Happy in Thrift

Four M-W-F shifts in, I'm thrilled to be back to playing with thrift. The store and I fit each other, despite everything.
I'm happy, and they are lucky to have me, frankly:
the Housewares sales floor has been neglected since Ass't Man left a year ago.

Hm... what can I do? Let's move stuff around!

This week, I set up a Vintage section---a first for the store.
With Big Boss's permission––(I am being judicious and checking before I make big changes––he likes that (and, fair enough)––I moved Religious Goods from its prominent position to a side shelf, and moved Cool Old Stuff in:

Old stuff can seem junky among shiny, newer home decor. Separating it brings out its cool factor and justifies higher prices. (I mean, like $2.99.) 

I don't like that tacky wood bookshelf though. Maybe I could cover it?
[Linda Sue, I wish you'd come and make everything cool!]

The spun aluminum canisters are the coolest of the collection. A man commented on them, and I said, "Why don't you get them?"

"My wife prefers square things," he said.

He was pretty round himself, and I was going to say he and I wouldn't meet her standards, but figured body shape is not a joking matter, sadly...

Personally, my favorites are little oddments, like the "cool old stuff" baggy I assembled. It holds a farmer's account-diary from 1939, a metal pill tin, and a magnifying glass and a tube of test strips from a chemical company.

 

The slides ^ are from a 1977 trip to Little Norway--a living history museum in Wisconsin that closed in 2012.
You can see I left a couple of religious items that could count as Vintage (or kitsch). Most of our religious donations are treacly porcelain figurines.

Volunteer pricers often don't recognize less-than-obvious vintage.
They'd priced the floral tray 99 cents. It's hand painted and stamped "Made in USSR" on the back. Not super valuable--there are zillions of them--but they do sell online from $20 up.
I repriced it $2.99:

 

I pulled the Dippity-do ^ from the trash, with its original 97¢ Kresge price sticker.
"A little dab'll do ya." Oh, no--that's Brylcreem.

I LOVE how vintage opens history up.
The above white and blue pitcher & cup are stamped 'National Brotherhood of Operative Potters'. 
The NBOP "was founded in 1890 when skilled pottery workers and unionists in the vicinity of East Liverpool, Ohio, broke away from the then faltering Knights of Labor." 
[via Kent State U]

Yesterday I threw out leftovers from the Halloween display (= a jumble of garbage) and set up Thanksgiving. Standard stuff, mostly.

I'd already set up Christmas, below.
Nothing super cool . . . yet. There are boxes and boxes of this stuff to be priced and put out. I know there's something I NEED in there.

It's not all about stuff, though. I also reinstituted a practice I'd started: cooking hot lunch for my coworkers once a week, using free food from the food shelf near my house.

I made chicken chili on Weds., with fresh salsa, colored bell peppers, butternut squash, and chopped onions.
(It's wonderful to get free fresh veg, but they're always at the edge of melting into sludge, so you have to use them right away.)

I'd started making lunch after a coworker told me he was out of groceries. A lot of my coworkers have no financial back-up. (I have savings from my dead relatives.)
So I started for practical reasons––"feed my sheep"––but it has a really nice side-effect:
people serve themselves from the crock pot in the break room, then sit down and eat together.

Below, L to R: Big Boss, Manageress, me, and Volunteer Abby, at the charitable society's annual dinner, spring 2023:

Big Boss and I have had good, meaningful conversations--mostly about scripture. He's Christian and I'm Catholic--NOT the same thing, as you know.
So we differ, but we would both agree with Ram Dass:
"Treat everyone you meet like they are God in drag".
(Though Big Boss would not say "drag".)

We have also clashed pretty seriously in the six years I was at the store. He values Obedience as a virtue.
I Question Authority.
Once I was so mad about a matter of fairness, I broke something in front of him!
He walked away.
Later he came back and said I was right.

I'm surprised he hired me back.
I know (because she told me) that Manageress pushed him to do so.
In fact, it was her saying to me, "Maybe this is your place" that made me even consider coming back.
I'd rejected the possibility as a bad idea when I quit the high school in late August.

When she'd suggested it, I told Manageress that Big Boss wouldn't hire me back.
And I know he was worried about doing so. Abby told me after he rehired me that Big Boss had asked her opinion.
He'd said, "She's strong willed". As in, that's a BAD thing.

"But she's been working for free because she loves the store," Abby told him. "And she knows everything and everyone, and she's a hard worker. You and she don't have to agree on everything."

"That's what I'm thinking," he said.

I don't know that we will clash (so much) going forward.
We know each other, and I think, I hope, we will respect our differences. Like how I asked him for his opinion about moving things around. And he does have good ones; he has worked at the store for thirty years! 

For now, it seems I was wrong. He did hire me back, and it is a good thing.
Fingers crossed!