There is usually a period of time in a person’s life where they have to watch every fraction of a penny that they spend.
For some of us this means that we have to go to resale shops to buy certain items. In my early twenties, I had a small one-bedroom apartment that I furnished entirely with things that I bought at a Goodwill store.
Basically everything but the mattress. Hell, even work clothes that I knew were going to get destroyed I got from Goodwill.
It is a great resource for people who are trying to stay within their means while at the same time need certain things. In the days before flat-screen televisions you cold go there and get a television for relatively cheap.
There are some drawbacks to shopping at Goodwill though.
If something breaks or falls apart five minutes after you get it home, you really don’t have much of a recourse in terms of a warranty.
I had a TV once start smoking on me when I plugged it in and it took some pretty good negotiating from them to give me my money back.
It seems that even the employees of Goodwill are finally speaking up that the business isn’t as perfect as its charitable intentions are made out to be.
A recent series of anonymous interviews revealed some pretty insane things about what goes on that the customers don’t see.
For example, one employee intimated that the store doesn’t wash any of the clothing that gets donated. Which means that chances are it is going to be sold as funky as the day they got it.
It also means that there might be the off chance that someone who didn’t wear underwear the last time that they donated something to Goodwill is going to have, well…remnants of whatever was left over after the last time they used the restroom.
The point is, you should wash any clothing you get before you wear it anyway. It’s one thing when something has been sitting in a department store that’s cleaned regularly.
When you buy something that has been used, and sitting in a big room with other used stuff, that’s just asking to get sick.
