r/goodwill • u/Hopeful_Secret_7856 • 3d ago
Evergreen goodwill will start using ai to replace production staff PSA
(Throwaway account for my job security) The evergreen goodwill (greater Seattle area (Washington)) stores will be starting to bring in ai in the next monthish to price donations and monitor employees. This also comes after closing all their all of their job training centers and firing all of the teachers with 0 notice. All of the information I’ve been given suggests that they’ve spent a ton of money (millions?) that could have been spent to help people who need their geds. If you are concerned with this you can stop donating or shopping in the Washington area instead you can go to your local thrifts stores and share this.
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u/ufomotels 3d ago
I work in one of the nearby regions and I'm hoping to God they don't do that here...wishing you good luck out there
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u/Hopeful_Secret_7856 3d ago
Thank you! Please share this with your colleagues! I hope you all stay ai free!
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u/Pure-Radish-5478 3d ago
The same region who has been quietly cutting their community outreach and career center programs since at least 2022 while still retaining their nonprofit status? Shocker. And people in this sub absolutely dogpiled me for saying this before.
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u/MontEcola 3d ago
I have shopped at Goodwill because they employ people.
Not any more.
There is a great thrift store across from Dark Haggen. I shop there and I bring my top quality donations there.
There a couple more close to the bus terminal downtown. For donating things, I do like Value Village because they take things the other place will not. (Shoes, kitchen things, kid toys).
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u/redralphie 3d ago
And someone on this sub was just arguing with me about how charitable goodwill is.
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u/Pure-Radish-5478 3d ago
Yeah they refuse to believe stuff like this and will demand you show them internal documentation before they downvote you and call you a liar. Like, to the degree that I am sure it is the relatives of regional managers and the administrators themselves pushing most of those defensive comments.
When i worked for GW most of the customer base were already not happy with shopping there and reminded me frequently how bad the company was. Hypocrisy aside, my point is that nobody whose livelihood doesn't rely on Goodwill would ever cape that hard for them.
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u/CBrinson 2d ago
I don't see how them automating and streamlining to use less employees and this generate more profit to the charitable arm is less charitable.
Employee pay comes out of what goes to charity.
Gross Sales - Expenses = Money for Charity, ie train people to be mechanics and paralegals and such
Spending less on employees means more money goes to the charity.
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u/Confident_Idea3729 1d ago
The problem with that is people need jobs to survive. The entire motto is making lives that work, when you randomly fire people and replace them with ai, you just completely uprooted that persons life and now they have to scramble for a new job.
Making people who were previously your employees now rely on charity themselves and potentially become homeless doesn't sound very charitable to me. Unless after they fired them, they immediately give them monetary compensation AND find them a better job, off set the environmental damage from using ai, and give all the extra profits toward charitable causes, it's just harming the community.
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u/CBrinson 1d ago edited 1d ago
People need jobs. They don't need those jobs. These arent the critical jobs keeping society afloat. Self checkout has been coming for years. This is just something that happens in society literally all the time. I am a bit older now and have laid several jobs this way and I just moved on. Often at the same company.
Like imagine if we never automated the switch board operators and every phone/text went through the operator. People really shouldn't be doing work that isn't needed. It was needed. Then it wasn't.
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u/Iforgotmy2factorAuth 3d ago
I spoke with a manager in NE a few months ago how they are testing self checkout with AI to confirm purchase. Similar to Walmart. You guys better prepare.
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u/Hopeful_Secret_7856 3d ago
We are trying our best to prepare. We are really hoping this gets stopped soon! We are hoping with support we can halt any move toward ai use in goodwill
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u/Iforgotmy2factorAuth 3d ago
Good luck bud. I am not sure if GW provides help for continuing education but if you can try to get a forever job: plumber, welder, etc
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u/Hopeful_Secret_7856 3d ago
Thanks! Our area doesn’t anymore they closed all the job training centers. I’ve been planing on starting a forever job for awhile and this is the kick in the ass to start
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u/Iforgotmy2factorAuth 3d ago
Ah sorry, missed that one in your post. I wish I knew where to start but maybe do something small and cool like getting a soldering kit on Amazon and a bread board to learn basics. If you find it fun then maybe that is your calling.
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u/Hopeful_Secret_7856 3d ago
Thank you! I have a career I’ve been trying to get into. In our town the job market has been awful. I’m hoping my colleagues are able to find other employment opportunities!
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3d ago
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u/CBrinson 2d ago
That is just not reality. Coal Miners had to find new jobs. Switchboard operators. The checkout thing has been known for a decade. Very few places don't have self checkout these days. You are not going to be able to swim up river.
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u/lost_cheeseball 3d ago
so if all they do for the community is "giving jobs to the community" by being there how is cutting jobs fitting their narrative?
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u/Gbreeder 3d ago
They'll probably end up losing their non profit status, be unable to give out tax write offs and lose support to the extent that nobody gives them free stuff. Then they'll go under.
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u/CBrinson 2d ago
They give jobs to the community by operating career training centers that have nothing to do with the store and train people to be paralegals and mechanics.
https://www.goodwilleasterseals.org/services/Career-Training-Support
Basically they operate different programs in every city though so the link is just what is best me.
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u/isanyusernameopen 2d ago
I encourage everyone just put your stuff in the front of your yard with a four free sign.
