What is the strangest behaviour you have witnessed in a charity shop?

[CharityShop]

I help out at a very small charity shop. We have no changing room, so customers can return items if they try them on at home and they don't fit.

This morning, a customer didn't want to take a pair of trousers home to try. She took off her own trousers in the middle of the shop in order to try the trousers she wanted to buy on! Cue bemused looks from other customers!

I don't think that's mega unreasonable, I wouldn't faff around bringing it back but would make sure I had big pants on!

The weirdest thing I saw was actually by the charity shop. They had a half used bottle of Dove moisturiser for sale.

I was in a charity shop when a guy haggled the price of a pair of trainers down to a pound from about £5, claiming poverty. I was later queued behind him in the supermarket where he was buying cigarettes and beer.
I was in another one when a man came in, picked up the first pair of ladies shoes he saw. After he left the shop the assistant said he comes in every day and buys a pair. All I'm saying is that his feet must have been considerably larger than the shoes....

The strangest thing I ever saw was a volunteer in the middle of rearranging their large collection of paperback books on a bookshelf - not as you might expect by author or genre or even alphabetically by title, but by spine colour.

I might qualify for this, judging by the shop worker’s utterly baffled reaction. Last year I saw a pattern I really liked in a large hardback book about embroidery. Couldn’t buy the book because I was on my way to a flight with hand luggage only, hence no spare space. So I asked the woman if I could donate a pound to photograph the two pages, but leave the book itself (priced 10 pounds) in the shop. A win-win solution, surely. The woman agreed, but had a ‘you weirdo’ look on her face. Or maybe she always looked that way.

A very small middle aged man followed me round the whole shop picking up everything I picked up immediately after I set each thing down or hung back up.

I like your style!

That's been a thing on social media recently (I'm old and not very engaged, so I'm not sure if it's still the case). There was a fad for arranging books so that they made a rainbow.

The spine colour thing is quite a popular way to display books in charity shops.
I hate it.
I buy books by author.
It also means where someone has donated a whole set - the set is split up.
It really annoys me !

I realise I am being a misery on what is supposed to be a light-hearted thread, but I do think that a lot of people living in extreme poverty use alcohol, tobacco and other substances in order to alleviate the grinding misery of their lives.

I don't judge them for it.

Charity shops are amazing - they provide so many different kinds of service - hats off to all of you on this thread who volunteer in them!

The strangest thing I ever witnessed in one was when a woman got really offended with our dog because he wouldn't eat the treat she offered him. Seriously, it was like he had personally rejected her.... In the end he took it and sorted of spat it out on the floor, and my partner and I found it really hard not to laugh .... We apologised for his rudeness, obviously. But we always afterwards referred to it as the Dog Poisoner Shop....

I have several times witnessed people saying "oh there was a so and so here last week" and when told it had been sold whether they'd be "getting one again".
The assistant would always look confused and say "well no..... because we don't know what people plan to donate".
😂

Probably me, this week. A lot of stuff destined to be returned to head office for dumping/pulping was piled up in the shop. I expressed interest in the hardback books (can't help myself). There were no other customers and the woman in the shop very very kindly let me rootle through - which worked out for the shop because I took 20 tatty old volumes away at €1 each.

A flustered looking dgf in a charity shop with a toddler last week. The little girl was pointing out all the things she could see.. She was keen to take the toy battery operated piano home.
Dgf quick on his feet told her it was broken!!. I loved his style...
Bet he would have been made redundant from dc care taking that home.

Oh my gosh I wouldnt know where to look!

Very strange!

I've done this.

Funniest thing I ever saw was when a women came in with her toddler, spent a long while buying some curtains then when she went to leave wondered where her child's wellies had gone. Turned out the child had taken them off and the shop assistant had sold them to another customer thinking they were stock!

One of the volunteers in our shop put down her reading glasses and they were accidentally sold to one of the customers 😀

This isn't a strange thing but I've always remembered it and have thought what a great idea it was.

One of the larger charity shops was having a 50% off day and as you can imagine it was very busy and the few changing rooms had long queues.

Suddenly a woman nearby calmly slipped out of her trousers.
Underneath she was wearing a pair of tight, black, stretchy -smooth cycling shorts.
She went on to slip on and try a few trousers and skirts quickly and efficiently, while the rest of us waited and waited to get in the change room!

I saw someone trying to return a vase as she had dropped it when she got home and cracked the bottom 'so it wasn't any good as the water leaks'

My mum was visiting and went to our local charity shop. She noticed the yarn shelf and was embarrassingly excited about it:
”Oh WOW! Charity shops sell WOOL here!”
Then she video called a few friends to repeatedly discuss this amazing revelation very loudly while I shared an apologetic look with the shop volunteer.

I volunteered in one as a teenager so I have a few stories.

One day a woman ran in from the bingo a couple of doors down, soaking wet. She’d spilled a drink over herself so she grabbed a t-shirt in her size, paid for it, then changed into it in the shop without closing the curtain to the dressing room so everyone could see. She wasn’t wearing a bra.

On my very first day there I also had a whole bunch of Marines come in to try on and buy dresses for a night out they were going on. Some of them went the whole hog and bought handbags and heels too.

Another time an old man tried to haggle over the price of a cassette with me. It was 39p and I wasn’t allowed to change the prices so he stormed out saying he wouldn’t be back because I wouldn’t accept the 21p he had in his pocket.

And that’s without all the stories of things people donated. Underwear full of skidmarks, sex toys of all kinds, mouldy blankets, broken ornaments/chipped plates and mugs (you could tell when something was accidental but some people knew what they were handing in still).

For my part I “rented” fur hats and coats from a charity shop for a weekend to use them for a Narnia themed event. I paid for them and returned them on the Monday for a partial refund, giving them £1 per item as a donation. It was all perfectly civilised but was a bit tricky to explain what I wanted.

Was it a Barnados? They colour code all their rails.
Doesn't matter if it's a purple fleece in June, so long as it's nestled beside a purple bikini 😂

I was once wandering around (trying to kill some time) and nipped into a charity shop that sells vintage bits

I walked in to a woman demanding they flog her a typewriter for 'two pooouuunnndddsss!' (I seem to remember it had a £25 label on it)

When told 'no but we can take 10% off' the lady fell to the floor like a toddler and started screaming while trying to take her top off

A few of us had to step over her to get out

I went back half an hour later and they said she'd just gone after threating to put their windows through

Another time a gentleman walked in,pulled his trousers down,showed us all his bare arse and penis before pulling them back up and walking out

The staff said he was known for it (he had mental health issues apparently)

Other than that,everyone's been boring and normal

I volunteered in a charity shop years ago. People used to take things out of the skip behind the shop and leave it in a right mess (unwanted things thrown on the ground etc.). My boss put a big sign on it saying please feel free to take things, but to leave it tidy.

Anyway, a couple of days later a quite smart looking man came in and asked to speak to the manager. When he’d gone, she told us that he’d said he did sometimes take things out of the skip, but always left it tidy - but was giving us a “little donation” to say thank you.

I don’t know how much it was exactly, but the wad of notes must have been an inch thick.