Two persons of my acquaintance were cleaning out a house and there were two ratty refrigerators that were, according to them, not worth fixing.
They offered said ratty refrigerators to the St. Vincent de Paul Society. Said society would take the less ratty of the two ratty refrigerators, but refused the second.
The reaction of the persons of my acquaintance:
Person 1: Well, they’re picky.
Person 2: There aren’t any poor people left.
Person 1: I guess not.
Hmm, could it be that a charitable organization didn’t want you to foist your disgusting, garbagy fridge on them? Could it possibly be that one of these oh-so-rare “poor people” might not be able to afford fixing your disgusting, garbagy fridge, the same fridge you have deigned as not worth fixing?
And could it also be that the charity has people who donate things that actually have some non-rattiness left in them? And that the people the charity serves are smart enough to pick out the newer, less ratty fridges before they would pick out your garbage?
This is so stupid, so smug and infantile, that it makes my hair hurt. Face it, persons of my acquaintance. You just didn’t want to pay to have the goddamned things hauled away and figured you could sucker a charity into doing it.
These people sound like they don’t know how to identify trash. Or perhaps they think that poor people like trash.
I’ll donate items that are still working, or still useable or wearable but if it’s broken or torn or stained then it most likely belongs in the trash can.
In your friends’ defense, it seems as if our charitable organizations are getting very picky about the free stuff they accept these days. Sometimes beggars can’t be choosers and it frequently annoys me when charities make statements like this. However, foisting garbage on charities is pretty skymie, and there are situations when I’m sure that has happened and they muct bear the cost to dump said trash.
It seems that there’s a thin line between trash and charity…
Except they can be choosers because there’s often a glut of large appliances and large home furnishings (couches, etc.) that people dump when they move.
I tried to donate my couch when I moved:a clean, unbemished–or so I thought–3 piece sectional. The Salvation Army guys who came out rejected it due to a half-dollar size patch of wear on the back. Then they offered to take it off my hands and trash it for $40.
At least it was cheaper then paying a rubbish hauler…
Hello, jsgoddess. I don’t think we’ve met before. Thanks for the OP.
I’ve often thought that the great failing of the war on poverty is that we don’t allow them to surrender or defect.
Your friends (sorry – acquaintances) might have benefitted by looking further. Goodwill Industries, for example, will take nearly anything (at least in my area) because they employ and train people to repair and recondition things so that they will be salable. Most charities don’t have that resource. But try to be charitable yourself (yes, I know). Your acq’s don’t actually believe that there are no poor people any more than they really believe that all car dealers are crooks: it’s just a poor, overworked, intellectually bankrupt rhetorical device to express their disappointment. A more-or-less functional refrigerator will soon be delivered to someone in need. That’s good. For the church to have taken both would have created a problem, but also perhaps encouraged somewhat charitably disposed people to do it again someday, which might have been worth it.
On the whole, I’m all for you – I agree. There are people running around who don’t know nearly enough about how the other half lives. But, if they’re the ones giving away refrigerators, perhaps they should get a pass now and then.
Much of this has been overtaken by other posters as I typed, but I’ll be lazy and leave it as it is.
In the early 70’s, I worked as a garbage man. I was astonished at the shit people stick out on the curb and wait for me to haul away. But the upside was, I had a whole network of people who could tinker and fix stuff…TV’s especially, but all kinds of appliances that could be fixed on the cheap. Sometimes I sold them, sometimes I gave them to people who needed them, depending on the extent of my revolutionary fervor and committment to the proletariat, and how that stacked up that week relative to beer money.
So, yeah, I can relate. But the big difference these days is that so much is made so cheaply, and made not to be repaired. It is a kind of engineering: do you build it so a broken part can be extracted and replaced, or build it as a one-piece unit rather than an assembly of exchangeable parts? More and more, it is better, spreadsheet-wise, to do it the latter way, even though it is ultimately wasteful of labor and resource.
Remember when there were guys whose whole profession was fixing stuff?
