a frequently-asked question

[Kathie Brosemer <kathie@cleannorth.org>]

Why don't we let everyone drop off their stuff on the Friday, and have the 
Saturday for just sales, like the other "swaps" do?


Mostly it's the number of volunteers we would need to have on hand to 
accept public drop offs on the Friday - and it's a work day and school day, 
and hard to get volunteers. It's a lot easier to just schedule one or two 
people to be there when businesses are dropping off, and the businesses 
have to have a prearranged time so our volunteer is only there when drop 
offs are scheduled.

Businesses generally provide their own people to unload, and many can't do 
that on Saturday.  Individuals usually bring one item, and we have to talk 
with each of them, so volunteers are much more occupied with each 
individual drop off than with businesses.  So we have to have more 
volunteers for them.

Individuals are far less likely to be dropping off stuff we can actually 
use.  So the opportunity to do setup/testing/rebuild in advance really 
doesn't matter all that much.  Yes, a few good things come in from 
individuals on the Saturday, and the techies are usually so bored by then 
that they leap on it and it's out on the table right away.

Also we don't charge the loonie drop off fee for a business, because we 
figure the stuff is likelier to be good reuseable stuff, and in many cases 
they're helping in other ways (publicity, volunteers, etc).  But we do 
charge the loonie to individuals, so it would be really messy to have 
individuals dropping off at the same time.  And dropping off and shopping 
don't require separate admission, which they would if we took drop offs on 
Friday and did sales on Saturday (that or we wouldn't charge admission for 
sales, but then we'd get even more of the pains-in-the-neck who hang around 
and hassle us all day).

Yes there are people who can't make it for drop offs on Saturday, but there 
are always people who can't make it for whatever reason.  Our reasons for 
doing it this way work for us.

thanks for asking.

K