Goodwill, if you’re listening: I’ve got a few beefs

A little more than four weeks into The Goodwill Project and I have a few beefs.

1. Your price tags often cover up the deets.

I’m a sucker for china dishes, for example. “Mismatched” is my middle name, so perhaps it shouldn’t matter, but I’m stymied every time by the natural inclination to turn over the dish or the bowl to learn the brand and pattern name only to find the details covered with the price tag. Could you askew the sticker?

2. The system for big ticket and heavy items raises my blood pressure.

It’s brilliant in theory: If you see something you want, you simply tear off the bottom of a perforated tag, take it to the sales counter and pay, then someone helps you bring the item out of the store and put it into your car.

But what about the eager buyer with a mind-change? They’ve left with the sales slip wadded in their fist. Or maybe nonchalantly slipped it into a Big Gulp cup on the plastics aisle, or tossed it in the trashcan on their way out the door.

Shopper B comes along, spots the item, beelines to it with heart racing, only to be then crushed to find the botttom half of the sticker gone. Being five minutes late to the party is part of the game, so you shake it off and move on in search of the next exciting find.

Again, brilliant in theory, but what about Shopper B’s natural inclination to stalk all the other customers for signs of who might be headed to the sales counter to finalize the purchase? And weirdly fantasizing about what’s in their pocket?

That’s how it happened at the Holcomb Bridge store. The bottom half of the sticker was gone and absolutely no one in the store seemed as excited about the deck chair find as I was.

It’s been weeks, and I still feel a spike in blood pressure when I think about Adirondacks.

Goodwill, what can you do to help out a Shopper B?