A couple of years ago I was living in a small town in Michigan where I made regular trips to the local Goodwill As-Is. I love a bargain, and it reminded me of hometown, Portland, Oregon. The Adrian Goodwill As-Is displayed their goods heaped up in piles atop big wooden bins, just like home, and there was an abundance of dirty, crappy stuff that no one else really wanted with one or two cool things thrown in for good measure, just like home. Unlike Portland, they priced things by the piece instead of by the pound, so, $.25 for a pair of pants, $.50 for shoes, $.75 for an overcoat, etc., but it was still wicked cheap, obviously, so I wasn't complaining.
One day while I was shopping I overheard the staff say something about going to a by-the-pound system. I butted in: "that's the way they do it where I'm from!" They were extremely interested and told me that my Goodwill was a model for Goodwills all over the country and they were trying to adopt its practices.
When I eventally returned home to Portland, I found out why. Prices at the Goodwill had spiraled out of control! Even at the bins (or the As-Is, or the "Outlet" as they are now calling it) was charging $1.29 a pound! The regular first-run Goodwills had adopted a cheap department store look, and replacd the popcorn and hotdog counter with an espresso stand. I don't like change on general principals, and I definitely didn't approve of any of these updates. But the real downside struck home when I saw a man, whom I'd originally noticed in the parking lot getting out of a live/drive car in the parking lot, bring a pair of workboots up to the counter to ask the price. After he was told they were $5.00 he tossed them back in a bin in disgust. It did seem a ridiculous price for a pair of shitty old worn out workboots and I thought to myself, "what a betrayal of Goodwill principals!" My sense of outrage inspired regular, ranting barstool lectures to friends and family. My aunt was so pissed about the high prices at Goodwill that she took to shoplifting some small item on each trip, wearing a hat or scarf out of the place.
Goodwill was a big part of my life growning up. As a kid, I thought of the Goodwill as a generous source of cheap goods for poor people that only incidentally employed retards and cripples as a thoughtful source cheap labor to keep the prices down for us poor folk. (Goodwill also employed at least one able bodied member of the family who took advantage of his position by picking extra nice goodies from the donation box to bring home to us. It was a form of graft, but it all seemed within the spirit of things.) I thought of the Goodwill as a cornicopia of all that was good and fun, where you could go and buy anything you wanted -- and many things you didn't. I still have dreams inspired largely by the freedom that the Goodwill made me feel. At the old Goodwill, they didn't even have shopping carts, so you'd find a cardboard box or suitcase, attach an old tie or belt to it and drag it around on the ground after you. You'd load that box up with as many items as your heart desired and leave with big garbage bags full of goodies (or baddies -- who cared?). You didn't worry too much about what fit or not because you could always give it back; it was all part of the great cycle of consumption.
Then, in the context of what I came to understand about the history of American consumer culture, I saw Goodwill as a potential source of empowerment for poor people: a chance to excercise the buying power that the world otherwise denied them, but valued so highly. And unlike charity, there could be no coercive pressure to reform. I also saw it somewhat more insidiously as a gateway drug for a consumer's high. As a someone without much money, you could still be introduced to the thrills of unfettered consumption -- practice for later days when you might actually have some money (and maybe an incentive to make it).
After some research I realized that my disappointment in Goodwill came from a profound misunderstanding of its mission. The historical mission of Goodwill Industries rests more on ideals about production than consumption. Our local Goodwill aims to "provide vocational opportunities to people with barriers to employment;" the national Goodwill says, "We at Goodwill Industries will be satisfied only when every person in the global community has the opportunity to achieve his/her fullest potential as an individual and to participate and contribute fully in all aspects of a productive life."
I have mixed feelings about this emphasis on production rather than consumption. Historians tell us that in the early/mid-20th century American workers made a compromise with capitalists under the new industrial economy: they accepted relatively boring, non-automomous, and alientating working conditions in exchange for more time off, and increased wages which gave them greater buying power under what one historican has called the Consumers' Republic. In this narrative, Americans went from skilled producers to deskilled consumers, a bargain that wasn't without sacrifice, but I think we can all agree that consumer culture is not without pleasure: certainly even the gnarliest thrift-store shopping trip is more fun than grinding away as a receptionist, drill press operator, or sock assembler. On the other hand, many groups today (particularly Canadians, for some reason) have rejected consumption as a basis for identity and ask us to find something more meaningful to hold on to. I don't think they mean work, but for all of us, there something more noble in general about the idea of identifying with what we make, than what we buy.
