I Worked At Value Village & Here Are The 6 Most Annoying Things Customers Did

Hanging up clothes in the wrong place

We're all guilty of picking something up from a specific area of a store only to decide against it and drop it off wherever we happen to be at the time.

The path of least resistance seems to be the one most people take while browsing a Value Village in Toronto. I can't tell you how often I found shirts in the pants aisle and vice versa. It would take a podcast.

Things got displaced so much that most of my shifts centred around putting things back where they belonged.

Being the high-maintenance clean freak that I am, I always aimed to leave the store perfectly organized by closing time — which customers ensured never happened.

Complaining about prices

I seldom operated the cash register at my Value Village, but every time I did, without fail, I had people complain to me about how much cheaper everything should be.

It was like I was having a garage sale on my front lawn, and bargaining was on the table. It was not.

Whenever somebody would tell me why the shoes they bought for a whopping $5 should be priced down, I would smile and say, "you're so right."

If that didn't appease them, I'd called my manager and fake a bathroom break. As a result, I got really good at Candy Crush in those stalls.Too good.

Asking if things work

During my time at Value Village, so many people came to me with remote controls, DVDs, and other electronics, asking me if they worked that my response had dwindled down to a shoulder shrug by my last few shifts.

Neither I nor the management nor the people hauling the store's inventory off our trucks knew if the electronics worked or not because we never tested them. It was all based on the goodwill of whoever donated them.

I had always assumed that people understood that buying something for $7 when it usually costs $20 meant there was a chance it wouldn't work well. But I was wrong.

Trying to steal things

Is there a bigger cheapskate move than stealing from a thrift store?

During my many shifts at Value Village, I caught people of all ages stuffing everything from decor to toasters into their bags.

When I intervened in these situations, I was usually greeted with this "way to be a party pooper" attitude, as if I was supposed to know bargain hunting and five-finger discounts go hand-and-hand.

Breaking something and not telling anyone

I get that it's awkward to break something in public. I once shattered an entire case of beer on the ground in an LCBO when I was 19 and full-tilt ran away, so I'm hardly preaching from the mountain.

Still, the Value Village I worked at was massive. So, it wasn't always obvious when someone had broken something made of glass and left it in pieces on the floor.

We always had children running around our store, and my biggest fear was that one of those little tyrants would fall on some shattered object I had failed to notice.

The world is a better place when people are responsible for their actions. If you break something at a store, tell an employee you have — they won't shame you. They'll clean it up.

Ask what year something is from

You would've thought I worked at a winery based on the number of times I was asked this question during my time at Value Village.

Can you tell how old a VHS player is by looking at it? I can't. How do I know? Because a customer once asked me if the model he was holding was from the 90's, or noughties, leading to one of the most prolonged awkward silences of my life.

I didn't get asked this question every shift like some other points on this list. But, I was put through the wringer enough times to become a master of B.S. answers by the time I quit.