Housing Works Thrift Shops - Columbus & 74th St — Local services in New York

Today was my first time visiting Housing Works Thrift and I had a bad experience with an employee who was unnecessarily rude. This is how it went down: I perused around the shop for about 20 minutes before I was done checking everything out. My husband was going to buy a book and was still looking. I saw a couple sitting on a nearby couch that seemed like it was set up for people to rest while they waited for their companions to finish shopping. There was no sign to indicate that one was not allowed to sit. I sat down on the couch just as the couple before me got up to leave. After a few minutes, I heard a snide voice say "How would you like to not sit there," in an extremely rude tone. I looked up to see an employee peering down at me with a mean smirk on her face. The way she went about this was unnecessarily nasty. It would have been fine if she had merely said "Excuse me, we are asking customers please not to sit on the couch" in a courteous tone. But instead, this employee chose to be rude for no reason. Despite her mean demeanor, I immediately stood up. I explained that because there was no sign that indicated people couldn't sit and since I had seen others sitting, it was not clear that sitting on the couch was "against the rules." She responded that sitting wasn't against the rules -- people are allowed to sit on the couch -- but that they were trying to sell the couch, and that they wanted people to be standing up looking around and spending money. There are a few things that struck me about her response. For one, you now have an employee (or perhaps owner, who knows) being rude to a potential customer not for breaking a clearly articulated rule, but rather, for doing something that was completely within the realm of established acceptable behavior. She approached me as if I was doing something blatantly "wrong" when in fact I wasn't even breaking any rule. Another baffling consideration: since sitting is not "against the rules," does this mean that the employee arbitrarily gets to decide who is "allowed" to sit on the couch and who isn't? Seems a bit shady. Finally, the employee explained her behavior in part by saying that she wanted to encourage people to spend money in the store. In case any management is reading this, I would like to note that, in fact, her approach had the opposite effect. After this encounter, I immediately went and found my husband to tell him we should leave. He was going to purchase a book but I explained to him that I did not want to spend any money in the store after an employee had been unnecessarily rude to me so he put the book back. I live in the area and buy most of my house and clothing items from thrift stores. Were it not for this negative experience, I likely would have been a regular customer but now I will not return the Columbus location of Housing Works Thrift. If Housing Works Thrift wants to encourage visitors to spend money in their store, I suggest they adjust their strategy by ensuring that employees are kind to...

Disappointing experience, particularly due to an employee named Christina and the older gentleman who seemed to be the manager of this Housing Works location. Over the weekend I found an item, a large item on the high end of pricing in the store, marked “auction,” and asked the very friendly weekend staff about the sale. I was kindly informed that the item (as well as the the item’s price) would be available Monday morning and that I should arrive early if I didn’t want to miss it. Well, my 14 year old niece was in town on Monday, so I brought her along with me. We arrived Monday morning 30 minutes before they opened. It was snowing pretty heavily. At 10 till, an older gentleman angrily pushed passed us and knocked on the glass door, and Christina came and opened it for him. “Hello,” I said very genuinely, “are you able to release pricing information?” Christina, flustered, harshly closed the door all but a crack and asked which item I was interested in. I told her and she responded with a scoff, “oh, that’s not even for sale.” She slammed the door, locked the locks and walked away before I could respond. We waited, and minutes later she returned to the double door entrance way, only to remain on the other side and shout a price. “What??” I responded. She simply shook her head while walking away. Finally 10:05 and they allow us in from the cold, only to be offered more scoffs, more rudeness, and avoided eye contact. Fortunately I was able to purchase the amazing item for an amazing price. Housing Works is a great company with a great cause and really fantastic finds. But this location clearly needs a new weekday...

Omg the worst thrift store ,I live close to the store and I know how much people used to donate including myself .My husband and me work as superintendent so when sometimes tenant moves to Europe they leave the whole apt bed ,sofa, dishes , we call Housing works at Columbus 74th St .I want the place to make money , the store has less things and furniture no more donations from people sadly this is only due to nasty people working there ,now they hardly have anything in the store to sell if they do it's junk and overpriced ,Today I found one jacket for man from Zara priced for 25$ a good deal 50% less from what I would pay in the store ,looked new not used ,waiting in line to pay and the salesperson with a name Michele who happened to be manager after I asked for one said ,not sorry or nothing she just ripped the ticket and said this is a women's jacket and this is not the price Bc i put it this morning by mistake ,she just wanted the jacket for herself and didn't want to sell it to me ,she thinks that jacket is worth more and the price will be tomorrow morning .I will never send a broken book in the store anymore ,there other thrift stores that will have my donations from now on . Thrift stores are also for the people in the community for our neighbors who can't afford the retail stores prices it does not have to be so expensive ,it's all bc of the You tubers finding this and that and now thrift stores are with prices of French...