Shopping Disappointment

[Pipersson]

But should the Salvation Army not try to make people happy...;-)

[Chas]

I don't know about anywhere else, but in the UK, charity shops are seen as an easy target for shoplifters. The logic is that the stock has cost the charity nothing, so if it is stolen there is no loss. One general method is for one person to rip off the tags and a second person try to buy for a lower price. To combat this most charity shops operate a policy of removing the goods from sale and then re-tagging and re-selling on a different date or a different shop. Most of the big charities operate that policy here. There is usually a sign behind the till saying so. Makes it easy for the till staff then to say "Sorry, can't do that - the sign says no". Till staff generally are not allowed to change prices - it takes a manager to do that.

Regards

Chas

[ScotFree]

Well I did speak to a manager for that very reason. I certainly didn't take my frustration out on the poor cashier. However, the saga continues, and the truth comes to light. The manager in question saw an opportunity to snag the jacket for himself. One of the ladies that work there remembered my being in there yesterday, and told me on the sly that said manager bought it himself and took it home last night. Just eyeballing the dude, we looked about the same size so its totally believable. I guess I've been had so to speak.

[David Thorpe]

Such a shame. I doubt that he appreciates the rarity of a jacket which can be readily converted into a kilt jacket.

Keep up the quest!

[ScotFree]

Such a shame. I doubt that he appreciates the rarity of a jacket which can be readily converted into a kilt jacket.

Keep up the quest!

Nor do I think he cares. But clearly he is no gentleman.

[Spartan Tartan]

Well I did speak to a manager for that very reason. I certainly didn't take my frustration out on the poor cashier. However, the saga continues, and the truth comes to light. The manager in question saw an opportunity to snag the jacket for himself. One of the ladies that work there remembered my being in there yesterday, and told me on the sly that said manager bought it himself and took it home last night. Just eyeballing the dude, we looked about the same size so its totally believable. I guess I've been had so to speak.

Truly disappointing, indeed. I am sorry that the manager seems to have been somewhat of a rat, but then again...perhaps he very much knows what a great kilt jacket conversion it would be and snagged it for just that reason!

[Java]

Lest there be any doubt, what the manager did was very much against the rules. On top of that, although the cashier was just doing what she had to do (the others were mostly correct about those rules) when you offered what was obviously too much for the jacket, the manager should have sold it to you. It's a shame that things like this give the store and others like it (including mine) a bad name. If you were in a little town like mine, where my wife and I are the only officers, and oversee the church, the store, the social services, etc, it would be easy to know who to get in touch with. But, with you being so close to the "big city", it's probably overseen from a central location in Chicago. I hate that this happened to you. I have to admit I shop our jacket rack too, but haven't found anything in the year I've been here. Even if I did, if a customer wanted it, he would get it. This kind of store cannot afford the reputation that the employees "get all the good stuff."

[David Thorpe]

That manager has a boss. It might be worth finding him or her and having a conversation.

[Father Bill]

I hope you're not right about that Fr Bill.
Management not being allowed to make decisions because their employees won't be able to follow their example?
That is why managers are (or should be) there. They can make the decisions that the employee can't and shouldn't be making.
This seems to me a case of a manager who shouldn't be in the position he's in.

That may indeed be the case, but in many thrift shop situations, the rules are extremely rigid only because they're designed not only as a source for the public but more and also, to teach and give succour to handicapped staff who may have little or no vocational or cognitive skill. Some of those are individuals who simply cannot handle variation, even if it is made by their leaders, and it can cause some very real emotional breakdowns for some of them.

We need to remember that some (and admittedly not all) thrift shops have two products: the items on the shelves, and the emotional/ social/ vocational lives of their clients who work and learn there at the same time as we go shopping. It's something with which I had a very close connection for 25+ years, and while I know that often this is not the situation, it sometimes is, and that's why I mention it as one possibility.

Should the manager have another way of dealing with it? Of course... but s/he may not, and while that may not meet our extremely unusual and unique needs, it may on the other hand, meet the extremely and unusual needs of handicapped staff.

Making people happy has many facets - us (the customer with a need for a jacket conversion that nobody there has ever imagined or could understand) and in cases such as I've tried in a few words to describe, the client-staff whose quality of life may be hung on slender threads because of challenges and horrors that we could never imagine, and for whose absence in our lives we should be giving humble thanks.

Things are rarely as simple as they seem!

[James Hood]

'Personally maintain and (successfully, praise and thanks be), raised our children with continual repitition of this writer's...

..."Rule # 1."

"LIFE AIN'T FAIR"

Which is why our three had to drive beater cars and attend state universities and the commodity broker across the street's four children each got a brand new car for their 16th birthday and attended prestigious colleges.

Rule #1 is also why our sprogs woke up healthy and complete, living in a loving home in a demi-affluent suburb in the USA and MANY other kids woke up in Rwanda fearing for their lives or in Afghanistan, fearing having their legs blown off by a land mine while playing or in inner cities without an intact family, exposed to gang violence...

...or having been born "incomplete" or with a horrific disease...

...because Life Ain't Fair.

Sympathies with the initiator of this thread; 'hope the "sleazy-lite" manager of the thrift store enjoys YOUR jacket. Best of fortune in finding an even better one. Suggestion, don't report him; he has his own life issues to deal with.