Charity shops (Shop)

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I am a charity shop addict. I love them. In fact, I can't remember the last time I paid over £5 for a skirt, and that means I save money, which can then be spent on much more important things, like shoes.

---~*Isn't it a bit... cheap?*~---

There is still a bit of a reputation that puts charity shops out of bounds for anyone who doesn't knit on buses but, to be honest, if you're worried about your friends' reaction ...
...from and you say "a charity shop", you just don't have the right kind of friends.

There's a fashion at the moment for vintage things which means charity shops are gradually gaining respect. There are the odd people my age coming in to buy things when I'm on the till, either shopping alone and dressed like Kate Moss or, like the guys that came in today, just wander in off the streets to speak pirate and try on sunglasses. ... more

After 6th form finished, I found myself facing 5 months of holiday and the boredom was overwhelming. I wasn't bored enough to bother with a full time job, but I thought one day a week volunteering would at least get me out of bed before noon, and I can spend the other 6 days recuperating from the exertion.

I am a charity shop addict. I love them. In fact, I can't remember the last time I paid over £5 for a skirt, and that means I save money, which can then be spent on much more important things, like shoes.

---~*Isn't it a bit... cheap?*~---

There is still a bit of a reputation that puts charity shops out of bounds for anyone who doesn't knit on buses but, to be honest, if you're worried about your friends' reaction if they ask you where you got your new top from and you say "a charity shop", you just don't have the right kind of friends.

There's a fashion at the moment for vintage things which means charity shops are gradually gaining respect. There are the odd people my age coming in to buy things when I'm on the till, either shopping alone and dressed like Kate Moss or, like the guys that came in today, just wander in off the streets to speak pirate and try on sunglasses. I like that, because it makes a change from the old men trying to hold your hand.

For me, it's not really the cheapness that I love, it's the fact that everything is in one place.
I love shopping, but I hate the whole rummaging around different shops and not finding what you want, or finding what you want but not being able to afford it and whoever's with you won't go back into the first shop just to check that top you've suddenly decided you want is still there in the sale. The time's running out on the Pay and Display and a woman with a double buggy has just driven over your toe.
Charity shops are like Argos if Argos sold good things. You can get anything there, and it'll usually always be very good quality because let's face it, it's lasted long enough for one person to own it and still hasn't broken enough to be thrown away.

---~*What, you mean there's good stuff there??*~---

There is good stuff. It all depends on what people donate, really. Rummaging through the bags we get in, it baffles me how often we get bags full of Monsoon Kids clothes and stuff with the tags still on. I didn't think there was anyone in my town that could afford to attire their children in Baby Gap, let alone donate that stuff to charity afterwards, but there you go. There are some generous people around, and it means that I wish my parents had had more taste when I was a baby. I have photos of me dressed in the most appalling outfits. Not just cos it was the 80s either.
So if you have kids, charity shops are good. In ours, we have a whole section dedicated to kids clothes, and nothing in there is over £1.

Then there are the people who donate utter rubbish. In my first week there was a bag that amongst the quite good, sellable stuff, also contained some limp lettuce and a slice of tomato.
In my second week there was a bag containing a bunch of those toys you get free in cereal, a few stained tshirts, a clock with the hands missing, and a bag of mismatched jigsaw pieces without even the box to show you what it was supposed to look like.
We get a lucky bag every week with stuff like that in.
Sometimes I think people have just brought in the wrong black bag, and there is one full of really nice stuff failing to decompose in a landfill somewhere. Other times, I think people just like to be able to think they've donated something, and aren't they nice people.

I don't want to put people off donating, though. We don't always sit around discussing what's been brought in. Of course, if you donate that sparkly multicoloured cardigan your sister knitted for you one christmas after you'd called her fat, we can't help but giggle, but usually we're just grateful that people bring stuff in. Especially since we get so much awesome stuff in our shop.

I've almost entirely furnished my new room at uni with stuff from work. It's been half the price than if I'd gone and got even Asda smartprice things, and I don't have to use the same brand of cutlery as Uri Gellar.

