Goodwill Hunting

Tina’s breath rasped through her mask. Her skin itched under the rough fabric of her Carhart jacket, and her hands sweat within her rubber sanitation gloves. Even through the mask, she could smell the sickly-sweet odor of unwashed bodies and hot garbage. The florescent tubes cast a harsh, migraine-inducing light, and Tina’s rubber sneakers squealed whenever they so much as touched the stained concreate floor. Other shifty-eyed scavengers scuttled around her, casting about in the bins stacked widdershins all throughout the warehouse, each stuffed with mounds of used clothes, broken appliances, and outright rubbish. The “donations” that not even the local Goodwill store could offload. This Goodwill Outlet (basically the Goodwill for Goodwill, if that makes sense) was the last best hope to save what is conventionally considered trash from condemnation to the landfill – usually in favor of a hoarder’s nest.

When plumbing the depths of these warehouses, wearing protective clothing is a must – hence the mask, heavy jacket, and gloves. If the frequent encounters with yellow underwear and moldy Tupperware had not convinced Tina of this, then the powder scare back in November had. That was when Reggie, one of the regulars, discovered a stack of envelopes addressed via magazine letter cutouts to names including Paul McCartney, Elvis Presley, and the Illuminati. Thinking that he had discovered some interesting literature, Reggie opened the first of these, immediately releasing a cloud of white powder into the air. Eyes wide, Reggie had looked across the bins into Tina’s shocked gaze. Without a word, he carefully placed the envelopes down and then sprinted out of the building, pockets jingling with the spoons that he had snagged for his collection, Tina a step behind. Fortunately, it seems to have been a false alarm, as nothing really came of the event. Although, it had been a couple of months since she had seen Reggie last…

A crash and a POP startled Tina from these thoughts. She instinctively ducked for cover. She had become much jumpier since the gun incident of ‘24, which was a whole other story. Basically, one of the Geriatrics had found a handgun lodged in the back of a busted microwave, and Chris (the stamp guy, further explanation should not be needed) had taken a stray bullet to the hand (“My stamp hand,” he had cried). The Geriatric who had fired the shot claimed that he thought the handgun was a toy, but Tina had her doubts. The Geriatrics were old, lying bastards. She would trust any one of them about as far as she could toss them. Well, maybe not that far, given that their desiccated bodies could probably float away on a stiff breeze.

Vehement cursing echoed through the store and Tina relaxed as she realized that the underside of someone’s tired cardboard box had given up the ghost rather than another Chris. It had dumped out a handful of used lamps, a lightbulb had burst, and shards of glass now lay strewn across the cement floor. Tina took a deep breath through her nose – an action she immediately regretted – as her heart climbed out of her throat.

“Hey!”

Tina winced at the shrill shriek. Without looking, she knew the voice belonged to Karen – an unfortunate but admittedly appropriate name. She was the ringleader of the Tubby Tabbies, the dominant gang in this Outlet since the summer of ‘20 when they had taken over from the Geriatrics, whose numbers that year had experienced a severe reduction. Folks slunk out of the way as the Tubby Tabbies muscled through the crowd. The eight large women represented over one ton of self-righteous entitlement and wrath.

“That’s mine! That is mine! Find your own box!” Karen shouted as she bodied a terrified college student away from a used clothes bin.

“But I’ve been here for like ten minutes,” the college student spluttered.

“Stop shouting at me!” Karen screamed. “Don’t make me call security! I’ll do it! Security! SECURITY!”

Tina was quite sure that the outlet had as much security as the average cabbage patch, but the college student didn’t know that. In a terror, the poor boy stumbled over an overturned box of lamps and garden gnomes as he fled, leaving the Tubby Tabbies to cackle over their ill begotten spoils, the vicious magpies.

The Geriatrics were less raucous than the Tubby Tabbies, but infinitely more conniving. They only pretended to need those canes and walkers they swaggered in on. In reality, those were the instruments with which they enforced a dictatorial gerontocracy. If at any point one of the newbies or hobbyists accused them of assault, they would fall back on the age-old excuse of senility and bad hearing.

“He hit me!” cried a newbie.

“What?” asked a Geriatric, sounding confused and afraid.

“He said, you hit him,” a tired looking employee said, using his best talking-to-grandma-over-the-phone voice.

“Say what? A Jew bit Jim? Who the hell is Jim?” While the employee rubbed his eyes, surely wondering what evil he had done in a previous life to end up here, the Geriatric snuck a stinky wink at the newbie. Fork-tongued liar.

Tina kept her head down. You had to look after yourself; the Goodwill Outlet was no place for heroes. Only hoarders, lunatics, and the desperate visited this preview of the apocalypse. The trick was to get in and get out, fast. Claim a box before one of the gangs could pry it from you and pray to the poverty gods for good luck. If you were lucky, you might be able to get a second box, but that only tended to happen on the first Sunday of the month, when Sloppy Bob’s “Morning Mimosa Happy Hour” whittled the Tubby Tabbies down to six hundred or so pounds.

Alliances were important as well, of course, but they only ever went so far. Here, it was every woman for herself. One time, Rebecca had stolen an excellent 1970’s handbag in perfect condition straight from Tina’s bin. To be fair, who hasn’t engaged in a little petty theft? Still, Tina had caught her red-handed and Rebecca still refused to hand over the goods. That felt like a bridge too far. In return, Tina refused to help Rebecca during the Furby stampede of ’22, no matter how much she begged. That had been a real-life Skar and Mufasa moment for Tina.

Always wear gloves and look out for used needles or broken glass. If one of the gangs started eye-balling your box, then move on. That was a losing battle. If Haudrey slunk in your direction, move on faster. That guy was a weirdo. If the gangs inflicted physical trauma, then Haudrey inflicted mental trauma, the shit that Medicaid wouldn’t cover.

All things considered, Tina was getting too old for this shit. Between the constant gang wars, creepy Haudrey, and the racoon problem (they had laid claim over the bathrooms years ago and had successfully crushed any attempt at usurpation), she was halfway to losing her mind.

But she could not stop.

What had started as an attempt at thrift had transformed into a bad habit, and then into a rampant addiction that she could not kick. She was obsessed with finding good deals, rare collectables, and outright steals. She had found one or two in her day – a rare Pokémon card, a banana sticker from the ‘60s, a spoon signed by Tommy Wiseau – but nothing like the stories passed among the regulars in hushed tones. There had been no mattresses stuffed with cash or winning lottery tickets, no gold-plated Rolex watches or diamond rings. She had found nothing that would propel her to another tax bracket. Not that she paid taxes, but still.

Screams erupted from the back of the warehouse as Karen wrestled with three Geriatrics over a plastic bag filled with coins. A blurry-eyed employee regarded the confrontation flaccidly, and Haudrey leered at the confrontation eagerly. The bag tore open. Senior citizens and loose change flew everywhere. Chaos erupted and people punched, kicked, and bit their neighbors over the shiny bits of shrapnel. An octogenarian keened over a broken hip, but at this point nobody here believed a word spoken by someone over retirement age.

Tina took a deep breath – her cheeks puffing out on the exhale – and joined the brawl, throwing elbows indiscriminately, viciously fighting off young and old alike. After all, perhaps one of the coins was rare. Tina would be damned if she missed out.