Goodwill Workers Reveal the Item They Wish People Would Stop Donating

You know that feeling you get when you finally sort through your belongings and take your old crap to Goodwill? Well, you might have to rethink that. Not every used item is a good candidate for Goodwill (or any other thrift store), and nobody knows that better than the employees who have to sort through all your old stuff.

A Reddit user asked Goodwill store workers for the one item they wish people would stop donating. Some employees had trouble choosing just one!

1. Broken, dirty, or chewed-up items.

“So so many things. I have to say these shops are not somewhere you should dump your trash. No one wants broken toys and chewed books. We are not ungrateful but it costs us to dispose of these things. I do not want to handle your dirty torn underpants.

I almost had a serious injury when one donor wrapped up blades from a blender in a towel and dumped them in a bag full of clothes. Please don’t do that.”

2. VHS tapes.

“I remember about ten years ago reading that charity shops were stopping accepting VHS tapes because there was such a glut of them.

One person complained that they’d enjoyed getting five VHS tapes for £1… which was pretty much missing the point. VHSs are large and bulky, take up storage space and the staff still have to process them- all for 20p each. Nice for him, not so good for the workers and charity that’s supposed to be benefiting, and probably why they stopped accepting them.

Not to mention that half those tapes probably would have gone unsold and cost money to dispose of.

‘Course, nowadays most of those worthless, mass-market VHS tapes are probably landfill, and it’s 10-to-15-year-old DVDs that my local branch of CEX is selling for 50p each…”

3. Mismatched items.

“Shoes with no fellow, items that don’t work right, clothes that are badly stained.”

4. Sentimental items.

“Folks, go through your stuff before you donate – I once found a memorial album someone had made for a woman who had died, and another time I found an old friendship book full of names and addresses. Really made me wonder what the people who worked in the charity shop were thinking.”

“Someone accidentally donated an urn, complete with cremated ashes.”

“Personalized items. I’m talking about wedding things, shirts, and anything with names on them. I found a memorial shirt one time and I was wondering why someone would donate something like that.”

5. Literal garbage.

“I haven’t worked there in over a decade, but: garbage. People would dump bags and bags of garbage in front of the store overnight, and I mean shit that no reasonable person would ever consider to be anything but garbage.

Busted up concrete. Rusty metal. Basically shit they didn’t want to pay to have hauled away, and couldn’t be fucked to take all the way to the dump.”

6. 50 Shades of Grey.

“I remember a while ago I saw a side news story covering how a bunch of charity places were asking people to stop donating book copies of Fifty Shades of Grey. I seem to recall one store had enough copies they made a book fort out of them.”

7. Old-school TV stands.

“Cleaning out my senior parents’ place we tried to donate a very expensive built in tv stand made of oak. Turns out flat screens don’t fit in them and they never get sold.”

8. Outdated electronics.

“Generally if your electronic device is older than 10ish years the store is probably not going to be able to sell it, 5ish for TVs. The exception is very well-kept and well packaged game consoles.”

9. Personal hygiene items.

“Don’t donate used (honestly don’t donate new) makeup, mouthwash, cleaners, or pretty much anything liquid.”

10. Vintage magazines.

“Do not donate your stack of old Readers Digest magazines from 1994-1998 that was in your bathroom collecting poo particles for years.”

11. Unwashed clothes.

“You know the stank that most Goodwill stores have? They don’t wash donations before putting them out. They just go straight on the racks.”

12. Light bulbs.

“Compact fluorescent light bulbs: please stop. How nice you switched to LED, but nobody buys used CFLs, and since they are classified as hazardous waste due to mercury, we are back to your ‘donation’ actually costs the charity money since we have to properly dispose of them.”

13. Clothes with stuff in the pockets.

“Be sure to check the pockets in your clothes before donating. Around this time of year we find a metric crapton of used tissues and cough drops hidden inside pockets. Our employees get sick pretty frequently from handling so much product, please don’t make it harder on us.”

14. Used undergarments.

“You would be really surprised by the number of people who think it’s okay to donate used underwear. I honestly didn’t realize that people would even consider doing that, but apparently they do.”

“It happens pretty frequently. Another big thing is women who donate pants they’ve worn without wearing underwear to protect the clothing from vaginal fluids. People don’t realize that’s a thing most of the time.”

15. Bootleg DVDs.

“I used to work for the Salvos, and early on in my tenure there, we would get loads of these bootleg DVD’s people would pick up in Bali. Those always ended up in the bin because the packaging was just a flimsy plastic envelope and the label printing quality was awful.”

The post Goodwill Workers Reveal the Item They Wish People Would Stop Donating appeared first on UberFacts.

Thrift Store Workers Share the Weirdest Items They’ve Pulled from the Donation Bin

If what you see on the shelves at the thrift store is the good stuff, then what gets donated and doesn’t make the cut?

Below are 15 solid examples.

#15. There’s a story there somewhere.

Not something I’ve found particularly but something very strange. Every month and a half or so, a man would come by right before we closed and would donate a single blank cd. Every single time. My coworkers and I would always put it in and see if anything was on it. There never was.

#14. The extra stuff inside.

