Charity Shop Update

My stint as Assistant Manager has flown by since I joined 18 months ago. Now promoted temporarily to Acting Manager, I not only find myself knee-deep in donations and endless paperwork from HQ but having to time-manage myself to the millionth of a micro-second to cope with staff sickness and holidays. Of course, it is paramount that the shop remains stacked with interesting and alluring stock to attract every type of customer and with donations hailing from textile banks and customers its always a lottery to what you actually end up with.

 Mr X, my lovely boss who has now moved on to pastures new, trained me to be highly displined when sorting through bric-a-brac. 'Only the best will do for the shop!', he used to boom at me. The first day I put bric a brac out, I received at lecture from him regarding saucepans with 'wobbly bottoms, how unsafe they were due to being cheaply made and as to emphasise the point he made me run my hand over the unfortunate milk saucepan's bottom and then examine it at eye-level, for effect he spun it around on its axel, 'this would not happen if this was flat' he announced loudly. Point taken.

 Mr X was also a stickler when it came to cleanliness of stock and missing artefacts. Positioning bric-a-brac also could affect sales he used to say, so think carefully where you position something. One day we were presented with a middle-sized version of 'The Thinker', basically a naked man, leaning over thinking. Anatomically there was no mistaking he was male, but where to place him? Bearing in mind, many of our customers are middle-class 50 something females, it was not a good idea to give him the centre stage of our genteel arranged bric-a- brac shelf. Also not a good idea to position him to close to where Mr X used to like to stand and think either. Eventually I settled upon the second to top shelf of the bric-a-brac amongst the antiques. Of course there were the envitable comments and occasions where customers would find it amusing to turn The Thinker around displaying his butt to all and sundry. Luckily within a couple of days he was purchased for the sum of £20.