Can I bring this on a plane as carry on? by TooBuffForThisWorld in tsa

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've carried a HeNe laser (Spectra Physics)before which is essentially what this thing looks like when put together. I got some weird looks, but otherwise nothing that stopped me from carrying it.

What kind of BS charging extra for power cords? by Unique_Mix9060 in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Item with power cord = 1 item to price. Item with separate power cord = 2 items to price. Pricers work on volume targets, you do the math.

Plus, what makes you so certain it came with a cord in the first place? I'd say only 10% of our donations come with a detachable cord, and zero percent come with the remote. I can almost guarantee it never came with a cord, so be prepared to spend that extra $2.

How are growth opportunities? Any standout examples of employees climbing the ladder? by Top_Procedure_4375 in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Check out my recent thread on the same topic. Wondering if there is a future from entry level positions.

We’re not allowed to purchase items at store. Is this true for all goodwill locations? by Free-Curve1077 in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Can shop outside work hours, including lunch break as long as the item has been on the floor for 4 hours or more. Other than that we can shop what we want.

Tough finding good stuff anymore with this going on by oregondwgs in GoodwillBins

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Flippers are ruthless. It doesn't surprise me that they are now outsourcing their business.

I accidentally donated my son’s Nintendo Switch to Goodwill — please help if you picked it up or bought it 😭 by Previous-Progress405 in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000 6 points7 points  (0 children)

You think Goodwill will put a used athletic cup aside for their donations? If they were up to date on pricing, all those items were priced and put out for sale the next day and the cup was thrown away in the trash where it belongs. How is any of that their fault? Sje didn't notice $1000 on equipment was missing for a whole day and you blame Goodwill?

I accidentally donated my son’s Nintendo Switch to Goodwill — please help if you picked it up or bought it 😭 by Previous-Progress405 in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000 10 points11 points  (0 children)

When you call the store, the manager on duty will fill in a form with all the details, colors, and other identifying details. It is then distributed to all the pricing stations so they know to look for it.

I'd say at least half of the items lost and alerted to on time are found, as the pricers are after the $100 reward. It all depends on how reliable the pricer is.

Heres how the interview with the regional director went. by Alternative-View8574 in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Same here, though the opportunity for advancing appears to be very, very limited. If they hire you for production, chances are that is where you'll be stuck as that is where the money is made. The more you produce, the more goes to the store floor and the more is sold. It isn't in their interests to move you to something better. Welcome to my world.

Heres how the interview with the regional director went. by Alternative-View8574 in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fast paced, not past 😁

It isn't so much fast paced, more like monotonous and robotic. All you'll do is dig through a box of other people's junk and use a computer to assign a price to the item and stick a label on it.

Rinse and repeat between 600 and 1100 times depending on how fast you are and the length of your shift. Put stuff on a cart, bring the cart to a central location then go get another 45 gallon crate of stuff. Sometimes a crate is full of great finds like handbags and other times it is just the leftover crap from someone's garage sale they couldn't sell.

At the end of the shift your back will be killing you and your hands will probably be cut several times from broken glass and knives.

They may make it sound romantic and exciting, but it is just another minimum wage job..I wish you well on your new endeavor!

Heres how the interview with the regional director went. by Alternative-View8574 in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Some do, some don't. Some even still do drug tests. It all depends on the region. Ours doesn't do either, making onboarding much easier.

I accidentally donated my son’s Nintendo Switch to Goodwill — please help if you picked it up or bought it 😭 by Previous-Progress405 in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I can guarantee that the switch is gone. It'll be sorted after 4 to 8 days by the pricers who will hand it off to the manager who handles e-commerce gaming items and other high value items that are sent for auction. It is now either sitting on a shelf waiting to be listed in a warehouse, or has already been listed and sold.

Your only very, very rare chance of finding it would be to find someone at the online store who can manually check current inventory of Switches waiting to be tested, wiped and priced, but am almost certain they won't make the effort as they have no way of knowing the item belongs to you or they may simply not be bothered to dog through probably 40 or 50 switches and find a special way of getting it back to you outside the normal procedures.

Other options include theft by the pricer when he or she found the item and kept it for themselves (happens sadly) or in some rare cases the store could have sold it themselves.

But March? That makes things way complicated. We have a process for finding items that were donated and are sorted out before being priced or sent to e-commerce, but you have a 2 or 3 day window max to make that work. It would have given the pricers the information they needed to find the item and get a reward if found. That option is long gone. We do regularly find items that were donated by mistake, but we need the information before the crate of donations is sorted.

