I severely injured my left wrist attempting to keep up the pace in the back room. Doctor diagnosed Tendonitis. I then broke my toe to an non-work related accident, but the company refused to accommodate, and forced me to perform tasks that required more walking than any other employee. Torture. It's been 8 months since the brake, 6 since I quit, and it's still broken to this day. I had to remove my shoe and show my boss the swollen purpleness after 2 hours of limping around putting clothes out on the floor. Headphones aren't allowed, even though you're required to scream to other employees anyway, and you're never around customers. No beverages allowed, not even under the tables.
The store policies require you to throw away perfectly good clothing because of defects that can't be noticed unless thorough inspection. And here I thought it was a thrift store. I was forced to throw away brand new military fatigues, uniforms that resembled official law enforcement, tactical pants (which are just black pants with lots of pockets), jumpsuits, mechanic uniforms, expensive dresses for being tangled up, funny shirts for being suggestive, not even mildly offensive. It got to the point where I had to throw away big winter coats for missing single buttons, thinking to myself, there's homeless people in my town that wouldn't care about little defects like that, and we're just gonna trash it.
The process of work back there is step by step, which leaves certain people doing more work for the same pay. Sometimes the order is all wrong, but management will stomp on you for suggesting a better alternative. My job was to hang women's clothes that came down the line. A task that required slightly more time than simply separating women's pants from women's tops, yet I would be blamed for holding up the line. Then, further down the line after me, they would discard 60% of what I hung, making it a waste of effort and time. We processed about 10k pounds of clothes per day, if you were wondering why I'm complaining about hanging "a few pieces of clothes".
Up front, every other customer rips off a tag in order to dispute a price, which requires the long task of repricing an item. Employees are not allowed to buy new items, it has to be up for sale for 3 days before becoming available for their discount.
The work enviornment itself is disgusting. Aside from the constant drama and arguments, which I can tolerate, as I have patience... what I do not have patience for is the filthy conditions we work in. Most people are smokers, so nobody cared, but I did. At the end of every day, I would have to wipe off very noticable fuzz off of my glasses. Tiny fuzz particles build up by the hour and I wonder what I'm BREATHING in when I'm there. Clothes are not cleaned, simply sprayed with fabreeze, and there's mold everywhere.
Not to mention the actual labor for minimum wage is not worth what you do there. Work here if you're homeless, or desperate.