But I don't know that there's much nobility in the work that Goodwill offers. When I found out that Goodwill has a temp agency, the prospect of a cruel and innapropriate comedy skit immediately came to mind: Scene: boardroom full of high-powered executives, "We need this report out by Monday but we just don't have the manpower to crunch all that data!" Guy in suit: "Let's call in a temp!" Next scene: receptionist's desk at snazzy office interior. Guy who looks and talks like he has Downs Syndrome or something introduces himself: "Hi, I'm the temp. Will you be my friend?" Stressed out executive rushes out, "Great! we need you to start in on this report pronto!" Hilarity ensues as Temp fails to understand instructions, wants to be everyone's friend, hugs people at inappropriate times, etc. The Goodwill Temp could be a series (or at least a running joke on SNL).
Goodwill sees itself as offering a low-stakes chance to learn about the displine of the workforce. The Goodwill temp agency in Southern Oregon, for instance, is called, "Willpower," and Goodwill brags that it teaches such "soft skills" as "time management, dependability, problem solving and customer service.", not to mention appropriate dress. All of this would be easier to take if it weren't for the additional fact that the Oregon Department of Justice has been auditing Goodwill because its CEO is so highly compensated for a non-profit. I don't know that I think non-profit executives should make less than regular ones -- they all make too much! Still, the move from selling poor folks junky things at a low price to gouging folks of all kinds for crappy things so that you can give poor people their money back in the form of charity with lots of strings attached just seems naturally regressive. Personally, I've been trying to just plain give away more stuff for free to avoid the whole issue.
I'm petering out here -- what began as an energetic barstool rant has trickled to a overworked blog entry; I now have too much information to be truly irate or articulate (or maybe I just need to drink more beer while blogging). I've been learning about the value of the polemic from reading, Against Love: A Polemic, but I lack the ability to suspend uncertaintly to carry it off. I guess my point in a nutshell is, I miss the days when I was able to enjoy Goodwill as a training ground for unfettered consumption even if I am politically suspicious of consumption as a skill to be learned, and in theory, at least, more sympathetic to the idea that we realize ourselves through our skills and talents rather than our pocketbooks. Boo hoo.
Great entry, Mary. I think you should turn the stuff about changes in Goodwill into an actual article or e-article. As I was reading it I was thinking I'd like to use it in my class on consumer culture.
You should expand this into another essay to publish, like your one about superfund sites. I just saw a documentary about the second hand clothing industry in Africa that gives you another reason to hate Good Will. (Actually GW wasn't named, and might be totally innocent of this). But apparently the textile and clothing manufacturing industries in some African countries have been destroyed by importers of second hand clothes bought from Salvation Army et al in the US by the ton. They sell them in Africa for a huge mark up, but the prices are still so low that African industries can't compete and can't protect their industries because of world debt. The sight of small African children wearing cast off Michael Bolton T shirts somehow appeared to me to be more depressing sign of global capitalism than the knowledge that the shirt was probably made by some sweatshop worker in China.
I'm testing the new TypeKey comment posting thing.
This entry and the one on Inappropriately contextualized T-shirts from around the third world kind of go together. I could write a book! I actually offered this blog entry to Lime Tea, the place that did my other essay, but got no response. I want to take a bunch of pictures of Goodwills, too.
testing typekey entry now!!!
trying it again - now as an approved user.
My question about these kinds of training programs is always: whose interests are being served, exactly, by training people for low-skill, low-wage jobs? I realize Goodwill's programs are targeted at a "special" population, but even still. When I was graduating from high school, vocational schools were just starting to do things like have a McDonald's in the school so the kids could learn to work in a fast-food restaurant, and even then that struck me as kind of a scam: get the government to pay for training your workers with the argument that it's preparing them for real-world jobs... but then pay them minimum wage when they actually come to work for you! And then there's the espresso stand at the Oakland airport, which is run by kids from one of the high schools. Somehow that seems even more pathetic, since they're still using the vocational education argument, but they're not even the dupes of some nefarious corporation; they just genuinely believe that training high-school kids to make espresso will somehow get them good jobs when they graduate. I guess you could make the argument (a la Goodwill) that you're really teaching students the value of work, rather than just training them to run a fryolater or whatever, but it seems to me that you could teach them the value of work while simultaneously giving them some real skills that would enable them to earn more than 5.75 an hour, or whatever minimum wage is now.
I guess I'm digressing from the whole Goodwill question in a big way.... Goodwill seems like a somewhat different kind of scam. I mean, how employable are their trainees, really, in the end? Can they function outside of a sheltered (yet crappy) situation like the one Goodwill offers? If you're running a temp agency where your workers need to be trained in "time management and dependability", is anyone actually going to hire them, even as temps? I can totally see how Mary's terrible sitcom would play out (first we had "The Office"... now, "The Goodwill Office"!), but it doesn't actually seem like much of a business model.
