Types of Charity shop customers
1. The thrifty shopper
Despite being in a charity shop, where almost everything is reasonably low in price, this person still tries to get more money off. One day a man came in the store and took two items into a changing room, a pair of jeans priced at £21 and a t-shirt priced at £5. 30 minutes later the man emerged from the cubicle and went to the checkout desk, he handed my boss the the pair of jeans and a price tag. He claimed that the price tag had fallen off while he was trying on the jeans. The price tag however read £5, as my boss had just priced the jeans she knew that the man had swapped the price tags. In the end the man didn’t get the pair of jeans as he was unwilling to pay the full price.
2. The disagreeing couple
This couple just doesn’t agree on anything, one wants to buy a beautiful 1970’s lamp whereas the other wants to buy the 3 for 2 CD’s, mostly by boy bands that no one has ever heard of. One day a couple came in during my shift and from the moment they stepped in they didn’t stop arguing. When the wife picked something up her husband would make a comment and when the husband picked something up his wife would make a comment. They ended up leaving the store empty handed, unsurprisingly.
3. The not so fancy, fancy dressed customer
This customer looks like they’re wearing fancy dress but really they’re not. One day a man came in store and he was wearing a lederhosen complete with a comically small hat. You could argue he was dressed for an Oktoberfest celebration, but I strongly doubt it as this was in August!
4. The colour decoder
After spending 1 hour organising all the clothes in the shop, into colour order, you get a feeling of great satisfaction. However this customer makes your job even harder. After spending 20 minutes organising the clothes you feel like everything's going great, enter the colour ‘decoder’. This customer at first is just browsing then they see you , innocently hanging clothes. Next thing you know this customer is right next to you looking at the new items you’ve put out. That’s not all though, this customer picks up the bright red sweater ,that you just hung with the other red clothes and puts it back with the blue clothes. Is it really that hard to put it back where you got it? Is it really that unclear where the red section is and wear the blue section is?
5. The over-familiar customer
This is the customer that comes to your shop so often that they know where everything is kept. This means that when you rearrange the shop layout, you’re ,flooded with questions from this customer. ‘ Where are the dvd’s? Oh and the board games... wait where are the men’s clothes?’ Each answer you give will then be questioned further- ‘ Why did you move the shoes, they were fine where they were.’
Despite all these things working in a charity shop is great and thank you to all the people who buy things, even if you fall into one of these categories!
- Ramandeep Srai, Waldegrave school for Girls
