Once a week I volunteer at a thrift shop whose income supports a social service agency in my small city and surrounding towns. The shop is wildly successful, with young people doing just about everything—taking in donations, pricing them, designing the sales floors (and changing the design and layout regularly), and holding sales when customers sweep in and come close to cleaning the place out. We are famous for our quality and variety and prices. My job is to put things out on the floor—to hang up clothes in appropriate sections and distribute items among the various divisions such as apparel, house wares, kitchen, home decor, crafts.
I’ve never worked retail before so this is a new experience for me. Just keeping up with the broad range of customers is a challenge. One person will examine an LL Bean jacket with attention to the seams and pockets, and another will pull out a T-shirt and frown at the color but throw it into their cart without further consideration. Sometimes the floor under a rack is littered with tops that refuse to stay on the hangers (thanks to the poor style of the designer), and I spend half my time rehanging things.
Items for housewares are lots of fun because I get to rearrange parts of a table to fit in something. I’ve never considered myself artistic in the design area but I surprise myself sometimes. When I return half an hour later to add to the cluster of knickknacks the one I put out is already gone. Confused, thinking I’m in the wrong spot, I spend a few seconds looking for it until I recognize that this is Bootstraps and few items last very long. Things are snatched up sometimes while I’m still appraising the location I’ve chosen for it.
But the best part are the people. Like most writers, I live in my head. I research for the current WIP, then disappear to that desk piled high with notes and books and a dictionary, hiding out from the world. Even when I’m out doing errands, I’m still in my WIP and the people I pass in the grocery store or on the street don’t hold my attention. But that’s not true at the thrift shop. This is where I learn what I’ve missed in real life, where I find the tiny fillips that bring a character to life.
A well-dressed man with a younger couple, male and female and physically smaller, are inspecting a jacket still on its hanger. I hear a little sound, like a foot scraping on the floor, though barely that loud, and keep walking past them. Another sound like a grunt and I turn to see the larger man looking at me. I ask if he needs help. He nods. Apparently both sounds were acceptable parts of conversation in his world and expected to get my attention, but I failed to respond appropriately. Communication reduced to its essentials.
Then there’s the woman who pulls a T-shirt off the rack and studies it as she follows me around the store until she finally asks if there are any more like it. I have no idea because I have no idea where she got it: from the $6 and $8 racks or the Boutique, or the Fresh Fits, which are a step below Boutique but above the discount racks. I go to work to track it down.
Another favorite is the petite woman in jeans, sweater, and sneakers who leans over the glass counter for the jewelry display studying each piece, her hands pressing on her thighs, until she gets really interested and rests her arm on the glass and peers down. She asks to see two pieces—a bracelet and a ring, which I pull out for her. She pulls out a loupe and studies the ring, then carefully replaces it on the glass counter. She handles the bracelet, turning it over in her fingers, holding it up, peering at it. “I found a nice bracelet here last month and sold it on eBay for $80. Sort of like this one.” Considering our pricing for most of the jewelry, she probably made about $60. She’s one of many who have found the thrift shop a lucrative source of income. Sometimes the managers even help them find something that might be rewarding.
Of course there is always the man or woman who wants the microwave, which works, for less than the $25 price tag, and decides she can do better elsewhere. Someone wants forks, but we don’t have any this week. They go fast. Spoons, no, knives, no. Forks, yes. Few people want all the glass we get, even though some of it is exceptionally fine. It eventually goes out onto the sidewalk in a cardboard box as a freebie, where it’s picked over but not taken.
Some people I see every week, and they pick through the new items in the carriage I’m pushing from table to table. The sign on the carriage asks them not to shop from the carriage, but we know how effective such signage is.
Once in a while I’ll spot a new volunteer walking around with a few items in her hands muttering I don’t know where to put this. I told one, “Put it anywhere. When I come in again, I’ll put it where I think it belongs.” A smile. Done.
Any place that puts human nature, personality quirks and all, on display is “home” to a writer. I’m typing this on Monday. This afternoon I head off to my “other home.”
