To think charity shops aren't playgroups?

[user1477282676]

Well...not THAT exactly but tell me this...why do people think it's ok to allow their small pre-school children to pull out all of the toys on sale in charity shops and to then play with them in the aisle?

I can't stand to see this! The toys are on sale and these DC are there banging them and playing roughly with them...making a ton of noise, mess and getting in the way.

Is it normal to see this? Or just where I live? Their parents are always happily browsing around whilst the kids make a God awful mess.

Just because the toys are second hand does not mean they're a free for all...yet people treat them like the toys in the doctor's waiting room!

[Floggingmolly]

But the customers judging whether the toys are broken or dirty (wrt to damage done by kids playing in the shop) is losing money for the charity, math. Why assume that's ok? And the notion that people only pass off all their old crap that's not "good enough" to sell yourself to charity shops is nonsense, too.
I only ever donate things I could imagine wanting to buy for my own kids.
No interest in time wasting on eBay or Facebook. I know a lot of people who feel the same.

[mathanxiety]

Not really sure what your first sentence means, Floggingmolly.
Surely everyone looks long and hard at a potential purchase of a toy, albeit with different criteria in mind, even in a retail shop - age suitability, educational or play value, price, size of the item, noise levels, etc. Everyone judges for themselves in every retail situation whether the item is worth the price. How is this costing a shop money? Nobody is under any obligation to buy anything.

When you check a toy in a second hand shop you would be daft not to check if it was broken or had pieces missing, on top of the other obvious criteria you would be employing anyway, and you have no idea if it arrived at the shop like that or was broken by a customer's child playing with it.

Are we assuming that every child who plays with a toy in a second hand shop is going to break it? I do a lot of second hand shopping, and this is not my observation of how children in second hand places behave at all.

As I remarked before, adults break plenty of stuff in the place I mostly go to - crockery, glassware, knick knacks; all handling takes a toll. Should people be forbidden from picking up the old pyrex dishes because they could drop them and cost the shop the price of the bowl? This would be $2.99 to $4.99 where I go, and the shop is selling donated goods after all, so their inventory costs them nothing.

[kali110]

flogging yes! These are things making money for a charity! Ofcourse it costs them money when potential items that could have been sold gets broken or damaged.
I also don't know anyone who donates shit to charity
I give items to charity that i could just sell, but i don't. Certainly isn't crap.

[wictional]

My kids do this and the charity shop staff encourage them as it means I usually end up leaving with £5 worth of tat, more often than not at least one of the items is something I had donated some months back

This. When I worked in a charity shop, we used to interact with the kids playing because more often than not, the parents would end up buying this toy and the charity would earn more money. People wanting to look at the nearby bric-a-brac simply said "excuse me" and leant over them. I suppose it must be harder with a limp, but of course the parents should simply make sure that their children are as bored as sin whilst out so as to avoid that.

[Elderlyelna]

I am that parent and those are my unruly children. We tidy before we leave and would pay for breakages if we've ever had any.
We don't care what you think
Since we've not had any complaints from shop staff, some of whom now know my children by name, I should think they don't either.

[mathanxiety]

You are under no obligation whatsoever to buy anything in a charity shop. If you don't find a toy that suits you, you are always welcome to make a donation or just walk out and try again another time. So you are no more losing the shop money than the person who walks past without even looking in. The items are still available for purchase, and you can't predict what a potential buyer will be looking for in the charity merchandise.

People buy clothing for plays, for Hallowe'en, for costume parties, for bad Christmas jumper competitions (are they depriving the poor by so doing?) People buy props for performances or for art, including broken or damaged toys. People buy old Scrabble sets with tiles missing because their own home sets also have tiles missing. A friend of mine picked up an ironing board with wonky legs and an iron that didn't work that inspired a street theatre piece that won her a festival prize. You really do not know what people are looking for when they enter a charity shop. It's not always the bleeding obvious.

[mathanxiety]

...And my favourite shop has a big bin of stuffed animals right up near the cashiers. Why is it that I never see the same collection of once-loved animals twice, I wonder...