The joys of being the youngest in the family means I still have that original 1979 video player, and I have more videos (£1 each) than will fit on my shelves. The last one I bought was The Man in the Iron Mask because we were having a girly sleepover and, yanno, Leo.
They all work as well. A lot of the videos are pretty recent, and we had Napoleon Dynamite on DVD the other week. I've only had one video that hasn't been perfect and that was A Life Less Ordinary, in which the sound cuts out for five minutes and is replaced by someone talking about fishing. I didn't even know you could do that on a proper video, so I've kept it until someone tells me how this was achieved.

We have books galore. A lot of people buy them and just bring them back, so they're all pretty recent. We get quite a few bestsellers. We have at least 5 copies of the Harry Potter books which, of course, nobody in the world hasn't read yet and therefore they don't sell as well as you'd think...
We get all the classics, too, as well as text books, language books, cookery, gardening, housework, car manuals, those What Not To Wear books, stuff like that.

I get nearly all my books from charity shops. Oxfam is good for that, because it's like a 'designer' charity shop so people tend to donate more nice things to them, I've found. Usually you find the book you want, unless it's very obscure. Most of the time though, you find it for 50p in Cancer Research a few weeks after you've gone and bought it from Ottakers, which never ceases to be irritating, especially when you're a poor student like me. Woe.

------~*But isn't it all the same stuff?*~----

Nope. It depends on how busy they are and how often they get stock in but stock is usually rotated every fortnight or so. At my charity shop, if you look at the sticker it'll say the price, the code for the till, and then the week number. So this week it's week 25 so it'll be my job to go and find all the books that say week 23 or below, take them off, and put new ones on. Those books then go to Cannock, who put them on their shelves and their week 23 books go to Stafford, I expect... and so on and so forth.

Clothes are one week, I think, because that's what most people buy and donate, so they rarely go a whole week without being sold anyway, we just make room for new stock.

Plus, new stuff is put on every day to replace what's sold.
You never know what people are going to donate so it's never the same stuff. You get an idea of the kind of stuff people donate but every so often you get a surprise bargain. One of those "why would people give this away??" moments.

We've had some random things while I've worked there like signed photos of Kelly and Jack Osbourne and a burberry buggy. We get some nice first edition books, too.

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VOLUNTEERING...

---~*Why would I want to volunteer?*~----

The first time I volunteered because I was bored, and I thought it'd be good work experience to put on a CV. Employers apparently go mad for charity work, which is good because that's all I've got. That, and raising £32 for Christian Aid. This was after I got fired from my school work experience for sending faxes, but I won't go into that.

Then this summer I volunteered because I was still bored, but I like the people. It's a brilliant way to make new friends, and not everyone is scary. There is the occasional old man that tries to hold your hand, but the managers are usually lovely. After all, you're working for them and they don't have to pay you. They have to be nice.
I did volunteer in a place where the manager was a bit mean and if I wasn't at least pretending to be doing some work, she'd glare at me. The rest of the volunteers weren't entirely friendly either. It was a really stifled atmosphere, which wasn't made any better by the fact that we were made to price everything quite high for a charity shop, and half the people who came in either tsked and went out again or asked for a reduction.

-----~*What is expected of a volunteer?*~-----

I think since you're not getting paid, there should be more of a relaxed attitude towards your role in the shop. That's not to say you shouldn't do any work but this summer it's been really fun. I never once dreaded going into work because the manageress was an absolute darling to me. She explained everything clearly so I knew exactly what I was doing and it was a nice laid-back atmosphere. -As long as the shop was tidy and there wasn't a customer waiting to be served-, you could stand around and eat biscuits and chat and drink tea.
It's not a job for slackers, because if you go there and don't do any work or complain, you'll find people don't have much patience with you. A useless volunteer pretty much just gets in the way, and is worse than no volunteer. There was one girl who was always at least an hour late, and whinged about having to steam the clothes because it was 'too hard'. We didn't like her much.

