Tulsa, OK

I am so frustrated. My brother and his family are in town visiting from Ohio. They love to shop at thrift stores. So, we thought we would take them shopping at some of the many stores we have here. We made it to two.

We started at the Goodwill on Garnett just south of Admiral Blvd. It’s a nice store and we found a few things in no time (2 dresses for my girl, and toys for their boys). I love how they divide clothing by colors. I’ve noticed more local thrift stores doing this recently, but Goodwill started doing it years ago.

After Goodwill, we decided to take Garnett down to 71st and check out the newer (and nicer) Salvation Army store. It is a nice store, and we found several tops we liked right away. And there is where my frustration started.

Half of the things we liked had numbers written on them with markers. Not little numbers in out-of-the-way places either. These are inch high numbers (one inch high x 9 inches long on one blouse) right across the front of the garment, hardly unnoticeable.

We decide to ask about the marks, so I take one to a cashier and ask about these obnoxious markings. She tells me that a certain national, “super” chain marks everything they donate this way. Everything. WTF.

Even if the cashier was right and the marks were removable, I think it’s an hateful practice and totally unnecessary.

I can understand a retailer wanting to prevent someone from buying at the thrift store and then returning to the retailer for a full refund. And, to be fair, this retailer is nice enough to take returns without receipts.

However, they don’t accept clothing returns if the item’s size/care tags have been removed. So why not just mark the tags some way to prevent returns? There is no reason to deface the garment itself.

The marks don’t always come off either. At least half of what we bought had marks, and only half of those came clean. Maybe this seems trivial and even petty, but think about it.

What if you’re shopping at the thrift store, not because you’re an awesome bargain hunter, but because you simply can’t afford to shop anywhere else?

So you have $20 to buy your kids some summer clothes. You buy these marked clothes because they’re cute, the right size, the kids like them, and the store’s staff thinks the marks can be removed. Hey, you’re a mom, you’ve picked up a few laundry tricks here and there, surely you can get a little ink out of a few clothes.

Only to get home and find out none of your tricks work and the marks seem to be made with permanent markers, like a Sharpie. Great.

Do you toss the clothes and have $20 wasted, or do you make the kids wear them and feel “marked” by poverty?

Are poor people the new Jews, to be marked by numbers and symbols on their clothes? That may seem like a rather extreme comparison, but I would never belittle the suffering they (and others) endured at the hands of Nazi fascism. People seem to forget, the nazis started small and worked their way up to tattooing people and shipping them off to die.

I just seem to see more little signs every day that hint at a gradual slide into a new fascism right here at home. That is not why my grandfather fought World War II, so that we could become the enemy. Whether it’s a slow slide or a blind leap into fascism, the end is just as ugly.

thrift store, Goodwill, Salvation Army, bargain, retail, markings, returns, poverty, poor, jews, fascism