Yesterday I was doing what I term as put off as long as you can errands. They were things I needed to do but were of no urgency so it was easy to allow them to languish.
One item on my list was stopping by Goodwill with two large trash bags full of clothes I finally admitted I was unlikely to wear again. They were casual clothes for the most part in good repair, but for various reasons, it was time to part with them.
It was almost six by the time I arrived at the closest Goodwill store. I pulled up to the donor dropoff and got the bags out of my car. It was around 95 degrees and very muggy. Unusually hot for this early in the summer. I saw a man working in a small intake room as I approached the open doorway.
There was no air conditioning in that small room. The man looked extremely tired. I imagined he had been there throughout the day, in the heat, probably lifting and sorting various items. I smiled at him as I entered the small room. He didn’t return my smile, instead, he sighed and greeted me in an exhausted, angry tone with a question. “ Do you know a word that rhymes with ash and starts with a T?” Puzzled by his question to me, I thought for only a second and answered with a question of my own. “ Trash?”
“Exactly! Do you have any idea what people bring in here?” “ No sir.” “ Well let me tell you!” He then proceeded to rattle off a list that surprised even me. I had often observed broken, dirty items people were *donating* when I dropped things off at Goodwill. It was obvious Goodwill couldn’t sell these things. They were not useful to anyone, other than inhabitants of a third-world country. And, I admit, I had occasionally wondered why people would dump, what was essentially, trash at Goodwill.
I concluded they were being lazy and cheap. And they were, literally, using Goodwill as though it was a trashcan. Years ago you could put virtually anything out to be picked up along with your regular household garbage and the city would collect it. Those days are long gone.
Everything is automated now. No longer do you see an assortment of trashcans on the curb twice a week. Now, the city issues regulation trash containers to each and all alike. Mechanical arms reach out from collection trucks and pluck containers full of discards into an empty-bodied truck until it reaches capacity and heads off to the landfill once each week.
No longer can you drag unwanted items, often in disrepair, to the curb. The city won’t pick them up. I believe there is a fee to collect things such as furniture, and that is done separately. There are some things you aren’t allowed to put out at all. Your only recourse is to pay someone to haul those items away or pay for a special permit that will allow you to.
So it’s easier and less expensive to dump them at Goodwill. It’s also insulting and dehumanizing. That’s what happened to the man who was working at the dropoff area when I arrived yesterday. He may not have realized it, but he had been made to feel as though he was trash himself by countless streams of individuals who dump their trash at Goodwill.
Some of the items he mentioned to me were vacuums that hadn’t been emptied. The dust cups were plainly full of dirt and debris they had collected from their own floors. People brought their own dirt to Goodwill because they were too lazy to empty it and wipe out the cup. I was forming images in my mind of what people who would do this might look like.
Next up, dirty clothes. He explained they had no washer and dryer. When they received clothes they needed to be clean and in good shape otherwise, they weren’t able to make them available for sale. But who would take dirty clothes to Goodwill? Many people, apparently.
The thing he mentioned that bothered me the most was the dirty box. He began this part of his story by saying he knew when he saw the man approaching exactly what was going to happen, and it unfolded just as he had foreseen. A man arrived with a box of items for donation. The box itself was cardboard, and filthy, full of leaves and cobwebs. In the box was an old vacuum. The vacuum was one fitting the description of those he had previously mentioned. It had a clear dust cup that was full of dirt. I suppose he was taking this all in within a matter of seconds, and sizing up the donor at the same time.
The donor put the box down in front of the man who was working and told him to take the things out of it, but to return the filthy box to him. As the man told me about this particular encounter he added that he knew the guy was going to tell him to return the nasty box to him as soon as he unloaded it. How did he know this? Probably because it had happened to him so many times before.
At this point, another donor arrived with several items so I said goodbye. I don’t know why the man at Goodwill unloaded his frustrations on me. It was alright that he did. I wasn’t in a hurry and realized he must have desperately needed to verbalize his anger, perhaps no one else was willing to listen. I’ve been thinking about him ever since I left the store.
How often do we overlook people such as the man at Goodwill? Probably frequently, because people like him are all too easy to overlook. The thing about those people is, that they matter just as much as the rest of us do. When people dump their personal dirt on them they are sending a message along with their *donations.*
What they are saying is, that you are unworthy. You aren’t worth me taking one minute to empty the dirt from my vacuum. Neither do you rate a few drops of Tide. Why should anyone waste their laundry detergent on things they are getting rid of? I have a feeling the main offenders aren’t Medium readers, so perhaps this story will be irrelevant. I decided to write it anyway.
If we all could slow down, even occasionally, maybe we could manage a smile for people like the man who works in the Goodwill intake room. Or spare a few minutes for someone who may very well have no one else willing to listen to them if they have to vent their anger and frustrations to a stranger.
Going forward I’m going to try harder to have smiles available for people I ordinarily don’t think too much about. A smile and a few minutes of your time send a message that totally negates the one the man at Goodwill usually receives. You can’t erase everything with one smile, but for just a minute you can convey that you care.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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