So, you may have seen my status yesterday about my bad experience with Freecycle in Clairton. Here's what happened:
I'm collecting garage sale items for a charity sale at work, and I posted a wanted ad on Freecycle. I got a response from a woman in Clairton saying she had several boxes of "knock knacks" from flea markets. I should have known right then that she was nuts. However, I'm not one to turn down a generous offer, so I set up a pickup time and got her address.
Yesterday was the day of pickup, and I had another stop to make in Imperial, where I actually received a large amount of clean, quality items. I was happily making my way into the bowels of Jefferson Hills when Gladys (the GPS I borrowed from my mom) told me I had arrived at my destination. I look to see a small, run-down house with a fenced-in yard overflowing with plastic children's toys. I'm talking pools, playhouses - you name it. I didn't see any boxes, so I went down a small alley of sorts to the back of her house. Sitting there were about 10 boxes of items, and I knew I was in trouble from just the sight of it. A rusty water cooler, an old stained pair of black pants, and a box full of dirty miniature tea sets was all I could distinguish from the masses. My car was already pretty full from my first stop, so I decided to take a few boxes of her items, just because I said I would, even though I knew I'd probably have to get rid of them at home or at least scour my body with bleach and pumice stones after coming in contact with them. I briefly rummaged around to figure out what I could possibly salvage and also what I could fit in my car. After loading in three boxes and a bag, I went on my merry way, intending to e-mail this woman when I got home, thank her for her donations, and make up some excuse about not being able to return for the rest of the items. In my defense, this was a 45-minute drive for a ton of junk that really belongs in a dump rather than on a flea market table.
So, I get home an hour or so later, after making a pit stop at Giant Eagle on the way, and I open my mailbox to compose my apology letter when what do I see? Hmm...an e-mail entitled "garage sale items" written by Nikki Morsaint, junk provider herself. Here is the exact text of the e-mail:
you know, I went through a lot of trouble to get things ready for you. I took several hours away from my kids in order to have it ready for you, and then you don't even take it. Not only that, but you don't have thew decentcy to knock on my door and tell my to lug it all back downstairs again, let alone bother to help. I am so glad I could be of help to your fundraiser." (typos were all hers)
I was shocked. Is this woman seriously yelling at me for not taking her ten piles of crap? Is she a quadrapelegic? How could it have possibly taken her HOURS to haphazardly dump a bunch of old junk in boxes and toss them on her lawn? And in what world am I going to knock on somebody's door that I've never met, in a bad neighborhood, and offer to help her "lug" her 3-pound cardboard boxes back inside? In hindsight, it would have been better for me to ignore her entirely, but I have a hot temper when it comes to being insulted through e-mail, so I wrote her back and explained that she only told me she had "several" boxes and I didn't have room in my car. I said I was actually going to thank her, but so much for that idea. Needless to say, we had an e-mail fight for a sequence of about 5 back-and-forths, where she proceeded to say that I was a liar, I only took the "new" items, and she took off work for the day in order to get things ready for me. By the end of all of this, I was fuming. Her comments were not only absurd, but verging on insanity. Our e-mail rants eventually ended, but I did get a little comfort from the moderator of Freecycle who told me that this woman was off-base and had no right to complain that I could not take 10 boxes of stuff when she only claimed to have a few.
Eventually I got over this little tiff and moved on with my life...until...I saw THIS post on craigslist today:
I took the time to go through all of my items for this woman that was so in need of these items for a fundraiser. It turns out she only took the box of new stuff, so she actually did not want flea market items, she wanted new stuff. It is unfortunate that other people use fundraisers as a means to get new things. Anyways I now have 8 boxes of flea items with no where to put them. They are ready to go, email for address.
ARE YOU SERIOUS, WOMAN??? I would really like to organize some kind of campaign against her, like where lots of people respond to her ad for the items and then either don't show up, show up and only take one or two boxes, or show up and add MORE boxes of junk to her piles. However, that's my vengeful side talking. All I did was send her a response to her craigslist ad, asking why she's still saying rude and untrue things. She probably won't respond, and tomorrow this will all be under the bridge, but for now, please leave a comment to commiserate/sympathize. It'd make me feel better.
