Make it Count
For the most part, African Americans tip high on the scale of consumerism. On the one hand, we were conditioned to be consumers. That being said, some of us like shopping and spending. Others use it as a form of stress busting. Therapy, so to speak. After all, Black Friday was named after Blacks’ spending habits, not to mention our vanity, or at least being brainwashed into thinking that straight hair is better than our own, hence the billion-dollar wig/hair industry. Garyside also wants to note a not too recently law that was passed allowing African Americans to be able to wear their natural hair, but I digress. All of that being said brings Garyside to its point. Goodwill in Indiana and the Village Discount Outlet #06 in Hammond, Indiana are two thrift or resale stores. With all the monies Black folks spend, we tend to donate our perfectly used items back to Goodwill, as we make room for more. Need I mention that the Village Discount Outlet #06 in Hammond, Indiana has turned into a thrift (resale) store where ONLY Hispanics are hired to work. By the end of this story, Garyside respectfully hopes that Garyians find ways to bring a black economy to the community. As far as our donations; remember that old saying. “If we don’t stand for something, we will fall for anything.” Garyside is about to share with Garyians one of the reasons why we truly should make it count.
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Garyside will not speak for all, however majority of Black folks are habitual shoppers/spenders. Oftimes it is therapeutic in an effort to deal with stress. Just walking around a mall to shop or window shopping, or just walking around Goodwill browsing through countless items are huge stress busters. One can really get into the habit of browsing through pounds and pounds of other folks used stuff to find something you don’t need, but like. Again, it is at times therapeutic.
Goodwill has truly changed, at least the Goodwill Outlet store in Gary. Suffice to say Goodwill prices at the stores are truly outrageous, and to add insult to injury, everything they get is donated. They sell for enourmous prices, yet we only get to deduct $500 on our taxes. That being said, we spent so much money in the old Goodwill store on Ridge Road, just pass Grant Street that Goodwill relocated to a larger facility. The new location was built from the ground up. If you venture down Ridge Road heading towards Griffith you will see a huge Goodwill outlet store, and this location also houses a Community Career Center. With the move, Goodwill changed its selling practice. Now Goodwill sells by the pound. No kidding. You put all of your USED findings in a grocery looking cart, and when you get to the cashier, you put your huge cart on a scale built into the floor, and it is weighed. Walla. You pay $1.39 a pound for your used items; that by the way are nonreturnable. For the record, this Goodwill Outlet does not sell its furniture by the pound; however these used items are nonreturnable. Goodwill knows how to play the game, they get all kinds of grant monies, tax breaks and incentives to open up stores to supposedly employ the COMMUNITY. Right. Take a stroll one day to Gary’s Goodwill Outlet center and see just how many “community” workers work there.
Blacks as well as non-Hispanic whites went to Goodwill all the time. On the other hand, a lot of black folks did not visit, buy or like anything from Goodwill, and that still stands to this day. In this present day, Garyside has noticed that it appears as if a sizeable number of Blacks have lost their Goodwill fever for shopping. On the other hand, Goodwills’ shopping atmosphere at the Gary Outlet store has changed drastically. Now there are tons of Africans and white Hispanics, and when the tables get rotated, they race through the store to get to the tables. It is literally like a stampede. They literally pillage the tables. They will literally knock your ass over. Some even hang in the store waiting for new tables/new items to come out, and then they race like they are trying to get to a finish line. It is just horrible now, to a point where when the Goodwill employees do a rotation, meaning they are replacing the old table bins with new table bins and new items, the Goodwill employees have to announce that if they touch the tables before they are finished the rotation (putting all the bins in place) they will be banned from Goodwill. They literally have to warned them not to go across the yellow line until the rotation (all the table bins have been replaced and locked in) before they snatch the items from the bins. Have you ever seen a dog digging for a bone vigorously. That is how it looks. When Garyside says rotation in relation to the Gary’s Goodwill outlet it means that they will come in and replace the bins with new bins that have new items. Ironically, whatever doesn’t sell in Goodwill from those bins, once the bins are removed from the floor, then the Goodwill employees tear up or damage the merchandise before they discard it so it is of no good to anyone. Go freaking figure.