A grinder with weed still in it, and somehow a suitcase full of dildos made it onto the floor and was brought to our attention by an elderly lady who was wanting to purchase the suitcase but didnt want “the extra stuff inside”.

I still think a customer had to have somehow snuck a bag of dildos in and dumped them there since anything going to the floor is opened and sprayed with disinfectant, plus it was heavy so it definitely wouldve been opened if it arrived that way. Either way it made for an interesting day at work.

Edit: I forgot to add money! We were allowed to keep any money we found, usually it was the occasional few bucks in a purse someone forgot. Other times it could be big bills or one lady locked out and found a stash of around $2000 in two dollar bills in a trinket box.

#13. A get out of jail free card.

We’ve had some nipple clamps on a chain, a rampant rabbit with car charger, a jug in the shape of a tit and a book with a hole in it that you stick your dick in for a novelty puppet show.

Oh and there was also a mobile phone with a bunch of photos of a local policeman wearing his girlfriend’s underwear. I securely deleted those. He owes me a get out of jail free card for that.

#12. I look fantastic in it.

I found a full Tommy lee jones Two face suit. I look fan tastic in it. Only $15

Here it is in all its glory.

View post on imgur.com

Edit: thank you all for the self confidence boost!

#11. A human skull.

A classmate of mine found a human skull that was donated. It still had reminents of human on it. They reported it to the police and turns out it was part of an active murder investigation 1 state over.

#10. That’s not sand.

I was a receiving and loading lead at a thrift store for a few years. We had this guy that cleaned out storage units for a living and then he’d dump whatever he couldn’t flip with us for a tax slip.

He pulls up and we’re going through it all. Pretty nice stuff, looked like it was an estate sale. We get it all unloaded and then we start snooping through to see what needs to get brought to where and we find this green glass vase filled with sand.

I started pouring the sand out into the trash so we could figure if the vase was worth using

“That’s not sand”

Somehow we ended up with an unmarked, full urn.

#9. I’ve seen it all.

Ah something I can contribute to. In college I was one of the people that directly sorted donations.

I’ve seen it all, vibrators, boxes of dildos, a nunchuk collection to name a few. On more than one occasion have we found large amounts of money stashed away in hollowed out books, usually $1000+ in new bills.

The one story that sticks out the most was this middle aged man who consistently came on Saturday evenings to donate used underwear. Bags and bags of men’s used underwear, for almost 3 months straight, then suddenly he just stopped.

#8. So much nope.

When I was about sixteen I worked at goodwill for about 6 months. There was this old homeless man who used to try and sneak inside to sleep and stuff like that. Everyday he’d get kicked out pretty quick by one of my female coworkers. After about a month of working there with her, the homeless man came up to the counter she was working at, gave her a target bag filled with rocks, and left. We open the bag and find a doll underneath about a layer of rocks. It was so friggin creepy. The doll looked exactly like her. We flipped it over and the back had her FULL NAME sewn into it. She quit about a couple days later because she was worried about that homeless man coming back to the store.

#7. Defaced by a complete lunatic.

One time, someone donated a book (some country singer’s autobiography I believe) that had been massively defaced by a complete lunatic.

That’s not a great description, but fortunately I took pictures:

Book donated by lunatic

Utterly fucking insane. I didn’t meet the donor because I was at lunch at the time, but my coworker said they seemed completely normal.

#6. A good read.

Used journals… Highlights include someone recounting the time they bit someone, and a tale of an explosive funeral. They make for a good read, but why wouldn’t you throw them out?

#5. Unwanted gifts.

I worked in donations. In the same day we got a pickled baby tiger shark and a coin purse made from a kangaroo scrotum.

Edit: for everyone wondering how I knew, it still had the original tag on it. Me and my co-workers were guessing it was an unwanted gift someone felt bad about throwing away.

It was not the same person that donated the shark.

Who knew my most upvoted comment would be about kangaroo balls?

#4. Cool job for a while.

Someone donated an entire trash bag full of dirty diapers.

Sex toys. Lots of sex toys. Some older, and more naive, workers actually priced them and put them in the sales floor.

An old electronic chessboard that was somehow worth $2000+

Some rich old lady came in and donated a ziplock bag full of gold and platinum jewelry – it was real.

Huge beanie baby collections. Guess someone finally figured out after 20 years that they weren’t a solid investment. It’s something you hear about but I never really saw before.

Maybe not the strangest but you actually do find some cool old shit people think is worthless. Cool job for a while.

EDIT: drinking some beers now. Ask a former Goodwill employee anything!

#3. Investigation warranted.

My aunt’s a cop and had to go investigate a donated hand grenade.

Edit: People keep asking if this happened in ______ city, so apparently it’s super common in America. For the record, keep it classy, San Diego.

#2. The Big Red Dog

A high school diploma still in its leather case. We were selling it for $1.39.

Also a porn movie inside a Clifford the Big Red Dog DVD case.

#1. Lobotomy tools.

I was sorting out some donated items and come across an unusual set of tools. Through some research, we discovered that it was a full transorbital lobotomy tool set. It got donated to a local university for display. Apparently, a vintage set in good condition can sell for around $1,000.

It’s high time I took another look around!

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