FARMINGTON – Many local businesses and organizations have returned to their regular pre-pandemic way of conducting things, including area thrift stores who were hit hard by the Covid-19 shutdown. As the virus spread last spring, Work First Inc.’s three Touch of Class thrift store locations closed their doors, including backdoors where employees take in donations.
As of two weeks ago, all three locations reopened for regular business, including accepting donations, but the organization has been facing a new problem ever since.
More than a few times, employees have arrived at work to find giant, fifty-gallon trash bags sitting beside the back door, and they have not always been stuffed with gently used items and clothes.
“I think it’s a problem that everyone has right now,” Executive Director Linda LaRue Keniston said. “I think with the pandemic, people just found more time to clean.”
Touch of Class is not just your average thrift store. The stores are operated by Work First, a non-profit that supports adults with developmental disabilities, and employs many adults who might struggle to find work elsewhere. When the pandemic hit, the stores lost many of their employees and are still waiting to rehire at full capacity. Currently they are operating with five fewer employees than normal.
“We’re excited to be open again, but it’s more than we can handle right now,” LaRue Keniston said.
Manpower aside, Touch of Class spends a significant amount of money on disposing unusable items. Last year they spent $20,000 on trips to the dump with items such as completely bald tires, broken TVs and sometimes bags of trash that got mixed up with bags to donate.
“It can be pretty difficult sometimes,” LaRue Keniston said.
While she emphasized their appreciation for donations of gently used clothes (which they could use more of right now), LaRue Keniston said they do not need anymore household items at this time, and are not interested in leftover yard sale items. Donations should be made in smaller trips, allowing for employees to process each one, rather than one oversized load. LaRue Keniston said that the donation drop off area does have security cameras, and while they prefer not to, they will use the video footage for help if needed. Vehicles dumping large bags of items during closed hours will be traced down and owners will be requested to come back for their bags, she said.