Here is what is interesting. The white Hispanics, as well as the Africans go through and buy several carts full to the brim of items. The white Hispanics then go over to flea markets or various other venues and sell their findings from Goodwill with over the top prices. What’s more, the same ones who speak only Spanish and, the Africans who only speak their native languages inside Goodwill speak perfectly good English over at the Flea market on Cleveland Street in Gary, Indiana, but I digress.
Garyside remembers when Goodwill was a staple to help those in need at low affordable prices, and now that profit margin has soared and Goodwill’s prices are over the top. Way too high. At Gary’s Outlet store there are no prices on anything, except the furniture. Then too some of the workers are getting lazier and lazier. A Garyian experienced this first hand. A Garyian rented a 10’ apartment sized U-Haul truck to donate her items to Goodwill. When the Garyian drove the U-Haul truck through the drive through, and the bell rang; the Black worker whispered to the white Hispanic worker, and stated: “All this shit” in earshot of the Black Garyian who was donating. The Garyian had not even opened up the back of the truck at that point. However, tons of the items still had tags on them, as majority of the items were purchased from Goodwill. [Sidebar: While the Garyian was packing stuff on the U-Haul truck to take to Goodwill, a neighbor saw her, and asked if she could have some of the items as the neighbor was watching what was being loaded on the U-Haul truck, of which the Garyian complied.]
After the U-Haul door was opened, the Black worker looked at the multitude of items in the truck and lied and stated: “We don’t take this stuff, as the white Hispanic stood there and listened to the lie and never uttered a word. Neither one of their lazy asses wanted to unload the stuff. The Garyian told the Black guy: “yes you do because I bought this stuff from Goodwill.” Then the Black worker got in and stood in the U-Haul truck. The white Hispanic disappeared for a considerable amount of time. The black worker stood in the U-Haul truck, and passed the boxes and other items to the Garyian and then the Garyian passed it to the white Hispanic. Go figure. No one was working harder than the other that day.
While on the U-Haul truck the Black worker was on his cellphone talking all the time to a point where the Garyian thought he was talking to her, and asked him. “What did you say? The Black worker said over and over “I am on my cellphone. I am not talking to you.” The Black worker left an ice cream maker on the truck, and when Garyian pointed it out by stating: “you forgot something” The Black worker stated “that is a damn bucket.” The Garyian told the worker “That is an ice cream maker.” The steel can where the ice cream is churned in was in the bucket as well, and the Garyian told the Black worker “Here is the top, and it is electric”. Again, both of these workers were lazy as hell. What’s more is the Black worker referred to Garyians items as a “bunch of shit”, and then went on to say that “we already have too much.” When the Garyian asked the Black guy “Who do you think you are cursing at?” He lied, and said “I didn’t curse”. The Garyian stated: “Yes you did, you said my stuff was “a bunch of shit.” Then the Black Guy said “I didn’t have to take your stuff.” The Garyian said “yes you do”. When the Garyian asked for his name since he was talking too much shit, and way too disrespectful, the Black guy stated: “my name is me”. The Garyian stated: “well me you have a Supervisor”, and asked the white Hispanic to go get a Supervisor.” The white Hispanic took ten minutes, and came back and said that the supervisor was in a meeting.”
Neither one of them gave the Garyian a donation receipt for the truck full of items including a red barely used OasisSpace Heavy Duty Rollator Walker – Bariatric Rollator Walker with Large Seat for Seniors Support up to 500 lbs, as well as chairs, tons of leather purses etc. The items were items that you would feel bad about throwing in the alley when someone could use them. Not to mention the over $50.00 cost for renting a U-Haul truck. At one point, if I could have found a dump, I would have dumped perfectly good items into it.
The Garyian told the Black worker that she would not be coming back to the store anymore, and would not ever donate shit to them again. What’s more the Garyian stated to the Black guy “what would happen to the store if people stopped donating?”, and his Black ass just looked stupid. The Garyian had to remind the Black Worker that it was not his store, and he had no damn right to discriminate or treat the Garyian like a piece of shit. However, while the Garyian stood there the Black worker kindly walked back to the car behind where the U-Haul truck sat, where a white man was sitting and took his one bag gracefully. The only words he uttered to that white man was “Thank you”.
