In our last post, we covered the unbelievable things that escape the back room somehow. Today, let's look at the other foot. What is okay to put out, when "less than perfect." What got me going on this was an incident where I found some perfectly good girls jeans stuck in the cast off bag.
"What's wrong with these?"
"There was dirty underwear in the bag they were in."
(Uh, no there wasn't. That bag came from my house, and I loaded it directly from stuff that had just come out of the dryer. Now there might have been some stained clean underwear stuck inside a pair of pants that laundry man missed, but stained and clean is worlds different than dirty...but that's off topic. The point is, there was some horrible underwear related error.)
"Okay, but what was wrong with these?"
"Nothing."
"Then we need to hang them up. We can't just toss stuff because of what was around it."
(I would have gone back and rescued the scooters too, but I could tell we had hit this person's shock limit already. I bought those flippin things NEW.)
"How long have you been a chair?"
"Since last October."
"Okay."
Remember, I am the one who found the stained thong out on the display floor! I am sympathetic to the eww moments of used underwear. I folded up that t-shirt and put it back on the table. Our clients are shrewd. They will wash before they wear.
That followed one of our regulars bringing me some "but they're perfectly good jackets" with stains. We kept two, (one I couldn't even FIND what she was talking about. The other was totally in a
"discreet" location) set aside one for laundering (which I forgot to bring home), and pitched two (you don't want to know. shiver.)
Hitting both these extremes in one day made me think perhaps the standards need to be further clarified.
So for the shoe on the other foot rules...it's pretty simple.
1) Clothes, like people have to be judged on their own merits. One icky item in a bag doesn't mean pitch the whole bag.
2) Gently used is not the same thing as "new." Missing tags, slight fading, stretching,etc. is okay. Really. It adds character. We will happily accept donations of new/my kid didn't like it items though!
3) When deciding if a spot is "bad enough" to put something that is otherwise okay into the castoffs, origins and location are key. Small ink stain towards the bottom of a blouse that can be tucked in? No big deal. Stains of bodily origin, (sweat marks, pet marks,etc.) Pitch it. Paint? Pitch it. Slightly mud stained knees? Let the mom decide how desperate her kid is for jeans.
4) There is bargain brand detergent clean and laundry whiz clean. They both are clean.
5) There is an inverse relationship between the demand for an item and the condition we will accept it in.
This applies to brand names as well as particular types of items.
I am absolutely ruthless about screening adult t-shirts. We get bajillions. It takes some serious nastiness to get me to pitch a pair of kids pants.
This is because the center always has an excess of t-shirts and a shortage of pants. I will deal with holey knees, slight fraying at the bottom, and colors that have faded a hue or two. Sure we still get rid of some. Anything so short that unshaved pubic hair might be visible, or has holes in personal places.
The point is though, when we have a tough time acquiring inventory, then standards are sometimes stretched a bit. The same principles apply to kids tennis shoes. If a pair has unfrayed laces and soles that aren't cracked or floppy, they probably won't see the yellow bag of doom...scuffed toes or not.
No comments:
Post a Comment