A Customer Recognized Her Late Mother’s Furniture At A Charity Shop — So The Employee Sold It Back To Her At A Discount
Pexels/Reddit
Regret usually doesn’t come with a second chance attached, but one customer’s did, and it was sitting on a charity store showroom floor.
After her mother passed away, one customer had donated a set of nesting tables, only to spend months wishing she hadn’t.
When she wandered back into the store and spotted them still there, marked down in price and waiting, she brought them right to the register.
What followed wasn’t tension or awkwardness; it was one of those genuinely nice moments retail workers don’t get very often.
Keep reading for the full heartwarming story.
A nice little story…
I work in a charity store that sells donated items. We get some really great stuff including high-end and antique furniture.
Stuff like that gets researched and priced by management to make sure the price is fair, but also what the stuff is worth.
This sometimes leads to high-value items sitting in the store for long periods of time.
A while back, we got a set of three nesting tables from Brandt Furniture. We found them for $1200+, so we put $600. (Don’t come at me, this is our process and we exist to raise money for a legit charity.)
Now, I thought the price was decent, they were very nice and in good shape. But, they sat. And sat. And sat, eventually hitting our 50% off sale.
But then one day, the tables finally got a bite from an interested customer, or so the employee thought.
This past week, a woman comes in and looks at them for a bit, like she’s considering buying them. I’m at the register watching her.
She grabs the price tag and brings it over.
Her actual story isn’t at all what the employee expected.
“I donated these tables, and I’d like to buy them back.” She doesn’t even bat an eye at the price written on the tag.
Turns out they were her mother’s, and she had donated them when she passed away. She had come to regret it, but when she saw we still had them, decided it was a sign.
The story actually ended on quite a positive note.
I explain that they’re on sale, so it’s down to $300, and she had $50 in store rewards, so with tax it’s $274. She’s honestly thrilled, I think more that the tables were still there and she didn’t care so much about the price.
She said she was happy to pay since it’s for a good cause.
It was a really nice interaction, and one of those moments that reminds me why I do what I do.
Well, that couldn’t have ended better!
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The universe gave this woman a much-needed second chance.
With a different type of customer, this story could have gone in a completely different direction.
Retail jobs mostly run on complaints, returns, and people arguing over coupon codes, so a lighthearted moment like this is a very welcome departure.
A grieving daughter got a second shot at something she thought she’d lost for good, and she didn’t even blink at the price tag on the way to getting it back.
Grief makes people give things away they’re not ready to give away, but this time, the universe gave her a second chance.
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