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Food
for Thought
Never
A Dull Moment…
musings From the Shop Floor
(part
2)
Farah
Ghuznavi
The
customers at the charity shop where I volunteered were no
less interesting to me than the volunteers themselves. Many
of them were regulars, stopping by every few days to check
in case something interesting had come in. A surprising number
of people donated almost-new clothing and other items to the
shop, and the marking down of such goods - despite the excellent
condition they were in - meant that there were often attractive
bargains to be had. Despite the usually reasonable prices
though, there were those among the regulars who still tried
to bargain (despite numerous past attempts that had failed).
We usually left Sulei, the manager, to deal with them. He
was able to handle such requests with the necessary combination
of pleasant firmness that would have evaded the less experienced
volunteers.
For myself,
one of the nicest things about working in the shop was to
see how people who might otherwise not be able to afford new
versions of some of the stock, could nonetheless get things
that were as good as new, but at a much lower price. A few
days ago, a young mother had come in with her two-year-old
daughter. They were clearly from a family which didn't have
much money to spare. Their attention quickly alighted on a
small pedal-bike, with four wheels and an upright stick at
the back (to help a parent guide a tired child).
Sulei
was eager to get rid of the pedal-bike, it took up too much
space in the shop, relative to its value. It had therefore
been marked down to the highly competitive price of five pounds,
but the mother was still hesitant, saying that she had to
discuss it with her husband before she purchased it. She asked
us to set it aside, a request that Sulei insisted that we
could not accommodate, precisely because we wanted to get
it out of the shop as soon as possible. In the meantime, the
little girl, Anna, had climbed on to the pedal-bike and started
riding around the shop. In the face of her daughter's evident
delight, her mother could not hold out, and five minutes later,
Anna rode the pedal-bike proudly out of the shop, waving at
all of us as she went…
Other
customers were less easy to deal with. At one point, I saw
Kristin, a Swedish volunteer, looking puzzled. Although her
English was fluent, she was unable to decipher the thick regional
accent of the English man who was asking her about one of
the music CDs! Luckily, an English volunteer, Sam stepped
in before things got out of hand, and the gentleman was provided
an update on the availability of the CDs he was looking for.
One of
the worst problems, one that came up every now and then, related
to customers who employed "dirty trick" tactics.
Sometimes this took the form of switching the price labels
between items. Because the charity shop did not have the barcode
system that prevented this happening in supermarkets, it was
a real danger. Sometimes of course, items were priced wrongly
by accident. But Sulei was usually careful in ensuring that
the volunteers followed the pricing guidelines fairly strictly.
A pair
of sought-after, branded shoes had been priced at 12 pounds.
Ramani, the South Indian volunteer, was handling the till
when a young woman brought over the shoes to us. I was stacking
the shelves by the till with fair trade products, (including
my major weakness, chocolate), and was lost in pondering the
important question of whether I should buy a bar for myself.
Meanwhile, not noticing any discrepancy, Ramani had started
entering the price of the young woman's shoes into the till
as six pounds, when Sulei suddenly intervened. It appeared
that the sticker on the shoes did indeed say six pounds, but
according to the pricing guidelines, the price should have
been much higher. When Sulei insisted on the higher price,
the young woman changed her mind about the shoes.
As she
walked away, Sulei turned to us and said, "She switched
the stickers herself". Ramani and I both felt that Sulei
was being too harsh, that it could have been an honest mistake,
but we didn't argue with him. Shortly afterwards, the young
woman was walking out of the shop, when suddenly Sulei went
bounding after her, "Excuse me, Madam, you can't take
those out of the shop!" To our amazement, we saw the
woman take the shoes out of the bag she was carrying. She
insisted, somewhat unconvincingly, that she was only taking
them out onto the street where her mother was waiting for
her, to show her mother the shoes. Since this strange behaviour
followed the earlier exchange over the price label, Ramani
and I were forced to agree that Sulei's intuition was more
reliable than ours.
Then there
was the time I saw David (the Peruvian-born, Jewish, Spanish
speaking German national, currently living in the UK, one
heck of a strange combination!) being cornered by a rather
animated customer. Because David wore a Jewish skull cap clipped
on to his hair, his religious identity was evident, though
he had never expressed any political views on the Middle East
in my hearing. He didn't seem to hold strong political views,
anyway, and was a quiet young man. The tall, blonde man talking
to him was a different case altogether. This guy turned out
to be a self-confessed Danish Christian Zionist (I am still
trying to figure out just what this means!), living in Sweden.
He had decided to share with the blameless David his frustrations
with the Swedish government, whom he felt were too supportive
of the Palestinian cause. He claimed that the government "listened
too much to the Muslims" and spoke out against the Israelis.
Good for them, if this is true, but given that most western
governments have done very little for the Palestinians and
that the Swedish government however sympathetic - is unlikely
to be over-influenced by the Muslims, I found his views somewhat
incomprehensible! Although David listened politely, he said
very little, and I can only be grateful that this particular
denizen of the Danish lunatic fringe had not decided to share
his views with me. I would have responded with rather less
self-control!
The occasional
weirdo's attempts to bond with one of us notwithstanding,
I must admit that the wide diversity of backgrounds, race
and religion among the volunteers had never led to any internal
friction that I had seen. Perhaps the fact that people chose
to volunteer time to support the charity outlet for an NGO
with well-known progressive political views accounted for
this. Perhaps the volunteers were just an unusually nice group
of people. Or perhaps it's just true that, despite our differences,
most of us can get along with a little effort (yes, yes, I
know I am an idealist!). Whatever the reason, my experience
at the charity shop has confirmed my cherished belief that
multiculturalism is alive and well, at least in this corner
of the UK. Now all we have to do is expand that outwards…
Copyright
(R) thedailystar.net 2004
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