The Garyian called to the store once the U-Haul truck was dropped off, and in the meantime spoke with the supervisor to get the Black and white Hispanic workers names to file a formal complaint. Then Garyian went right back to the Goodwill store to get her donation slip, that neither one of the workers bothered to even give her. The Garyian spoke to the Supervisor in the store and asked for their names to report them. The Supervisor said she would report the incident all the way up to the top as when she went back to the back to find out their names, several workers told her about the ill treatment the Garyian received as well as who did it.
All of that being said, the Black worker was one of those Black anti-black folks. One of the ones that think that all flat Becky is better than voluptuous Brenda, if you know what I mean. This Stockholm Syndrome Black man showed his black ass contempt for a black woman in front of his white Hispanic coworker—in Crown Point’s Goodwill on 93rd. You know the ones who have mixed kids, and will stand tall to tell you that “my kids are not black.” He was one of those. You know the ones who have Black Moms whose self-esteem is so low, especially if they are darker skinned, and have been treated like pieces of shit for being darker. A Black Women who will be scarred for the rest of her natural born life. The Black women who will now applaud the notion that “my grandbaby is light skinned, and has good hair”, as if Black folks hair isn’t good; when in fact our hair defies gravity, with our bad ass curves, and natural born butts. Listen, when God/Yahweh made black folks, he literally broke the mold. Not to mention Black is still beautiful, but I digress.
Suffice to say, Black folks have made a lot of these store/business owners wealthy in our own neighborhood. Just look at our community. What do we own? Just venture down Broadway, and see what we own, oftimes they do not even own the building they do hair in. Yet on the flip side of it is that you see Asian hair stores, which have made so much money in the black community that they have literally BUILT stores from the ground up. Again, what do we own, and who works in these places?
As Garyians we need to make it count! We give more than we get. They call black communities “Black Gold”. Again we have been branded to be perpetual consumers. Good ole Presidente Joe has made sure we don’t get the lion’s share of anything. Presidente has targeted who will if you get my drift. You know the one who had the audacity to state: “You ain’t black if you vote for Trump.” Garyside believes they may be in for a huge awakening come next election. I mean nobody is going to keep letting you screw them with no lube all the time. That is not even human nature. I mean even when your boss lies on and to you, and continues to screw you. YOU LEAVE. Your actions are not debatable, and they become non-negotiable. At that point, it does not matter what another says, but again I digress.
So Garyians let’s fast forward into the future, and make it count. One thing Black communities have are churches, of which we have made mega churches out of, and oftimes we have made Passa millionaires. You know how we do! We really should have our own country by now, but I digress. Another story. Another topic. Any who, if we just flip the script and instead of donating to billion dollar industries, we should donate to our own BLACK churches within the community who should in turn distribute it to the members within the community. We already know that monies will not be targeted for Black folks to open businesses. Only all others that claim to be minorities. This includes white women (who claim to be a minority and receive over 50% of Small business loans) will be targeted, just not Black folks. So what we should do here in Gary with all of these buildings is begin to operate as a group and open up some of these homes and redo them as Resale shops. The overabundance from the churches, as well as the donations from others will create some black millionaires in the community, and make some financially comfortable. A true rags to riches story. Just become a nonprofit is all. After all, isn’t someone else’s garbage, someone else’s treasure? All other ethnic groups do it. They work from within to build an economy amongst themselves, but we diversify our Black asses right out of wealth. Then display a eurocentric mentality to depict Blacks as not good to do business with. A slave mentality concept. Go figure. On the other hand, some frequent stores that follow them all around the store, stereotyping them as thieves. No hate crime bill for Blacks though, but I digress yet again.
Here is something to read and think about
“Goodwill Industries – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Goodwill_Industries
“Further, the website states that “Mark Curran” is neither the owner nor CEO. As of 2020, Steven Preston is the CEO of Goodwill Industries International and has …
Revenue: US$6.1 billion (2018)
Key people: Steven C. Preston; (President & C…
Founder: The Reverend Edgar J. Helms
Headquarters: 15810 Indianola Drive; Derwood, …”
Want to learn more, about Goodwill’s leadership? Below is a small section to read about Goodwill’s leadership, as well as a link for further reading.
“Preston served as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and as the Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, leading both federal agencies during times of national crisis . . .”
Click on this underlined Source to view link below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Preston
Click on this underlined Source to view link
https://www.goodwill.org/about-us/our-leadership/
In ending, Garyians, we need to start taking these lemons and make some lemonade, and we also need to drain our own swamp, so to speak.
