A new Community Service worker started doing his court-ordered hours at the store yesterday. As a non-profit, we host these "volunteers" pretty regularly.
Often they work other jobs during the week and can only get their hours in on Saturdays. This guy was telling Manageress that's the case with him.
"And it's my first job too," he said. "I never had a job before."
(He looks like he's about thirty.)
"Oh, why is that?" Manageress asked.
"Selling drugs," he said.
"That's all behind you now, right?"
"Yes, ma'am."
This sort of conversation is more or less normal in the world around the store.
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Another find at the store:
Royal Worcester square salad/dessert plates.
From what I could find online, they're hand-painted enamel, porcelain plates, c. 1930s.
The little orangey dots in the center are raised.
So I got the four.
I'll be serving bink scones on them this Sunday morning.
$1.99 each--another off-the-mark estimate on the part of the Housewares crew.
Yesterday Ass't Man stopped by the store with his little girl, who is almost the same age as Penny Cooper. (Penny is eight and a half.) They were just there to pick something up.
I was showing the plates to Ass't Man, and his daughter was just as attracted to them as the dolls were!
"Would you like to have one?" I asked. "They would look nice with cake."
And she did, so I gave her one.
(Wouldn't it be fun to have a parent working in thrift?)
The price was way too low, and likely some thrift shopper would know that.
But, in fact, I can imagine them not selling at the store at all. We are not the target market.
I used to sell stuff for the store on eBay, but it takes too much time, and most things do sell in-house.
Big Boss brought in some guy who lists stuff online for thrift stores, to talk with us.
I was going to meet with them too, but it was the day after I got the Covid shot.
Ass't Man went to the meeting.
He said the service wouldn't save us much work:
we'd still have to research and write original listings for things that aren't bar-coded. (Royal Worcester is not bar coded.) And house and ship the stuff.
All that, not the listing, is the laborious part.
It's not a bad idea, but also, we have no staff to do it. It's not just staff hours, it's staff expertise.
Obviously our HouseWares dept. misses a lot of valuable stuff.
I'd been worried Big Boss would insist we do this--but Ass't Man said he saw the problems too.
We'd do better selling drugs!
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