Having given up my job, got the work on the house under-way and recovered from the operation, I quickly got bored again. The obvious answer was to volunteer at a charity shop again. There are lots of charity shops in T so it was a question of which one to choose. Some of them seemed a bit posh or arranged their clothes by colour (which I find really irritating) or were in the wrong place so weren’t very busy or were for a charity I didn’t care about. That left the small, crowded, busy British Heart Foundation (BHF) on the High Street. Just my sort of place! So I went in and offered my services(!) and was accepted. This again meant filling in an application form and also going through an induction – mostly reading a folder of information.
I was initially asked to go in on a Wednesday, but that was soon changed to a Friday afternoon so that I could work on the till. This is actually quite a good time to be on the till, as it is usually quite busy. The best days are when it is sunny and the end of the month so people have just been paid! I think some people finish early on Fridays, so have time to trawl the shops.
After a while I discovered that Tuesday afternoons were rather short of people, so I started going then too. That is to work upstairs i.e. sorting the things that come in, putting tags on clothes and other “behind the scenes” activities. There is usually a lot of chat and I have great fun trying to wind up the manager, A. Don’t worry, she gets her own back!
It is interesting seeing the similarities and differences between the 2 charity shops where I have worked. Both have managers who are “characters”, but in different ways. The clothes and other items for sale are prepared in the same ways – sorting, putting on labels and hanging up clothes, steaming the clothes, pricing. The numbers of items put out each day is counted and there is a prescribed number. There is a target for the money to be raised each week – but in the first shop this was only for donated goods and in the second it is for everything. In the second shop they also have “van goods” collected from charity bags given out and collected from house to house collections, but in the first shop there were goods passed on from other shops. T is apparently too far from the other nearest shop for that to happen. In the second shop the labels and the code for the till have to show if they are donated goods or van goods. And there is also “gift aid”, where people who pay tax have donated goods and extra money can be claimed from the tax man if the goods are sold. These obviously have special labels with the unique gift aid code for each person so the money can be claimed – the joy of computerised tills!
In the first shop, the only paid staff were the manager and a lady who was in charge (and only paid for) Sundays. In the second shop there is a manager, an assistant manager and an assistant who are all paid. The last 2 are part time, with the last one mostly covering Sundays. There are more paid staff because they take more money!
In the first shop, the last thing I was taught to do was sorting the goods coming in, but that was the first thing in the second shop – probably because there is so much more, with all the van goods. Because I know my alphabet (!) I very often am asked to do gift aid – it involves finding the appropriate sheet from a filing cabinet with that person’s gift aid stickers to put on the labels. When I am feeling lazy/tired I beg to put labels on and hang up clothes – it is fairly mindless so can be done with little effort. A (the manager) put me on pricing bric-a-brac the other day as she thought I might like a change, but I hated it so much that I really complained and (pretended to) threaten to walk out. She has taken the hint and I have not been asked to do it again!
I have made sure that I have not taken so much responsibility in this shop and that I am not available to call on at any time. I actually haven’t learned to do all the things there are to do and don’t do steaming (I don’t like that much either and am very slow) or pricing.
Would I recommend it? Probably, but it is not for any one who doesn’t like handling second-hand clothes! I enjoy it, especially the contact with customers, staff and volunteers.