Lowest of the low

I regularly help out at the local foodbank. It opens three times a week and  we see over 400 families a week. Fridays (when I volunteer) are probably our busiest day of all as not only do we hand out food, but also provide a 2-course sit-down meal. We have advisers  who can help with benefits or housing problems, counsellors for issues with mental health and the occasional visit of a dentist or optician to check teeth and eyes for those who cant afford the normal NHS routes.  There's also a cafe to provide hot drinks and cake on all three sessions.

I get involved with preparing the bags of food to hand out to the guests and actually handing them out to the long queue that forms. People start arriving an hour before the foodbank opens in order to get at the front of the queue and get the best pick of fruit and veg on offer. Since Covid and the general economic slump, the number of guests has swelled alarmingly, whereas the number of donations has relatively dwindled as donors pull their own belts in. We have a shipping container in the ground of the church which once was full from floor to ceiling with crates of donations, but that dwindled to a very sad few crates in no time. 

Just over a year ago, it was decided to open a charity shop in the local high street, all profit going to the foodbank to buy in bulk things like pasta, toilet roll, tins of soup and beans, shampoo, nappies and anything else we were low on. The shop has been a godsend and I help out with that too once a week. Sometimes I sort donated clothes, books and toys, price them up and put them out in the shop. Sometimes I help on the till. A paid manageress and deputy manageress divide the shifts between them and, apart from electricity and rent, all profits are ploughed back into providing food for the foodbank. We don't put any old rubbish in the shop and pride ourselves on being the sort of shop people love to spend time in as they know they will find quality items in there. Anything past its best (full of holes, snags or stains) still makes money as they are bought by a ragman for so much a kilo. Anything in between -that is too good for the ragman but not good enough for the shop - goes into a pile which is given to the foodbank itself for guests to rummage through for free. A lot of local people use the foodbank shop as they say it represents good quality compared to other charity shops in the neighbourhood.

Unfortunately, there are some unsavoury characters who think it is OK to shoplift. We have installed CCTV cameras to spot the culprits, although we have been told not to get involved in an argument in case these people carry knives or get violent.  We just make sure, if we see them again, we ask them to leave and say why. There are also some people going round deliberately getting rid of fake £20 notes too. We know how to spot the fake notes now, so again, we have to keep our eyes peeled. I really do despair of the human race sometimes. They are the lowest of the low to shoplift from/or con a shop trying to buy food for a foodbank.