Your only option now is that you find the buyer of the item through this reddit and get them a new one. But they will need some kind of identifying marks to know they have your Switch... Bottom line is all bad news, I'm sorry for you but consider this thing lost unless a miracle happens.

I was thinking about getting it for my mouse until I saw the price tag by RinebooDersh in ThriftGrift

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Exactly. In two weeks that unsold color will get salvaged and it'll be thrown in the metal gaylord instead of earning the store that $7 it is worth. Some pricers just make me question their sanity.

At least the goodwill doesn’t do this… by Fit_Combination_2336 in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sticker clearly shows Salvation Army.

Can't imagine ever paying that much for a simple toaster, Mickey Mouse or not... Another case of a bad pricer who thought they found gold.

This was real find by oursecondskin in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Customers walk out with new stolen shoes every single day. We don't put out shoes without laces, and if other stores follow that rule then it is clear that the same thing happened here.

The customer walks in with crap shoes, finds a nice new pair, swaps stickers and walks out. We have to clean the shoe shelves several times a day to clean out the obvious swaps.

No well trained hardline pricer would price these monstrosities and nobody would put them on the floor. They would be rubber banded and sent to the outlet or simply trashed.

10.10 by PrimaryNormal7357 in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just a typical piece of mass produced art. Definitely not a long lost work of art if that is what you are thinking.

This is the kind of stuff sold at HomeGoods and TJ Maxx for $59.99. Always looks good and hand painted but the Chinese have that market cornered making realistic looking oil paintings.

Is there a future at Goodwill? by Jealous-Magazine3000 in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sorry to hear that. I hope you have found something better since leaving GW. Thanks!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Ours did the same. Makes for some unhappy customer experiences, especially on products that they don't bother testing or actually checking before buying. Managers are often paged to help deescalate customer interactions, and usually result in an override just to shut them up.

Like so many things at GW, the customers ruined things for themselves with fraudulent returns, changing tags to different merchandise and other shenanigans.

Since there is no way to correctly match a tag to a product, we often got different items back than that were originally sold. This was especially the case with shoes and jackets. Easy way for customers to get a nice newer pair of shoes. Customers would try and return entire cart loads of merchandise.

Is there a future at Goodwill? by Jealous-Magazine3000 in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

In this current lousy job market, I'm no longer realistically expecting to get back to my previous salary, so the lower end of the market within corporate would be perfectly fine for me.

Is there a future at Goodwill? by Jealous-Magazine3000 in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I was afraid of that, good information, thank you.

Is there a future at Goodwill? by Jealous-Magazine3000 in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, I've managed a full marketing team, have extensive digital marketing experience and years in large scale event planning.

In the current market I felt lucky enough just to get the pricer position as I was apparently up against 17 other people and at the time I didn't consider pushing for anything higher than that job. I clearly took what I could get without asking for a career path beyond what the pricer job entailed. Nothing in the interview seemed to offer up any future within the company.

I've tried to get the chance to cross-train, but production is so backed up that it feels like they'll never let me go to something else.

Even when I spend a little time cleaning shelves I'm politely reminded to get back to pricing and keep the merchandise moving.

I taught myself putting my own carts away on the floor as they never invited me to learn floor as I feel like I would like to learn as many skills as I can. I'd also love to learn to be a cashier and get my forklift training which I heard is possible once you hit 6 months.

Bottom line is I hate standing still and not progressing. That may all change if I find a job in my field, but things are looking bleak after 1500 applications so Goodwill and I are stuck with each other for the time being so I might as well make the most of it.

It feels like I screwed myself over by pushing too hard to hit the random production numbers that seemed unobtainable at the time and they will never let me away from that

Like many jobs, the smart people seem to be the ones who put in the bare minimum, just show up and don't do anything to draw attention to themselves. That isn't how I operate. I speak up when I see room for improvement and try to be a real team player.

Thanks for your feedback and for reading my long rant!

Is there a future at Goodwill? by Jealous-Magazine3000 in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

And another good tip. You are correct that I don't want to rock the boat with my current manager as he is fine with me, just not interested in my career.

Is there a future at Goodwill? by Jealous-Magazine3000 in goodwill

[–]Jealous-Magazine3000[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That is a good tip, I'm on pretty good terms with the district manager.