Whether we're looking for it or not, drama has a way of finding us. It isn't always easy to know how to handle a situation, and harder still to know whether the tack we took was the right one.
For these situations, the jury of Reddit can help us untangle these awkward social situations. These scenarios are all more than a little bit uncomfortable — but fortunately, in each case, we have a definite verdict. Keep reading to learn more.
"Am I the jerk for taking all of the clothes in my size off the rack so resellers couldn't grab everything before I looked?"
This dilemma brings us to a thrift store. If you've spent much time in thrift stores over the years, you've probably noticed a marked change. While there used to be better selection and better prices, resellers have started snatching up all of the good stuff.
The poster of this story is mindful of this (it's definitely not her first thrift store rodeo), so she decided to take some proactive measures on her most recent visit.
She noticed a likely reseller walk into the area.
Three women came in, all consulting tablets to check online prices for the stuff in the thrift store. "They were clearly resellers and started grabbing stuff after checking labels," she wrote.
This put a "sense of dread" into the poster, so she decided to take everything in her size off of the rack and threw it all into her cart. This way, she reasoned, she'd have dibs on it before scavengers could take all of the good stuff.
The resellers started staring.
The poster asked them what their deal was. "One was like, 'We'd like to be able to see what's on the rack too.' I said that they could as soon as I was done."
At this, the women scoffed and said she was being rude. It didn't end there, though, as one of the women literally tried to snatch a top out of her hands as she held it up for a better look.
Resellers travel in packs.
This obviously isn't a hard and fast rule, but it seems to be true more often than not. Commenters pointed this out again and again: For resellers, a group means it's easy to divide and conquer.
Of course, the poster's story dealt with one of these packs of resellers. Perhaps the fact that there were three of them emboldened them to be jerks to her because there's strength in numbers.
"First come, first serve."
It all seems to boil down to this simple statement. While the ethics of reselling thrifted goods can be debated endlessly, it's kind of beside the point. Ultimately, the first person to get their hands on a product has the right to buy it.
Commenters shared their experiences, saying they'd had to resort to these tactics at clothing stores, bookstores, and everywhere in between. Shopping can be a competitive sport sometimes.
"Resellers have ruined thrifting."
"I have been thrifting for 15 years, and I used to find great stuff in my size all the time...now it's just leftover junk," wrote one exasperated commenter. "They are the same as landlords, in my opinion, and there are way more ethical professions."
In the smartphone era, it's easier than ever to quickly look up the value of an item if you're shopping, and it seems that this convenience has made thrift stores less special than they used to be.
This isn't the point of thrift stores.
Many thrift stores are affiliated with charities and make efforts to keep costs low in order to provide quality used products to those who couldn't otherwise afford them.
"[Resellers] take people's charitable donations and treat it like their business," wrote a commenter. "These people are the scourge of the charity community. Rather than supporting a place for people to buy needed items for cheaper, they look for profit."
At this point, an employee stepped in.
Both sides explained their positions to the worker, who concluded that the poster wasn't doing anything wrong by putting clothes into a rack. He then thanked her for putting stuff back on the rack when she was done with it.
"I finished what I was doing with the women breathing down my neck and took my clothes to go try on," she wrote. "One of them kept following me and asked me what the [heck] my problem was, why I was being such a [jerk], etc."
Let's hear from someone who donates these clothes.
One commenter who donates a lot of nice clothes to thrift shops wrote, "I would like others who can't easily afford them to get them...not so someone else can swoop in and sell my clothes for their profit."
She added that it's a different situation if this is done to people who genuinely just want to shop for themselves — but judging by the story here, the women were pretty clearly resellers.
It's the law of the jungle at the thrift shop.
"I'm pretty judgey about thrift resellers in general, but they would have done EXACTLY the same thing you did if they had been there before you," wrote a commenter. "The only different is they would have been slightly more selective based on their researches."
This was a pretty common theme in the comments: That, to a certain extent at least, it's everyone for themselves when it comes to shopping — and if you need to throw a bunch of stuff in your cart, then so be it.
Things really got out of hand.
The resellers were being absolutely jerks in their actions. Snatching clothes out of someone's hands and using salty language to insult them is never acceptable. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the poster was in the right.
Is it acceptable to 'hoard' clothes so others can't get a look? How do the stakes change when you're doing this to resellers versus legitimate shoppers? It's a nuanced issue, so the poster wanted to know if they were in the wrong.
This verdict isn't even that complicated.
One might expect a few thrift store resellers to chime in and share their side of the story, but that didn't really happen. The closest thing to support for resellers came in the form of "first come, first served" messaging.
It's hard to argue against the poster, considering she just wanted to buy some clothes for herself and was putting unwanted items back on the hangers for others to enjoy.