, when they can easily create an Etsy account and make money off their old junk.
Speaking as a kid who was actually doing all those activities in high school…
Off the top of my head:
Marching/Concert band
Secretary of NHS
Assistant editor of the High School yearbook
Multicultural diversity club
Volunteering 1-2 times a week at my church
Dual enrollment for college credit
And all while working full time - I was actually in more activities before that (jazz band, pit orchestra, choir)
It’s usually a mix of things that have big time commitments (being in band is a massive time commitment) and things that have trivial time commitments, like a monthly meeting for NHS. The diversity club consisted of me hanging out with my best friends every Friday. They were the diversity. It was a real thing, but not exactly work.
You can safely assume a kid was doing something for each of those things and that there were varying degrees of responsibility involved, but my point is students can fit a lot of shit into their schedules if motivated sufficiently and it doesn’t mean they are lying.
In New Jersey there were few Good Wills, In South Carolina Myrtle area there are many with good attendance! Other then the Northern retirees money is tighter as is the rate of pay…For the time being they are tariff free zones
Just out of curiosity, were the bins on the sales floor. None of the thrift stores I’ve ever visited, and I’ve visited a lot, had bins anywhere but in the employees only area. Except for the outlet stores, of course.
ETA, rereading the initial post it seems they were. Maybe the customers were wrong, but not a good store design.
NHS?
National Honor Society - it’s a high school organization
Thanks. I was in it. 50+ years ago. Utterly forgotten. Oops.
And incompetent ones cost a lot more.
And Goodwill is notorious for this.
Some stores will discard things that they’re opposed to selling; there was a “Free Store” in my old town whose director threw steamy romance novels in the trash, instead of passing them on to, say, the library. It was her right to do so. And in the early 1990s, I volunteered at a free clinic that would discard any donations of the Today Contraceptive Sponge, because it was so unreliable; they would cut them up before throwing them away. I could also see a thrift store run by, for instance, fundamentalist Christians that would discard anything they considered “occult.” Again, their right.
The Salvation Army stores in my area have a network where they will message other stores with things like “We need baby clothes, and if anyone here needs hardcover novels, we have an excess of those. Please take the china off our hands too, if you want it.” Different neighborhoods also have different clienteles, and things that sell well in one area may not just a few miles away.
The back area was separated from the sales floor by two big swinging doors. There was an alcove set back in so that the doors didn’t open into the sales floor itself. The doors were also so big that only one was ever used, the other one stayed locked. So that when a bin was brought out it wasn’t out on the floor as much as it was set back into the alcove. And the bins were clearly marked that going through them was off limits.
The system, at the stores I worked at, was that there were probably 6-8 bins in the back by the dock. The workers outside would bring in the drop offs and tossed stuff into one of the bins. They were loosely designated for things like clothing, toys, electronics, tools, etc.
The sorters would go thru the bins and throw away anything deemed not ‘good’ or salable. I don’t know, but I was told, that those items were shipped overseas.
Once the items were ready, the bins would be pushed out to the staging area. From there either the sorter or the floor people would put stuff out on the respective areas/shelves.
In one store I volunteered at, things were put out and arranged by color. All of the blue dishes put together, for example, all the red toys were put together and so on. , Other than sizing, the clothes were color sorted as well. The store manager took pride in having his store look clean and tidy.
Okay, I can see color shorting clothes and dishes but why color sort toys? That’s not going to help the customers. It’s just borderline OCD. Or maybe a petty manager inventing unnecessary work for his employees.
I saw a webcomic last week that asked people whether they sorted their book collection by author, by title, by genre, or by color. And I was thinking “Why the hell would anybody sort their book collection by color?”
I still don’t understand the point of NHS. I can’t remember what we did. I think there was a volunteer requirement, so I got credit for stuff I was already doing.
My role will forever be a source of shame because I was running against a good friend of mine. We promised we would vote for each other, and at the last minute I decided I was actually the better candidate and voted for myself. And won by one vote.
I know.
The guilt was so bad it put me off ever doing anything like that again.