re: #20 The Sanity Inspector

The attitude I try to take is, if it’s not obvious to the customer, it’s not obvious. But by all means, feel free to vent here, afterwards.

…and there is an important distinction between large thrift operations and normal retail… production is job one, there is not so much emphasis on selling or internal marketing. It’s mainly haul from the route truck, price it, haul to the floor, haul to the customers vehicle, repeat.

I’ve spent the first 6 weeks at this store trying to clean up the image of the used furniture department, trying to make sure all the stuff is in neat rows, visible, accessible and so on.

The district manage was in the store today and I heard him say to our manager… “this is incredible…” meaning how organized the department was.

In the past, I’ve done a lot of buying and selling of used items at outdoor markets and such, and I know what it takes to properly market the stuff.

Many thrift store only care about piling as much used product on the floor hoping to move as much as possible, with no regards to what is really selling versus what is sitting for weeks and so on.

I’m trying to change that at this company.