There's no reason why you wouldn't enjoy yourself though, unless you happen to be working somewhere which isn't too nice, but you can always go in and volunteer for one day, then if you don't like it, you don't have to go back. You could do that with a few shops until you find one that suits you.
You don't even have to do a whole day. I did afternoons, which meant I could roll out of bed at 11am and be at work for 12. I usually stayed until closing but there's no reason why you can't just do one hour a week if that's all you can spare. Every little helps, so they say.

There's always something to do if you run out of tasks because customers find it fun to rearrange the clothes, or drop them on the floor, so you have to go sort them all out.
You're always on your feet so it keeps you active and gets you out of the house. If you're behind the till or sorting out bags in the back, you could be sneaky and get a chair. There's an endless chain of cups of tea too, which has got to be a plus in any job.

It is a nice job. I'd quite like to work as a manager of a charity shop. It must be hard though, because you're dealing with the useless volunteers or no volunteers and having to coordinate pretty much everything on your own. But the pay's good, I hear.

---~*What do I have to do?*~----

As a volunteer the main things you'll be doing are stuff like steaming the clothes, which involves a steam cleaner which invariably drips hot water on you, and clothes that adamantly stay creased just to spite you. That's the only job I'd prefer not to do, but it's more an inconvenience than an actual chore because the swooshy noise it makes makes it impossible to have a conversation at the same time, and it seems slower then.

Books was always my job, it seemed. The day I got there I got showed the equivalent of Monica's Closet. Under the table there were masses and masses of books. I sat there for 3 hours and sorted them into categories and made them neat. The next week they had avalanched and the week after that I discovered that someone had got fed up of them all and put them -all- in the shop at once. This involved towers and towers of books horizontal on the bookshelves. It looked dreadful and all the customers complained they couldn't read the titles properly. So I had to go through and sort them out.
However, I find it quite relaxing to organise things. I don't know why, but I actually like tidying and giving everything a place, so I liked sorting out the books every week.
It wasn't always a mess though. Usually your main job books-wise would be to take off the old stock, price up the new books and put them on the shelves. Simple.

Clothes... after everything's steamed you have to use the tag gun which inevitably skewers your fingers at least once a day, to put the little tags on, write the codes and the price on and put them out in the shop.
Some shops have absolutely no organisation of clothes. There's one in my town where everything is colour-coordinated and after that, it's a shambles. If you want something red, that's fine, it'll be on the red shelf, but you'll have to rummage for hours to find your size.
Ours, we have a rail of tshirts, a rail of long-sleeved shirts, a rail of short-sleeved shirts, sleeveless tops and just tops. It's a nightmare if you haven't been told which is which. But if you do, it's fine. Easypeasy.

If you work there regularly and they trust you not to steal from them, you might be shown how to use the till. This is my favourite, because you get to talk to the customers and you don't actually have to do anything at all. Just push buttons on the till and smile.
If there's no customers, you'll probably have to do something else while you're behind the counter, but it means you don't have to do the steaming. ^_^

A lot of the customers are weird in one way or another. You need to be open-minded and remain calm under pressure.
If they're not trying to grope you, demanding a reduction, or claiming that 2p pieces are 10ps until you give in and charge them less, you at least have to be able to understand mumbles and heavy accents. One lady asked me for a "stilty-pot" the other week and I was baffled. It turned out she was looking for a steel tea pot, but we didn't have one. Alas.

Oh, you might also have to do the window display, which is great fun when you're trying to undress a 6-foot mannequin whose tshirt has actually been pinned to it, but you don't realise that and all the passersby see you wrestling with it in the window and point and laugh. It's best to bring the mannequin back into the shop before you do that. And don't pretend to grope the lady-mannequin's boobs if one of your friends walks past and waves, because undoubtebly there'll be a conservative octegenarian couple walking past just at that second who will be offended.

I think that is all.
Oh yes. If you do volunteer, bringing donuts to work is always a good way to engratiate yourself with your coworkers.  

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