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I donated some spindles of burned media and programs to Salvation Army expecting they'd throw 'em out. They're selling 'em for $3.
(media.kbin.social)
this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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Value village is Walmart.
They don't come any shittier than that company wise.
So, I'm not trying to be the "ackshually" guy.
Value Village isn't owned by Walmart.
Buuuut, you're still right. They're absolutely a shit company. I was an assistant supervisor at Value Village a couple of decades ago. First, they're 100% for profit but advertise in such a way that consumers believe they're a charity. What they do is buy donations from charities by the pound. Any donations accepted at the store on behalf of a charity are paid at a drastically reduced rate, so of course they push HARD for customers to bring donations directly to the store.
The shit cherry on top was the stores lying to charities about the quality of received goods to avoid paying. If clothes, for example, were soiled, they'd refuse to pay for the entire batch. Stores would find a few dirty shirts, claim the entire cart was crap, claw the money back, and sell the rest of the cart.
The company makes a HUGE profit but pays their employees peanuts. Our head cashier had worked for the company for eight years and capped out at $7.25/hour in 2003, about $14 today. One year, they announced no raises, no reason given. My then girlfriend and I discovered the owners had purchased a cabin in Northern California for use by the c-suite douches. The store manager was pulling in $60k a year, plus bonus, in a very low cost of living area. Me? $8.25 per hour.
What else? They incentivize under staffing by making a supervisor's paltry bonuses tied to their staffing budget. Staying at budget meant no bonus. They had to come in under budget for any bonus, and the more "savings" the higher the bonus. I got chewed out when I first started scheduling because I used all the hours allotted in the budget. The store went from a shit hole to being fairly respectable but it would eat into my boss's bonus. Her maximum annual bonus? $2.5k.
So they may not be owned by Walmart, but they're the Walmart of thrift stores. Fuck those guys.
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!
Thanks for straightening that up, my bad.
No no, you really weren't off base. Even if they were owned by Walmart, I doubt they could do worse.