Once again, I tried to graciously donate a couch to the Goodwill. (Read about that mishap.) And once again, I was brutally rebuffed by the supposed Goodwill. This couch was a fine couch. It wasn’t too old; it was rarely sat on; and it spent most of its life in an unlit, unused wing of each of the two houses it lived in.
There were two Goodwill guys at the drop-off, but for the purposes of this re-entactment, I will combine them into one dude. Here’s how it went down:
Me: Hi. I’d like to donate this couch.
GW: (Inspects the couch for a second) We can’t take this.
Me: Really? Why?
GW: Because it looks used.
Me: (Impressively calm) Well…it is used. It’s a used couch.
GW: We can’t take it.
Me: I understand you have your rules, but what is wrong with this couch?
GW: We can’t take it.
Me: I am not trying to be shitty here. Please explain to me why this couch is unacceptable, because I REALLY don’t understand.
GW: Well, like I told you it looks used and I don’t think this is the original color. Look here (point to the top of the couch), it’s all freyed.
Me: That’s not freyed, that’s how the style of the couch is. (This is true, I assure you it wasn’t freyed.) And how do you know what the original color is? (There are no darker patches on the couch that betray the true color of the couch…because this IS the original color of the couch.)
GW: We can’t take it.
I wanted to ask him if I went over to the couch store and bought a new one, would he take that. However, at this point I was running late to pick up my nieces (a whole separate fiasco), and now I had to figure out what to do with the couch in my truck. My wife, Miranda Kopfschmetzen, had a bag of nice clothes she was going to drop off at the Badwill with the couch. I asked her if she wanted to leave those with the GW dudes. Loud enough for them to hear she says, “I’m not leaving my nice clothes with these guys!” I love my wife, Miranda Kopfschmertzen.
So what have we learned? Well, either the Goodwill has Tiffany’s-like standards and I have been deluding myself in thinking I am of their stature, or am complete white trash that even the Goodwill is disgusted by.