by Seth Ratzlaff
Published in September 2015
Working at Worth a Second Look, The Working Centre’s second-hand furniture and housewares store located at 97 Victoria St. North, sometimes we are faced with difficult decisions. How do we deal with hagglers, people who consider the price tag more disputable than settled fact? Well, it depends. It depends on the circumstance…
We live out each day in ambiguity at the store – in terms of boundaries, item pricing, roles and job descriptions — even in terms of its purpose: it is both a business and a place of community building. This sometimes loose structure demands mindfulness, re-evaluation, faith in choices; in other words, difficult things that can challenge one’s spirit as we try to determine right action.
A man comes in looking for a lower price on the litter box because he simply doesn’t have the money, and more conversation reveals his cats can’t use the pail currently set up. So we come to a compromise that is not for free but requires him to pull together a few bucks to contribute.
Most second-hand stores enact a rule about pricing: all prices are final. But such a policy doesn’t always recognize the importance of compromise, kindness, decisions made in relationship with the person before us.
When you are working in the role of store host, one sometimes wonders if a stricter policy would be better – something people can predict and we can lean on when trying to make decisions. There are times when a clear policy is helpful.
But there is a kind of policy that doesn’t really promote relationship, and in fact, achieves the opposite. This kind of rigid policy can all too often infect the structure and responses of our institutions. It is a poor policy that replaces informed decision-making with blind prescribed action. In this scenario, workers no longer make decisions; judges no longer judge.
Last summer, a young man sat down on a couch in the store, removed his right sneaker, produced a safety pin and lighter, and began to operate on a very infected blister covering nearly half his heel. Instead of sending him away, we moved to the back room, found a first aid kit and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. He didn’t want to go to hospital to have it treated – a friendly customer heard about what was going on and offered a lift to the hospital. No, he didn’t want a lift.
In most situations, this person might have been asked to leave. No shoes, no service! The kind of compassion we try to live each day must guard itself from such policy-supported excuses, and respond with kindness to the person before us.
One pitfall of policy is that it fails to prescribe action for unusual circumstance. Our government institutions are especially aware of this. Unfortunately their solution is to expand policy, to build a massive system that attempts to transcend decision-making, transforming its members into cogs of a computational machine — if client meets requirements A, B, and C, then do X and Y. This sterilized mathematics dehumanizes all parties, making any genuine human relationship impossible, which totally defeats its purpose.
Our work as caring community, in a social enterprise setting, must carefully guard itself from this tyranny, lest we lose our mandate to seek just human relationship.
At Worth a Second Look, we could enact more rules, which I might add would certainly make my day-to-day work considerably less demanding. When someone asks for a lower price, I could point to something above and beyond myself and thereby conveniently absolve myself of any responsibility to consider his or her complex circumstance — I’m not a mean person, it’s just the store Policy.
Here is the insidious nature of rigid policy at work. It actually hinders the chance to help one another. By deterring conversation, policy can prevent the development of an authentic relationship, something that is essential if we are going to begin to understand each other. The specific context, the extenuating circumstance, the unique suffering are all ignored because the decision is pre-ordained.
Worth a Second Look is a second-hand store that seeks to provide affordable furniture and housewares to the local community. Approximately 3000 houseware and furniture items are accepted, processed, cleaned, shelved, and sold a week. All of this is made possible because of a large group of dedicated and loyal volunteers. We work hard not to respond as policy, but to receive each person in thoughtful ways, with a sense of fairness to everyone.
Part of this is done by making sure policy remains in general (something The Working Centre calls “virtues”). This practice makes space for creative and cooperative solutions, new forms of action in response to new circumstance. This is difficult stuff. But it is also, ideally, more human. It is mindful action working alongside communal reflection, constantly re-evaluating oneself and itself, always seeking new and better possibilities.
A few weeks ago two older men were hanging out at the store. Someone pulled up and started to unload some donations for the store. Suddenly, out came an acoustic guitar. One of the gentlemen commented, Wow! That’s a nice guitar. And then the man donating the items offered it to him. We work as staff and volunteers not to take privilege in moments like this. We both looked at the guitar. It’s a nice one. Okay, he said, I see now that you are losing money because of me, so how about I give you some money for it? Sure, why not? But I don’t have any money, he said. Well we hummed and hawed and then he had an idea and suggested, How about I go out and busk tonight with the guitar, and I’ll donate the proceeds to WASL?
Now that’s a creative solution.
