Yikes! I’ve never thought they were a charity. It’s always been pretty clear to me that they’re a for-profit business, but I wasn’t aware of all those shitty policies. As a shopper, they have a lot of great stuff for dirt cheap. I got a $1000 amp there once for $45. Similar deals all over my house. Oh, we got a $4500 high quality 6 person dining table for 40 bucks, and four chairs worth $600 each for 12 bucks a pop.
The thing about them is their low wages and reluctance to train their employees meant high-end goods were often priced very low. Levi’s jeans were $10-15 a pair while designer jeans were priced at $5. I recall someone donating a batch of Hermés scarves. None of the pricers knew the brand, so they put them out for $1 each. I bought them all for 50% off (employee discount!) and hit eBay. This kind of thing happened weekly so the employees were always looking for things we could resell. We made less than $20k/year, that’s how we scraped by!
I’m not sure how other stores are, but mine was a great example of being a penny wise and a pound foolish.
Oh I forgot all about that. My wife got a Hermes leather wallet that cost $2,600 for like $5. It’s awesome when the employees don’t know what they’re pricing. Haha. We used to sell stuff from yard sales on eBay back when the 08 crash happened, and after we moved here we both noted how we could have been doing really well for ourselves if we had access to VV back then. We lived in a city where the thrift store was basically just a garbage dump though, so that didn’t happen.
It’s unfortunate that they have such shitty employee policies, because we really love what the store itself has to offer. Heck, it’s so good that Macklemore wrote a hit song about it!
Yikes! I’ve never thought they were a charity. It’s always been pretty clear to me that they’re a for-profit business, but I wasn’t aware of all those shitty policies. As a shopper, they have a lot of great stuff for dirt cheap. I got a $1000 amp there once for $45. Similar deals all over my house. Oh, we got a $4500 high quality 6 person dining table for 40 bucks, and four chairs worth $600 each for 12 bucks a pop.
That’s great, I’m glad you got some deals!
The thing about them is their low wages and reluctance to train their employees meant high-end goods were often priced very low. Levi’s jeans were $10-15 a pair while designer jeans were priced at $5. I recall someone donating a batch of Hermés scarves. None of the pricers knew the brand, so they put them out for $1 each. I bought them all for 50% off (employee discount!) and hit eBay. This kind of thing happened weekly so the employees were always looking for things we could resell. We made less than $20k/year, that’s how we scraped by!
I’m not sure how other stores are, but mine was a great example of being a penny wise and a pound foolish.
Oh I forgot all about that. My wife got a Hermes leather wallet that cost $2,600 for like $5. It’s awesome when the employees don’t know what they’re pricing. Haha. We used to sell stuff from yard sales on eBay back when the 08 crash happened, and after we moved here we both noted how we could have been doing really well for ourselves if we had access to VV back then. We lived in a city where the thrift store was basically just a garbage dump though, so that didn’t happen.
It’s unfortunate that they have such shitty employee policies, because we really love what the store itself has to offer. Heck, it’s so good that Macklemore wrote a hit song about it!