Writing for Fun
Captured - Jeanette Rothwell
April 2014
I once worked in a Charity shop. You wouldn't think that was the most exciting job in the world but it certainly had its moments. I volunteered to work there because I thought I would be doing something useful once I had got over the shock of retirement and not having to get up with the alarm every morning.
However, I digress; let me give you some idea of the work involved:
Monday mornings were the worse. Over the weekend, people had left plastic bags of every description outside the front door in spite of the notice on the door which states 'We are now closed, please don't leave your donations here, we open again at 9.00 am on Monday'
So, at the start of the week, the Manager, and any other volunteers, always struggled to get through the front door, pushing aside the heap of assorted plastic bags. The first job was to get this motley collection into some semblance of order. Sometimes I swore the bags contained somebody's recycling rubbish and they had left a bag of unwanted clothes for the dustman!
We also had to sort out the paperbacks and hard cover books. Do we display them by author or title? Some volunteers had their own ideas and the result was a complete mixture of dog-eared books in any order. Watching the customers trying to find their way around the library was a fascinating pass-time. Not wishing to sound too superior, I am convinced some of these volunteer salespeople had never read a book in their life and couldn't see the reason for putting them in some sort of order. Another volunteer and I tried to put them alphabetically by author, but it was a thankless task, so we gave up.
If somebody donates a load of videos, you have to watch a bit of them all to make sure it is indeed MARY POPPINS and not something a little more, er, personal, if you see what I mean. You do see life in the charity shop business, and not always the bits you were expecting.
Having tackled the sorting and confined some donations to the heap for the rag and bone man, we then took turns to steam the creases out of the clothes, hang them on hangers and price them. Of course, one had to examine them for their size and suitability for one's own wardrobe. There had to be some perks to the job.
You then stand behind the counter and people come in and give you money in exchange for second-hand goods. Occasionally they try to haggle over the price of things (It's a charity shop for goodness sake!). Our reply must be, 'The Manager makes those decisions and she is not available at the moment'. Mostly that meant that they accepted the trifling price and handed over the money.
Of course, one must make cooing noises about how much that shirt or skirt would definitely suit sir or madam (thinking, 'He must be colour blind!' or 'She is never a size 10 !').
On several occasions we encountered theft. How low can some people stoop? One young lady used to ask to try on various garments, enter the changing cubicle wearing a full length coat, and exit wearing the charity shop garments under her coat, leaving us to find her discarded ones hanging on the hook in the cubicle in their place. We eventually got wise to her and would carefully monitor her movements. She realised this and was never seen again.
Sometimes we would have people working in the shop who had committed some minor crime and were doing community service. This became difficult when needing some extra help in taking the money on the front counter. The Manager would be the judge and it was obvious that some of these offenders were only too willing to help and wouldn't have dreamed of taking any of the money for fear of further punishment. In fact, it was amazing how charming and helpful they could be and how sorry they were for their offence.
On quiet days, the Manager would fret if nobody had bought anything for about 40 minutes, and wonder why. She would speculate if it was the weather or if the window display was not quite right. A particularly artistic volunteer used to look after this display, deciding on a colour scheme for the week and using the best pieces from the shop to make a tasteful display.
Naturally, anything particularly attractive in the window would need to be shown to a potential customer and getting into the window to extract this object was always a delicate procedure. The customer would then, probably, reject it and you would have to climb back into the window to put it back exactly where it had been so as not to attract the wrath of our window dresser! I would always ask whichever one of us was the smallest to do this as it was all too easy to be like a bull in a china shops and disrupt the whole display.
Her delicate tissue paper sunflowers, colourful bunting or woolly yellow chicks, would always disintegrate or topple into the artistically thrown swathes of coloured material below, followed by a female dummy losing her blouse which had been pinned to fit, displaying a nude flesh coloured shapely dummy to the delight of passersby. (The male dummy had also been known to lose his trousers during one of these adventures, although he was wearing a Columbo style mac at the time and as male dummies go there was nothing to get worried about!)
We had one Assistant Manageress who used to complain about the window display and the layout of the charity shop in general by saying 'They think this is bleedin' Arrods!'
A Policewoman walked in on a particularly warm afternoon in July to warn us that there was an elderly gentleman who was making the rounds of the charity shops and stealing either any collection boxes from the counters or grabbing money from a till when it was opened. We thanked her for her warning and thought no more about it. Our collection box was chained to the counter and we were always careful not to leave the till open after giving change.
However, enter one elderly gentleman a few days later, neatly dressed, trimmed beard, even tanned face. I had forgotten about the Policewoman's warning. Did we have any Denby china, he asked.
'It's possible,' I said, 'I will have a look.' The till was closed and there was nobody else in the shop. The Manager was in the back room on the telephone. I searched the shelves of china, lifting some pieces to see if they were indeed 'Denby'. Mr Elderly Gentleman was idly looking at some shirts. Suddenly two teenage boys burst into the shop. 'Ere, Miss, do you 'ave any second-'and cameras?'
'Yes,' I said, 'we have several over there on the shelf by the CD's.' They both murmured, 'thanks,' and went over to have a look. I had stopped looking at Mr Elderly Gentleman. I then heard the rattle of money and turning to look in the direction of the sound, I beheld Mr E.G. tugging the collection box in order to wrest it from its anchorage. I rushed over towards the counter. By this time our Manager had emerged from the back room and got to the counter first. She swiftly slammed the collection box down on the man's hand and (much to my great amazement and with great presence of mind) I rushed to the front door, slammed it shut and turned the key in the lock.
Mr E.G. smiled at us both and protested that he was trying to make a donation. We gasped in amazement at his cheek. However, one of the teenage boys had witnessed the whole scene. He had a camera in his hand, not one of the ones we had for sale, I must add. 'It's OK' he said 'I captured him with my camera' and he showed us a picture of the thief trying to yank out the collection box. Meanwhile the Manager was phoning the Police.
Mr E.G. just looked like a pricked balloon. He sank into a nearby chair, covered his face with trembling hands and just stayed there until our intrepid Policewoman and a colleague arrived to take him away.
I was asked to make a statement but did not have to do any more than that because other shops had suffered from his thieving and the case against him was quite concrete.
However, the digital photograph which had captured his attempt at theft was shown in evidence.
The following day I was back to sorting old clothes, aiding the odd capture of a criminal, and other equally exciting pass-times.
I wonder why those boys wanted to buy another camera when they already had a good one? In the excitement, I forgot to ask.