• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Questions Worker Admin Shopper Goal: identify pain points in Goal: identify pain points in Goal: identify pain points in thrift shop work (stocking thrift shopping management. the thrift shopping experience shelves, taking in new (inventory, sales donations) management, employee management, marketing, etc.) Can you walk me through Can you walk me through How often do you thrift shop? your day? your process of organizing Where? donations? Why did you choose this Tell me about the last time particular shop? you were [insert responsibility Why did you choose this mentioned here, e.g. sorting work? Can you take me through donations]. your process of browsing? What’s the hardest part about What’s something most ● What do you look for? it? people don’t know or realize ● How do you decide about what you do? what to keep and How do you feel when you’re what to not? sorting donations / other What does your typical day ● How does this responsibility? look like? process compare to Can you walk me through non-thrift shopping? Can you walk me through how you do x task (based on what the process of accepting what they say)? What are you Why do you choose to thrift donations is like? What do thinking about as you do this? shop? you think about when you’re processing donations? Can you tell me about the hardest part of what you do? When’s the last time someone asked you for help? Why do you do it that way? What have customers asked When was the last time you for help with? something went wrong in your work? Why do you work here? ● How did you resolve it? How do items get priced? Who’s involved in pricing? Interview 1 Organization: Goodwill (CHAIN) ​ Name: Dave Taggart ​ Role: Thrift Shop Worker - Customer Service Specialist ​ Outside. Benjamin, the branch manager, is loading a truck as two employees receive donations and throw the donations into bins sorted by general category. Dave is inside taking his break, so we initially talk to Benjamin. Finding 1. Donation Hierarchy What are you doing right now? Loading a truck with donations. What’s not sellable ends up going to different areas, like San ​ ​ Jose. We’re one of the better stores in the county. We’re right behind Palo Alto high school, and ​ ​ there’s more money here. But what doesn’t end up getting sold gets sent to other counties. ​ How do you decide what gets sent to other counties? We keep anything that’s sellable. ● shows us examples of what’s not sellable- wooden toy guns with chipped paint, etc. ● explains that broken-ness or signs of wear make something not sellable Can you walk us through the process of getting donations? People hand in their stuff to us out here, and we just put them into different bins. What’s the hardest part? People putting things on the ground. Once some people start putting things on the ground, other people want to put them there too, and we need to pick them all up. What does your job look like? I work inside, outside--I do everything. I’m one of the managers here. Benjamin seemed busy, so we moved inside and met David. Finding 2. Specialists do the pricing and register them in a machine. How does receiving donations work? We sort the items first on whether we can use them or not. The ones we keep get put into bins by category, like this one is a bunch of hats. (shows us a cart with a bunch of sunhats- these are all going onto the floor). How does pricing work? That’s not part of my job, but someone checks the value of an item based on the quality. There’s a separate training to do the pricing. Then, they put the price into this machine. What happens if something falls into a brand that isn’t on the bran guide? Not sure-I’m not trained for that. David shows us the computer (a dinosaur) for which prices are inputted. Notice the chart in the back -- the left one is titled “NWT - NEW WITH TAGS ONLY” and has ​ brands like 7 For All Mankind, Adidas, Calvin Klein, Kenneth Cole, Lucky Brand, and Nike. The right one says “HIGH - SEND” and has brands like Alexander Wang, Balenciaga, Chanel, Givenchy, Gucci, and Prada. Then, I take the item to its specific place on the floor. David gives us a tour of the layout. ​ Finding 3. Organizing the items is straightforward for the employees (see interview on shopper for a different perspective). Items across the store are organized by color. How do you organize the items? Well, there’s a section for everything, like here’s furniture. Lamps go on top, which I don’t think makes sense, because they can fall on you. How did it get decided that lamps go on top? We’ve been doing it that way for a long time. Here’s ceramics, glass, etc… and you can see that everything is sorted by color. Like here, you can see the plates go from yellow, green, blue, purple and red. What’s the hardest part of your job? Well, it’s pretty straightforward. There’s some organization, and all I have to do is put it in the right spot. How do you know what the ‘right spot’ is? We learned that during training. I actually worked at Lulu Glen in Cupertino. But there were some legal battles, so I got moved to Blossom Hill and then finally here. The system is the same here. The main thing is that we sort by color because there have been studies too saying that’s ​ what customers like to see. What was difficult about transferring here? I mean, everybody has a different schedule. I’m here from 8:30 to 5 or 9:30 to 6. Once I was here until midnight. That shift includes closing, which means getting everything ready for the next morning. What’s the training process like when you switch locations? You follow someone else around, like a fellow employee who has been here a lot longer. Finding 4. Clothes specifically are sorted by type of clothing (e.g. women’s shirts, men’s shirts) but also by color and size. They are tagged, and the color of the tag indicates how long the piece has been on the rack. Clothes “get pulled” (taken off the rack) after a month, sent down the donation hierarchy. What’s the challenge with organizing the clothing? I’m not in charge of the clothes, but there’s a standard in color that we follow. (He tells us they changed the standard to include sorting clothing by color, which it didn’t used to be). Sizing, too. See, the clothes go from light to dark. When’s the last time a customer asked you for help? It was something about where to find something, like jeans or dresses. Other times it’s where to find the bathroom (laughs). But it’s usually the location of items. How long do the clothes stay on the rack? Well, if you take a look at the tags, everything is dated. Pink tags don’t have dates, but all the other colors mean they were put here on a certain date. Usually one type of color for one week. Gray tags are stuff we get from Target (he isn’t sure how that works). After a month, clothes “get pulled,” which means they’re taken off the rack. Interview 2 Organization: Goodwill (CHAIN) ​ Name: Amelia Geser ​ Role: Thrift Shop Shopper ​ Finding 1: Goodwill shoppers care about the environmental impact of their purchasing decisions. Why do you shop here? “If I’m going to buy cheap clothes, I might as well wear clothes that have been once through the cycle.” “I might wear them for a week and who knows? Or maybe I’ll wear them until ‘next season,’ and they go back to Goodwill.” “I don’t want to spend money. I work with third graders, so I don’t want to wear something nice and then get, I don’t know, acrylic paint, on it.” “It’s like shopping at a bunch of stores I wouldn’t normally go to.” Finding 2: Finding pieces at Goodwill requires trial-and-error. Can you tell us about your shopping process? My process is that I do two rounds. First, I’ll go through all the aisles and pick out things that catch my eye. Like this right here might stand out, because it’s sparkly (a long-sleeved gold top). Then I’ll try everything on to see if it looks good, and usually most of it doesn’t look good, so I’ll do a second round. What do you mean when you say “it doesn’t look good”? Like this top here (gold one) might be itchy. I usually look for stains too, or if something is like missing a button. If something is really special I’m willing to add a button later, but that’s rarely the case. I also like to cut dresses into tops. Finding 3: It’s easier to shop for clothes than other types of items. Do you normally come in with something specific in mind? “It’s too dangerous to come in and just browse” Yes- came in for cake pans, once came in for a vacuum cleaner. But it’s hard with electronics, or food items. “Clothing is usually a safe option.” I’ll rarely come in to shop and not leave with something.

Load more

  13

Copy Link