trashy book donations

[KellyHabersham]

*this sort of thing is an example of why I wish people would think before deciding to donate things to the library*

This afternoon, the "Smith" family apparently decided to "grace" the library with about 30 book donations via our bookdrop, along with their regular returned items. Problem is, just about every one of their donations was falling apart, scribbled and written on with crayons/ink pens, or had been chewed at the corners.......basically, NOTHING we could've added to the collection, and only about six of those books were in decent enough shape to set side for our local "Friends of the Library" chapter's book-selling corner. (I hate having to throw books in the trash, but then again, I don't get what these people were thinking by donating books in such bad condition)

[Mnemjian]

That reminds me of the free section on Craigslist, where it's actually just a bunch of trash people don't want to deal with and are trying to get somebody to take away for them. The "Smith" family obviously wasn't putting "charitable" at the top of their list, either

[KellyHabersham]

Oh, I've definitely gotten the feeling that people take advantage of our donation policy for such reasons........we're not allowed to turn down any donations (this being a policy set by those in Administration), and if non-library items are left in the bookdrops, we have to hold onto them for about a month or so. (the latter being because staff has no way to tell what was intended to be a donation and what might've been left by accident)

[Soulstealer]

Oh, I've definitely gotten the feeling that people take advantage of our donation policy for such reasons........we're not allowed to turn down any donations (this being a policy set by those in Administration), and if non-library items are left in the bookdrops, we have to hold onto them for about a month or so. (the latter being because staff has no way to tell what was intended to be a donation and what might've been left by accident)

We had this policy at an old job a while ago. Someone left a very ugly ceramic clown statue on the side walk once. Management wouldn't let us smash the thing right away, apparently it was still found on our property so the one month rule applies. Needless to say one month later it mysteriously vanished in pieces into the trash. Oh and a few of us had to wash up from the ceramic dust after wards.

[Seshat]

Does it have to be kept in one piece? An ugly ceramic clown might make a lovely mosaic.....

[Soulstealer]

Does it have to be kept in one piece? An ugly ceramic clown might make a lovely mosaic.....

You don't want any of it. The clown was made with really cheap ceramic and easily fell apart... I mean I know nothing.

[CaptainThrifty]

I feel for you. It's worse on my end as we get more than just books. I swear I have gotten modly books from someone and had to turn it down and they actually say something along the lines of "But someone might want it" ***facepalm*** I then have to explain the concept of health laws to them and why we don't want to take things we'll throw away since it cost us money we'd be better putting to our aid programs.

[JLG]

This reminds me of the time I volunteered at a food bank. People would donate food items that were not consumable. Like open packages of spaghetti, rice, and beans. Or my favorite, whatever grandma had in her cupboard for the last decade. Some of the food packaging was so old it did not have a barcode, just a sticker price.

I mean really why donate this crap to a food bank. It clearly needs to be tossed out. We had to take the food with a smile and a thank you and then we would toss it out.

[Flying Grype]

Oh, that kind of trashy! The library in the little backwater town where I grew up was essentially a depository for Harlequin romances that had already made the rounds of the local romance-reading crowd.

[KellyHabersham]

Oh, that kind of trashy! The library in the little backwater town where I grew up was essentially a depository for Harlequin romances that had already made the rounds of the local romance-reading crowd.

We actually don't get those too often........if we do, they end up getting thrown out because the librarians can't add them to our collection, and our local Friends chapter can't use them in their "Book Sale" corner because they don't sell.

[depechemodefan]

At a small branch I worked at for a while we got donations that I went through. Some stuff got trashed, but mostly it was textbooks and paperbacks. One time someone donated a cd of HIStory by Michael Jackon. I saw it on the shelf in the backroom one day and the next it was gone. Yeah, people working at the library would take some donated stuff.

[bubblelittlepally]

People have the mentality that just because it's complete garbage, that some poor underprivaliged person will charish it forever when that's not the case. We get that at the Housing Authoirty all the time, "As Seen on TV" junk missing parts, stained underware, clothes with holes, nasty old bed sheets, and all sorts of junk.

Most of the donations we get, we throw away.

[South Texan]

I don't get what these people were thinking by donating books in such bad condition

Because these people have the delusion that there always is "someone" who can use their trashed out belongings.

I sit on the board of two local charities. The amount of broken, torn, filthy, smelly, stained, burned out, worn out, out dated, obsolete and just unusable cast off crap and unrecognizable pieces to other crap we accept with a smile and hearty "Thank you so very much!" is unbelievable. We do it because we know that the moment we turn something down, that person or business will label us as ungrateful and never will give us any sort of donation ever again. Some of the businesses who have given us trash one year will turn around and give us wonderful items the next - OR become a sponsor of one of our events.

The dumpster at the office gets really full, though, around the end of the year when these businesses unload all their stuff on us.so they do not have to pay inventory tax on it and can claim a charitable donation.

[Lady J'ssem]

Ahhh donations.... I know exactly what you're talking about.

Our library we have times where we cannot accept donations (we're a pretty big library, so we get a ton of them), we put up signs, we cover (and sometimes hide!) the donation bins... and then we get all a ton of donations dumped into the drop box. Its "fun" sorting through our books, and donations.... Most I've gotten in one book drop so far has been 30, the librarian who had to check all of the books in looked on the edge of having a major fit, there wasn't any room for them!

And the saddest part of all that? The majority was magazines and computer manuals.... which we can't accept anyway and goes straight into the garbage!

[LadyAndreca]

Well, to be honest, I thought as a kid that anything I was done using would be handed on to someone else. I wore hand-me-down clothes that then went to other kids if I hadn't destroyed them, and toys I was done with went to my younger cousins. It wasn't until I was in middle school and my church started working with a local food pantry that I learned the concepts of 'if you think it's too old/gross for you to use, other people probably agree with you', and 'donate food YOU'D actually want to eat'.