On Working in a Charity Shop
I’ve just finished a job in a charity shop in Harborne. I was on a zero hours contract. I started in the same week I heard my second collection of short stories had been shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. There’s no money in writing the sort of things I write, so I have to work to pay the bills; as I’ve devoted more time to my craft than I have my ‘career’, this means moving from minimum-wage low-status job to minimum-wage low-status job.
Since I was first published, I’ve worked on a Helpdesk and in a bookshop, with an unskilled event crew, stacked shelves in a library and – briefly – a supermarket; my only role of any significance has been that of a part-time Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund.
Unlike many of those jobs I enjoyed working in the Hospice shop from the get go. At my induction, I was spared the usual drivel about ‘living the values’ of the organisation in favour of a more definitively appealing description of its contextual function. The NHS doesn’t provide much in the way of palliative care, which means the services of the Hospice are in continuous demand. Despite this, it faces a considerable financial shortfall, and this is where the shop comes in: the more up-cycled, recycled/second-hand goods we sold, the better the city’s end-of-life care would be resourced.
The directness of the equation was refreshing, and it’s almost anarchistic sensibility was replicated on the shop-floor. The shop is a big space, two stories high, the flagship store of the hospice’s retail operation. Despite this, I soon realised that much of its daily activity was unhindered by the fetishistically pointless processes that characterise much of what might be termed mainstream exchange, the sort of nonsense that encouraged David Graeber to describe bureaucracy as ‘a way of crushing the human imagination’. The pricing of goods was handled by shop-floor staff. Likewise, all decisions regarding merchandising and display. Other examples of this organic and purposeful autonomy included the processing of donations and the transferral of slow-selling items to other stores.
Working in the shop also generated a sense of belonging. Most of the staff were volunteers, and most customers were low-paid or unwaged; many of each spoke English as a second language. This demographic overlap meant that shop-floor interactions – often involving cash and haggling, gratitude and consternation – tuned me into something greater than mere buying and selling.
Please don’t misunderstand me. There was nothing about the experience that should be romanticised. Retail is low-paid and physically draining. Zero hours contracts are an obscenity – who are they for? Who do they benefit? – and I was only able to take the work because we had another source of stable income. It is also true that charities are sticking plasters, and the impact of an individual operation within a systemic shitshow is negligible. This particular point was illustrated one day by an advert for a podcast ‘to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Comic Relief’ which was played repeatedly on the shop-floor. On Amazon Radio of all stations. But even given this, I know I’ll miss the very particular energy that came from being in the world in the way I was in the shop, from my routine immersion in a very particular environment of human exchange.
Since I was first published, I’ve worked on a Helpdesk and in a bookshop, with an unskilled event crew, stacked shelves in a library and – briefly – a supermarket; my only role of any significance has been that of a part-time Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund.
Unlike many of those jobs I enjoyed working in the Hospice shop from the get go. At my induction, I was spared the usual drivel about ‘living the values’ of the organisation in favour of a more definitively appealing description of its contextual function. The NHS doesn’t provide much in the way of palliative care, which means the services of the Hospice are in continuous demand. Despite this, it faces a considerable financial shortfall, and this is where the shop comes in: the more up-cycled, recycled/second-hand goods we sold, the better the city’s end-of-life care would be resourced.
The directness of the equation was refreshing, and it’s almost anarchistic sensibility was replicated on the shop-floor. The shop is a big space, two stories high, the flagship store of the hospice’s retail operation. Despite this, I soon realised that much of its daily activity was unhindered by the fetishistically pointless processes that characterise much of what might be termed mainstream exchange, the sort of nonsense that encouraged David Graeber to describe bureaucracy as ‘a way of crushing the human imagination’. The pricing of goods was handled by shop-floor staff. Likewise, all decisions regarding merchandising and display. Other examples of this organic and purposeful autonomy included the processing of donations and the transferral of slow-selling items to other stores.
Working in the shop also generated a sense of belonging. Most of the staff were volunteers, and most customers were low-paid or unwaged; many of each spoke English as a second language. This demographic overlap meant that shop-floor interactions – often involving cash and haggling, gratitude and consternation – tuned me into something greater than mere buying and selling.
Please don’t misunderstand me. There was nothing about the experience that should be romanticised. Retail is low-paid and physically draining. Zero hours contracts are an obscenity – who are they for? Who do they benefit? – and I was only able to take the work because we had another source of stable income. It is also true that charities are sticking plasters, and the impact of an individual operation within a systemic shitshow is negligible. This particular point was illustrated one day by an advert for a podcast ‘to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Comic Relief’ which was played repeatedly on the shop-floor. On Amazon Radio of all stations. But even given this, I know I’ll miss the very particular energy that came from being in the world in the way I was in the shop, from my routine immersion in a very particular environment of human exchange.