Safari
The Safari is an organized event designed to allow customers and volunteers organized and supervised access to purchase items from the warehouse. It came as a response to a few issues:
- Volunteers were wanting to purchase things they found while working in the warehouse
- Customers were wanting to purchase things that weren't in the store, but that we were recycling in abundance
- Workers in all areas were getting overburdened with the above requests.
So in early 2009, it was proposed to designate one, set time for customers to gather in the Thrift Store for a "Safari."
Currently the Safari embarks from the Thrift Store promply at 3:00 pm on Wednesdays. It lasts as long as need be, up to one hour.
This event is solely a word-of-mouth affair, primarily designed to offer staff and volunteers a clear answer other than "no" when they are encountered with a request to buy some shiny, silly thing "from the back." If its popularity continues to grow, other arrangements will need to be made, such as adding additional times/days, adding supervision, setting a cap on number of participants, or other measures to ensure safe, controlled functioning of the event.
Beginning in January, 2010, laptop parts will no longer be included in the Safari. These items will be made available through the Thrift Store. The demand for these items has outstripped our ability to provide fair and equal access via the Safari, and has shown us that there is enough interest to warrent a place in the store.
The Safari will be of interest to artists, roboticists, people searching for oddball items that are below our criteria for reuse (laptop docking stations, printer parts, broken vacuum cleaners, etc.). People are allowed some time/space/tools for basic disassembly, but if the work is too fussy, the person will be sold the entire item, and asked to promise to bring all unused materials back to the Geek for proper recycling.
All blame for this event may be heaped on Tonyc.