(Now I'm logging in with a picture of Pica).
Melissa!! So glad to have you back - and so brilliantly. I was worried!
I agree about the espresso stands. they had one at my old office. cheap drinks! they weren't allowed to take tips which seemed to me to defeat at least half the point -- that point being to get people psyched up about the whole work thing.
(eh, that's not so exciting -- I thought a little picture of pica would appear by her name.)
no, but if you click on the strange little icon next to the name (is that the icon for "cloud of bad breath"?), you get pica's typekey profile. which takes forever to load on my creaky dial-up modem.
Quite the interesting Post you have there. I'm not too sure if i want to be on your team with this whole goodwill thing or against you. When I was doing research for an integrity preserving compromise I came across your Archived Post and a Goodwill website and this is what I found..."Our prices are competitive with demand. We establish prices by surveying the market. We make sure we are selling excellent quality merchandise for a price lower than new low-quality merchandise. To ensure a continuous influx of quality donations, we cannot allow our items to be priced too low. Many of our donors would become discouraged if we sold their quality donations at extremely low prices. Our supply of goods for sale depends on our donors who expect that we value their donations properly and we are committed to maximizing the impact of their generosity." What are your thoughts to this passage and that specific Goodwill's reasoning for so-called higher prices? Its as though their main concern is not about putting clothes on people's backs who can't afford them, its to raise money to assist them in finding a job. Their mission is not to give away clothes for free, its to help and assist people in finding a job, yet still have money to pay for internal costs of the goodwill industry. If your disappointed about the inflation of prices at Goodwill industries, then go shop somewhere else, like garage sales, flea markets, TJ Maxx, or in your aunt's case who liked to shoplift items...go to a lost&found at a school.
I think you're right that their mission is not to provide cheap clothing -- that was a lot of what I was writing about -- my discovery that their mission had nothing to do with what I thought it was, and hence my bitterness needed to be founded on something other than their hypocrisy, in my case, a rejection of their mission on grander grounds, i.e., a general distrust of the culture of consumer capitalism.
But thanks for bringing that particular passage to my attention -- I think that rationale is bullshit. Why not just say, "we charge as much as we can get away with because it's for a good cause"? No one cares how much they charge for the stuff they give away -- we give it away because we want it out of our lives. Well, except me. Frankly, at this point, I'm financially stable enough that the main time when I get irritated about the whole Goodwill thing is when I need to dump some junk somewhere, not when I'm shopping. Goodwill makes it extremely convenient to use them, but I strongly resent the thought that someone somewhere will be overcharged for something that I consider worthless. As you suggest, I've been trying to find alternatives to Goodwill, but more for getting rid of stuff than buying. Our community center has a table just for giving stuff away or there's freecycle. When it's not raining out, I'll just put stuff outside my garage with a "free" sign on it. Kathy can testify to the joys of curb side discoveries in towns and cities that have a curb your junk day (or whatever they call it).
Good luck on your "integrity preserving compromise" project! (I wonder what key words brought you here?).
I like your article because its supports some of my thoughts about Goodwill in Olympia, WA. I have literally seen price quadruple in the last 5 years at the local Goodwill. I wanted a pair of winter boots the other day, but they were 26.99. While furniture shopping, GW was charging up to 100 dollars for couches and 40 for rocking chairs. 40-60 for dressers, etc,. There is usually only 2-4 people of disabilies on shift at one time and they ALWAYS seem understaffed and overworked. A good friend of mine worked their and some of the women complained of carpal tunnel and short breaks and unwarranted changes in their schedules (these people have kids and families). I called the Oly GW because my daughter had a fever. I wanted to talk to her mother who worked in the back sorting clothes (for 8.00 hr which to me is slave labor in todays economy). They said they are not allowed to use the phone unless an emergency. I told the customer sevice lady that her daughter has a high fever, and she replied, "unless its an emergency I cant go and get her." Its this kinda shit that makes me think that those at the higher levels in GW are capitalist pigs and enforcing their philosophies upon the public. I am planning to write an expose about GW in a local paper. ANy other stories of worker maltreatment or other corcerns/stories about Goodwill would be appreciated. email me at starchild@riseup.net.
They recently changed the free give-away truck usually parked in our local Fred Meyer's parking lot to the Salvation Army instead of the Goodwill -- I don't know if it's in response to the recent outcry around the CEO's salary. I'm not really that much happier with the Salvation Army, to be honest -- I mean, I don't really support religiousity, per se, and I think their prices at our local thrift store are kind of over-done.
I don't have any accounts of workers, but let me know when your article comes out -- I'd be interested.
I really wish there was a progressive alternative. freecycle is good for some things, but I don't know if it works for just getting rid of piles of clothes and stuff.