When I applied for the job as manager of a charity shop, I imagined tea, biscuits, looking after the elderly and standing behind the till with a change pot under the counter repeating, ‘That’s 10p dear’ all day long.
I was in for a shock. The elderly are demanding. They demand tea, coffee, and biscuits constantly, and it is my duty, as shop manager to provide. No sooner as I spend out of coffee, the loo roll runs out. I am putting on a jolly smile while fretting about how to keep expenses under a reasonable maximum.
The customers are demanding. They simply can’t understand why you do not have what they want. You try to explain to them that you are a charity shop, and that you can only stock what comes in, but they continue to dodge you as they try to take a peep into the hidden wonders of the ‘backroom’, convinced that you are hiding something from them.
We have some wonderful, and valued, regular customers. I would like to take the opportunity to thank them. However I must point out, that as much as we like to work for charity, we do not stay all night. I see so many customers waiting longingly outside the door first thing, waiting to see the new stock, which we put out over night while we dress as nocturnal animals.
I must admit that there is a certain allure to the mystery of the ‘backroom’. Whenever I have been a customer myself, I have often caught a glimpse of some wonderful article, which is not yet on sale. But I can assure everyone that this is simply not the case. When you pick out that fabulous fabric from the rail, it is probably some hideous costume outfit that has not even been used in stage performances since the turn of the last century.
The remaining articles most likely consist of wedding dresses, with half of the bride’s dinner down the front where they couldn’t afford the dry cleaning as they had already spent their entire life savings prior to the wedding, or any other article that has yet to sell on the shop floor, hence not allowing room for fill ups.
Where we get our stock from is of no question. People kindly wash and launder their unwanted clothes, then kindly bring them into us or leave them out for our bag collector. I can remember one couple parking their car outside and literally scooping out armfuls of screwed up items. They nearly dumped them on the serving counter, before I urgently redirected them to the wonders of the ’backroom’. Lucky them. They threw each armful down on to the sorting table, absent of even one black bag, before admitting, ‘We were going to take it to the dump but of course it’s closed today isn’t it’.
Some of the bags we collect from our bag drop are so poor that it often makes me wonder if they put out the wrong bag. I feel sorry as imagine all the worn-once Monsoon dresses going into landfill. Either that or there are some people who do indeed find uses for empty yogurt pots. Perhaps they think we are so desperate that we may appreciate the teaspoonful that is yet to scrape out if we so tried.
I opened a bag recently that contained a canvass shopping bag bearing the images of cats, with quotes underneath each picture. I thought to myself, ‘Oh no, this one’s a cat-lover…’ One quote, apparently by Ellen Perry Berkley read, ‘What every cat owner knows is that no one owns a cat’
What every cat owner doesn’t know is that they stink of cat. I picked out the best from the bag, stood back and sprayed from a safe distance. Thank you Fabreeze.
Cat people are particularly peculiar. We had a lady who came in a while back, and I served her while I was on my own, ears half alert to her mumbling life story. She started to tell me why she had not been in to buy her skirt first thing this morning as she had to get to Sainsbury’s as they had a wonderful offer on the cat food. Now, I could have sworn to God that she said that it was ‘lovely in sandwiches’.
My ears pricked at this bizarre statement and I started to wonder if I was going quite off my rocker. I said, ‘Really?’ and she replied, ‘No, no it is’. This alone was not quite enough to confirm whether or not it was her or me that was completely barking. Or should I say mewing. So I asked her, ‘Do you have cats do you?’
‘Yes’ she said, ‘I have 9 cats’. Yep. It is definitely her.
We’ve a wonderful old lady called Gloria who works very hard indeed for us. There’s only one problem, well a couple of problems actually, the first being her lack of fashion expertise. She holds up a pre-faded ‘Fat Face’ hoodie and wrinkles up her nose in disgust. I over-hear her muttering, ‘such a shame’ as I catch a glimpse of the £85.00 price tag as she lobs it in the rag bag. I also caught her with a Topshop sequined vest top which I only noticed because I’m sure I’d only seen it in Topshop a few days earlier. She mumbled, ‘old fashioned’ to herself as this invariably was thrown to the same fate.
Her second habit becomes apparent as we have strict guidelines on what we are and are not allowed to legally sell in our shop due to health and safety. Talking about health and safety, no, I’ll go onto that later. Gloria can’t bear to throw the little cuddly toys away that do not bear the relevant CE label. (Or should that be that she can’t bear to thrown away the bears that do not bear the relevant CE label.) She hugs them close to her heart and rubs her nose in their nylon fur. I often hear her say, ‘Oh but looook, how could you’. I go for a good hunt around at the end of the day and find them stashed in all sorts of unlikely places. When I’m tidying by myself after dark in the depths of the winter months, the little glassy eyed monsters leap out at me from under the kitchen sink.
We have another dear lady called Betty, and watching the two of them together is really quite charming and amusing. The fashion for uneven hem lines on baggy vest tops baffled Betty completely. She said, ‘Oh my word, this looks ever so tatty and out of shape.’ She held up the hem and exclaimed, ‘what on earth has happed? Got caught in the wash I imagine’.
The winning bag so far has to be the sex-o-mania bag. This one opened up to reveal a pair of nipple clamps, four explicit videos, lots of saucy undies and two rampant rabbits. Gloria started out of habit, to rummage around for her little battery box that she keeps under the table, before I stopped her and reminded her that it was irrelevant whether they worked or not, we were not putting them out.
I have become accustomed slowly to nearly all things second hand, but there are some things that I draw the line at. Vibrators being one of them. Knickers being another. I also bear a slight suspicion towards towels, toothbrushes and mattresses.
You’ll be amazed at what people buy however. When I had to serve a young couple the ‘Make you sex life work for you’ book, which incidentally came from the same bag, I’m not sure who it was more embarrassing for. When they asked for a bag I told them that it was charity policy not to supply bags and I was afraid that they would have to just walk down the street carrying it. It’s good to have a laugh sometimes. You can’t have a job where you cannot laugh.
Geogger 
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