I found the guy I was looking for, Richard, and he directed me to
Vivian. I spent the next few hours learning a lot about thrift stores.
They take in a lot of stuff. They have to bulk process and store all of
it. There's not a lot of consideration that can be given to individual
items.
Not a lot, but some. While I was there, Vivian
came across an animatronic parrot that Richard identified as being a
collector's item from Disney's Pirate of Pensance. I was checking a line
of identical yoga pants to ensure that they were hung properly, facing
the correct direction, and tagged in preparation of pricing while she
dug through the bag looking for a parrot's remote control.
I
also took a pickup's load of used clothes and shoes to a little shed
where they'd be sent to another charity. While I was putting some baskets on top of some more baskets
in a basket corner, I noticed a glass...thing had been broken and had to stop to clean it up. Then there were some Fall and Halloween boxes needed to be put
upstairs. There was a shopping cart of leather-bound Western books that I
had to push/drag/lift across a gravel parking lot to a warehouse.
A guy pulled up with a pickup truck of his aunt's (or whatever's) old clothes. I was asked to bring them to the shed outback for Vivian. The guy was flabbergasted that we wouldn't be immediately hanging them alongside our
very own Purgatory Thrift Store Prized Collection and displaying them
proudly for people to adore.
I mean, gods, man! Old women clothes aren't
oil. I don't want to be crass, but the ratio of womens:mens clothes is
hanging tough at about 9:1. Thanks for bringing them by and while I can't tell you
the whys and wherefores, rest assured they're going
somewhere for someone.
Really. Thank you. But “Thrift Store” is an old white man word for “closer than the garbage dump" don't expect the stuff you're barely not throwing away to get you a nomination for Nobel Peace Prize.
No comments:
Post a Comment