In defense of charitable organizations, I went to Goodwill a week or so ago to donate something on a Saturday, and I had to wait in a long line to make my donation (some old but still serviceable clothes that no longer fit various family members). My donation was accepted, but the point is, there were a LOT of people wanting to give stuff away. Of course, around Christmas I imagine this sort of thing peaks, and on Saturdays as well, but still … maybe beggars CAN be choosers when they have that many donations to deal with.
It should also be noted that getting donated items from the drop-off point to the person in need costs time and money. There are many items which would be useful and needed only if they could be magically transported to the right people. Otherwise, it would be a big fat waste of money.
In my experience, people like to think of their donations instantly going to some starving family huddling around a burning trashcan and being met with ecstatic gratitude. “Mismatched socks with holes in them! A monopoly set with no pieces! One shoe! What have we done to deserve such a generous bounty?”
If it wasn’t a refrigerator, which I think has special rules about disposal what with the doors and all, I’d say leave it out in the street - I have never, ever put something even remotely in one piece by the side of the road that wasn’t gone before the city came to pick it up. I figure that’s okay - it’s basically charity with no overhead, right? Either people who need it come and pick it up, or people who don’t need it come and pick it up, fix it or whatever, and sell it to people who need it. Everybody wins, unless it can’t be fixed in which case at least I’m rid of it and maybe somebody can use it for parts.
I hear Japan is fabulous for dumpster diving because the Japanese are nuts about new stuff - little market for used things and htey just get dumped on trash day. I can only imagine the packs of roving gaijin. My mama would die of shame.
That drives me crazy when people try to donate to food drives stuff that they wouldn’t eat. If the food is going to be distributed domestically, it’s probably less to ward off complete starvation than to ensure more balanced meals (face it, it’s not hard to beg a buck off someone to buy a few packages of ramen to stave off starvation). And well, if it’s a year past the expiration date, that would, y’know, add to the health care expenses of the receiving family?
Please, only donate to food drives stuff you would eat and/or feed to your family.
I realize that other posters have touched on this tengentially, but refrigerators are one particular class of appliance where the liabilities of accepting used machines of questionable quality really comes into play. First off, most older refrigerators are going to be running on R-12 freon, and would need a number of substantial modifications to operate with the newer halogenated freons that are supposedly safer for the ozone layer. If the charge in the old fridge is too low, it can’t operate efficiently; and you really shouldn’t play mix and match with freons. This is ignoring any disposal costs that the charity may be liable for if they can’t make it work, as has been mentioned previously.
Secondly, while there hasn’t been any great revolution or breakthrough in efficiency costs, the gradual, incremental improvements in efficiency are such that the energy cost difference between a new machine and a very old, out of tune machine are substantial. I won’t claim that they make up for the cost of a new unit quickly - but, considering the number of things that can go wrong with a fridge, it’s not all that surprising to me that Goodwill and other charities are picky about accepting them.
Not disagreeing with anything in your OP jsgoddess, or anything anyone else has said - just pointing out that refrigerators are a special case compared to many other appliances.
I certainly understand the complaint about expired and/or dangerous foods. However, I’ve often donated foods to charities that I wouldn’t eat: Something I purchased on special, still in date, but the first sample of the product was not a good experience for me. (Actually some refried beans I picked up trying out a new brand - not only didn’t I like the taste, but the farts I got from them were toxic.) Nothing wrong with the food, just not something I’d want to eat, myself. Or, when I’m feeling generous I’ll purchase a mixed bag of canned goods, veggies especially that I wouldn’t touch, unless you payed me. (Canned corn, in particular, is a baaad thing in my kitchen.) I’m not ever going to eat these things, but I don’t see any problem or ethical considerations with the way I’ve donated them. And even the refried beans I’d mentioned weren’t the sort of ‘good’ food that no normal american would eat, like, say, a tin of pickled quail’s eggs, or umeboshi (pickled plums).
The fridge market for the poor probably isn’t that great to begin with. I’d imagine most poor people rent their homes and arn’t responsible for basic major appliances.
Am I the only person who read the title of this thread and thought the Bush Administration was going to recategorize “poor people” into some misleading euphemism(*), so they can then claim to have defeated poverty?
(* = Maybe “Fiscally challenged,” or “monetarily discouraged,” or as members of a new “Financial Growth Initiative” that doesn’t)
