Or was she? Charity shop purchase.

[JiggleJiggleFold]

I went in a charity shop yesterday and saw a set of figurines, 6 of them for £20.

I asked if I could buy 2 of them separately and the lady said no, they're a set. Fair enough. I had a few other bits to get from other shops, so left without them.

Whilst shopping I googled the figures hoping to get them from ebay or somewhere, as I only liked 2 of them. Turns out they end up at around 10/12 quid individually with postage anyways so 20 for 6 was very good.

I went back in and asked for the set. I paid the £20 and said to the lady "I only really want these 2, you can keep the other 4"

She told me they come as a set and you cannot but them individually.
I said I'm not asking to buy them individually, I'm paying the full price but only taking 2.

She told me I wasn't allowed to do that.

I said I'm keeping 2 and donating back the other 4 and that she could sell them as a set of 4.

She was adamant I want allowed to do that and made me take all 6 of them :s

I walked into the charity shop 2 doors down and donated the 4 I didn't want.

AIBU to think the whole things was just ridiculous?

She was really huffy and abrupt with me about it, like I was trying to rip them off or break the sacred rules or something!

Yes she was being ridiculous

The only logic I can think of was that she donated the 6 and wanted them to stay together.

but no, she was being daft

I suspect she was a volunteer, possibly one who is very new or who is working in a charity shop because she is inexperienced or vulnerable in some way.

So yes, of course your suggestion was sensible. But if she's been told 'these are a set', there might be good (to her) reasons that she didn't feel able to override that.

Pathetic charity shop lady with no sense.
You were totally reasonable. Don’t give it another thought & enjoy your purchase.

Most bizarre on her part, but as a PP has pointed out people who work in charity shops are usually volunteers. I would have just bought the set without any further comment rather than discussing it with her.

Volunteer, told what to do by the manager.
I wouldn’t have said anything the second time and just did what you did or sold the others on eBay. 🤷‍♀️

Yanbu unless you dwell on it any further. The charity shop down the road will probably price the set of 4 for £20 too and you have created extra value of income to thr charity sector. All is well.

I imagine it would cause a bit of an admin headache for the first shop to process the sale and yet still have the items on the shelves. Happier for them that you donated the other items elsewhere.

Sounds silly as after you've paid they are yours and you can do as you wish with them, but maybe she thought she'd get in trouble for charging you the full price of all items and them keeping some.

I would hedge my bets that this lady is not 'pathetic' but actually vulnerable in some way, as are a lot of volunteers, and was simply not deviating from what she had been told. It does seem daft on the face of it but I can see how easily something like that would happen.

I think you should just have done what you ended up doing anyway and not have caused such a fuss. People who work in charity shops are often volunteers and might not have felt they could "break" the rules and split them up. She may have been oddly rigid on the rules, but to me is more strange to keep arguing with her about it when you could just have done what you did in the end on the first day.

Sounds like a typical jobsworth charity shop assistant! It seems to be compulsory that to work in a charity shop you have to huff and puff as loudly as possible

It just sounds that kind of weird mindless retail logic that shop workers can easily slip into when faced with long tedious hours and customers (not OP!) who can be equally idiotic.

Manager has told her it's a set so it's a set.

I mean she was being weird about it, but if you knew the sold for £10-12 individually online then why didn't you just take the 6 and sell the 4 you didn't want?

A lot of volunteers are vulnerable adults on placement through support groups and organisations actually.

An assistant in a charity shop suggested exactly the same thing to me yesterday; to buy the bits of a set I wanted and donate the rest back! Of course it's sensible.

I most definitely didn't cause a fuss. I just tried to donate them 😂 Isn't that what people do in a charity shop, buy and donate. I did nothing more than both those.

It's not like they were even a full and complete set. There's a round 25 of them in total so the 6 together were not complete of special in anyway.

Its no big deal and the other charity shop benefited too so all is good in the end

I was just sat pondering if I was actually wrong for offering them back after paying full price!

Ridiculous! You weren’t being unreasonable.

One time in a charity shop I went to buy a puffer jacket for one of my children while visiting England and needing a warm coat, to be told that the item (on a hanger, from a hanging rail, with price tags on the shop floor) was not for sale?! When I explained it has a price tag and was on the hanging rail, why isn’t it for sale? She just kept repeating I cannot sell you this, without any explanation? So left without it.

I agree with this, they'd already made it clear they were sold as a collection (rightly or wrongly). It's potentially because they thought they were more likely to sell as a collection, they're also presumably worth less as a 4 than a 6.

I think you were actually a little rude going backing having known they weren't willing to sell just 2 and then pushing the subject. I would've just bought all 6 and either given the other 4 away at a different time or flogged them on eBay and donated the money etc or just accepted I would buy them elsewhere. If they were sealed packaged together you wouldn't ask to split them so I don't see much difference once you were told they weren't sold individually.

From their POV you'd already been told they were a collection and just donating them back was the same thing as buying 2 just at full price.

Her badge said Manager so I didn't think she was a volunteer.

YABU. Would you find a set of something in John Lewis and take the couple of bits you wanted out of the box and try to buy those? Or buy the whole thing at the till then try to leave behind the parts you didn’t want? People treat charity shops and their workers like crap.

Actually I don't agree. Selling them separately would mean them taking less money for just 2 and needing to wait for someone else to want the other 4.

I wanted to give them the whole amount for just 2 so they would have made alot more!

PineapplePrincess1 · Today 10:03
Sounds like a typical jobsworth charity shop assistant! It seems to be compulsory that to work in a charity shop you have to huff and puff as loudly as possible“

Don’t be an arse. Many sectors would grind to a halt without these “jobsworths”.

Some people, due to a certain mindset or occasionally SN, aren’t able to think outside the box so if they are told to sell them as a set then that’s what they will do.
I doubt this lady was doing it to intentionally piss you off. Some people just don’t or can’t use common sense.

Comparing JL to a charity shop is ridiculous.

Of course I wouldn't do that in JL but neither would I turn up with a bag of old clothes and trinkets and drop them off like you do at a charity shop.

Really bad analogy and completely moot point.

So not being able to 'think outside of the box' due to SN is a lack of common sense