Goodwill helps the poor, right?
They collect clothing donations to provide affordable clothing to those in
need. It sounds pretty good to me. That is until I came across an article in
The Week that revealed that a goodwill employee was sent to jail for giving
poor people a discount.
19-year-old Andrew Anderson was
charged with grand theft. Anderson defended himself in saying that he saw
people come in wearing all the clothes they had with only two or three dollars
to their names. He figured that since Goodwill is a giving company, he could
take upon himself to be giving. I guess he had the wrong impression about just
how giving Goodwill actually is.
At other companies, it would be
totally inappropriate to give out discounts wherever you see fit. However, I
think that at Goodwill it’s a different situation since the clothing comes from
donations. If I donated clothing, I would rather see it go to people like the
ones Anderson was trying to help instead of people who go to Goodwill to find a
costume or go thrift shopping for fun. People donate their clothes to Goodwill
so that Goodwill can sell them for an affordable price. If that price isn’t
affordable to some people in need, what’s the harm in helping them out?
Maddie, what an interesting argument to bring up! I agree with you that this punishment was severe considering the circumstances. Perhaps this says something about America's views on giving to charity. I think especially in the North Shore, people consider chairity work giving money. While this can help certain organizations, will this actually solve long term problems? Or is money just a short term solution to cover the problem up? This is similar to the Goodwill incident because Goodwill claims to be doing good things for American society, but we can see they might not be as giving as they appear to be. Americans may like the idea of giving, but our idea of charity might not be the most affective way to solve issues in the world.
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