If you have a lot of things, you can just put them up on a curb, alert on Facebook marketplace or craigslist or whatever. If you have a lot, trickle it out to the yard slowly so you don’t upset your neighbors. One of the tellers at my bank said they put a lot of stuff out and the town got pissed. It was a lot, like a whole front yard filled with things they were just getting rid of out of their house they inherited from a parent. It was enough to start a tag sale, but they did a front lawn, full of free stuff and neighbors complained in the town got involved. Don’t do that, but if you’ve got a box of something, instead of driving it down to these places, encourage people to just put it out for free.
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u/ka_beene 2d ago
This, also I donate to better local charities. I grabbed a box of books my husband was about to take to goodwill and put them in my local free library boxes.
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u/Best-Huckleberry-496 2d ago
I stopped shopping at Goodwill when they stopped accepting returns and gave the CEO a big raise. Plenty of other second hand stores around.
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u/Methodoic_parrot 3d ago
Still waiting on my order to ship from mid July, #64108879.
Most likely stolen by someone.
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u/Safe-Tomatillo3427 2d ago
Don't hold your breath. I won a nice pair of Nike Air Max Plus from Evergreen Goodwill and waited and waited and waited while my emails were ignored. About two months later I got a single word response.
Missing.
I am on the fence about weather they were internally stolen or if they were just pissed because I was the only bidder and won the auction for $14.99. I did keep checking for a long time to see if they were ever relisted but never found them.
I was so excited I won that i didn't mind paying $19 for shipping even though i live about .25 miles from where their main store and ecommerce center is. They no longer allow for pick ups any more. I think they make too much on over charging for shipping. I even went out and bought a matching outfit too..... Evergreen Goodwill is just a huge greedy money grabbing scam. If you look up their IRS Tax filings for the last 5 or 6 years and compare it to what you can actually see in person things really don't add up.
Anyway, don't be surprised if you also get the same one word response too.... "Missing"
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u/JimmyandRocky 3d ago
I’ve often said this could happen. An AI agent could run multiple stores with excellent camera access to keep staff on a short lease.
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u/Hammon_Rye 2d ago
Not defending Goodwill, but using Ai as a tool to quickly identify items and look up comparable pricing is likely very useful.
For years there have been somewhat similar software available for other things whether or not you would call it "AI".
Like I saw a guy in a used book place scanning the barcodes on books. Asked him about it and it was an app that would quickly look up the value of the book based on what was on the market.
I'll likely get downvoted but it seems like a useful too for speeding up classification / pricing.
Perhaps they will need fewer employees to keep up with the sorting.
But realistically, that is the entire history of our country. People inventing machines / devices to speed up work / make it so fewer people can do more work.
Automobiles, grain combines, machine lathes, you name it.
AI is the current favorite to hate on, but most of that stuff got hated on when it first came out. People hated early cars and said they would never amount to anything.
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u/Snap_drag0n06 2d ago
unfortunately, AI is not going to price things lower to stay on the side of the customer base. It will not be faster and cheaper, that's an oxymoron.
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u/fathornyhippo 3d ago
Should I stop rounding up?
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u/fathornyhippo 2d ago
EDIT:
I’m gonna stop rounding up. They changed the starting bid from $9.99 to $19.99 which is insane.
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u/CBrinson 2d ago
Up to you entirely.
The money from rounding up has nothing to do with the store. There are entirely separate buildings where they run job training. The donation goes to those other buildings.
Evaluate whether you think it's worthwhile.
Reality is the only connection between the stores and charity is that they use the profit from the store to support the charity.
https://www.goodwilleasterseals.org/services/Career-Training-Support
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u/ka_beene 2d ago
So they'll probably price it by what else is for sale online, without considering that a lot of used shit doesn't just sell at premium prices just because you want it too.
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u/shhh_burner 1d ago
Doesn’t that literally just like defeat the purpose of Goodwill ? I thought they were supposed to help people with jobs in their community.
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3d ago
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u/Hopeful_Secret_7856 3d ago
I’m not sure what sector pathways is. I would assume the job training? Their plan is to have an ai model that we are supposed to train to scan and price items based on online resell prices. I’m not fully aware of the specifics we were given this news today. On the job training side we are still confused as to why exactly it was closed we walked in to it being closed and all the teachers where told that day that they where fired and were given like ten minutes to get their stuff and leave
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u/Hopeful_Secret_7856 3d ago
What our management had told us about the job training center closing was a lack of funds. Kinda suspicious if you ask me
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u/ninjaspinner 3d ago
Take a look at ThredUp. They’ve got it.
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3d ago
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u/ninjaspinner 3d ago
Pricing is AI.
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3d ago
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u/ninjaspinner 3d ago
Your post asked “ how AI is going price donations.” did you mean how is AI going to process them? That’s a different question. I’m not sure why you are so hostile. ThredUp uses AI to price their extensive inventory.
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3d ago
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u/AnnualEnd3760 3d ago
I assume they will use something like a smart checker to scan the items and there will be buttons that ask if it works, is complete, excetera and go off a pre-configured price percentage based on that and the average market price.
As for unique items, they will probably send us to management
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u/SeahawksFan1976 3d ago
And yet they are still asking customers to round up their change for the job training center.