Just another manic Monday..

This job can be very labour intensive. I don’t mean digging a trench or building a wall (although sometimes I feel like climbing up one), you need, surprisingly a high level of fitness and mental alertness.

All day you are receiving peoples goods (donations), carrying them from cars into the back room and sometimes they are extremely heavy boxes full of breakables and my knees often wobble and I imagine the horror of dropping their tea sets and Royal wedding commemorative cups they have spent the past 4 hours wrapping up in last weeks newspaper. Then sorting, pricing, displaying and selling back to the public.

We get humongous boxes of books, ornaments, black carriers that weigh a ton –sorting the bad from the good and all this needs processing daily all day to keep it tidy, safe and to maintain maximum income. It’s not easy and many volunteers will tell you this is true because when they first start if they haven’t worked in the charity retail sector before are often very surprised and at how much needs to be done.

Because in larger stores, especially department stores stock is brought in usually pressed, sorted, priced and a plan of where it should go. This all has to be done manually and by scratch by a small team of sometimes inexperienced staff members which is why team work, co-operation and a flair are all essential parts of the job. Although anyone can apply and are welcome to work in this shop there are jobs for everyone at every level of competency. Trust me. I know these things.

Today is Monday and Mondays can be a bit manic “Just another manic Monday” which echoes in my brain all day. After the weekend lots of people have been having a “clear out” so they tell me, or “a neighbour has given me this bag I don’t know what’s in it” well did they specify they wanted it to go to charity, is it their shopping?

Who knows because at times bags are left in the shop and nobody seems to be near it and we have waltzed up to it and taken it into the back and its someone’s groceries. Once a very nice lady took of her shoes off to try some boots in the changing room and in the meantime a volunteer took her shoes and ragged them, that was very embarrassing. Obviously obliviously and she didn’t want the shoes back she bought the new ones. You daren’t take your coat off in our shop before you know it, it’ll be steamed, ticketed priced and sold or worse ragged by an overzealous member of staff.

The other week we had some little miniatures donated in, like porcelain. They were replicas of buildings in Amsterdam, these little bottles at first glance are just nice little ornaments for your mantelpiece but on further inspection and much to my delight they are filled with WHISKY! And we have four of them. Fantastic. So kitsch. One of our head office team have investigated and discovered they're individual value -new at about £15 each which is good going, we should get around £5-8 for each. They are numbered on the bottom, stamped, quite heavy and in perfect condition; here is a photo of one of them.

They are called 'KLM Delfts Porcelain House Miniature'.

Apparently Whisky gets better with age (so I’ve heard) so I don’t know how old these are but what a novelty for a Whisky/Porcelain lover. Please note they are sealed and I don’t intend opening or selling to age of under 18. (We are subject to the same rules, laws and regulations on sales of knives, age restriction VHS/DVD and alcohol.)