I Hate the Salvation Army

Here's why:

I have a desk and a PERFECTLY GOOD filing cabinet to give away, so I call the Salvation Army. They say they'll come and "take a look," and that their drivers have discretion over what they take or don't. And they give me the very precise pick up time of 7 to 5. That's AM and PM, respectively.

I expect I won't see them until the afternoon, since that's when they came the last time, but sure enough, I get a call at 7:15 this morning from a very snippy young man saying that his driver is out in front of my building trying to get ahold of me. I throw on some clothes, put the dog in the bedroom, and head downstairs.

Two guys are there waiting. The one with fewer teeth says, "How come you're not on the phone thing, bro?" referring to the apartment call box. I tell him I am. "Then how come I couldn't find you?" Because you have a second grade education, I almost say, but, hey, they're here to pick up my shit, so okay.

In the lobby, on the way to the elevator, I grab my paper. "Snitching someone's paper, huh?" says toothless guy, who, I now realize, REEKS of cigarette smoke and BO. No, it's mine, I say. "Just taking the front page?" No, you fucking idiot, there are papers bundled together and this one's mine and the other one belongs to... you know what, forget it, it doesn't matter.

He then asks what we have. I say we have a desk and a filing cabinet. "We don't mess around with metal filing cabinets." It's wood, I say.

We get inside and, because I wasn't expecting them until later, the desk is buried under a bunch of boxes. My bad, but still. While I'm lugging boxes and the one guy with more teeth stands there looking at me slack-jawed, the other guy goes and looks at the filing cabinet. "I can't see nothin'" he says and he starts fumbling for a light. It's dark because I was very recently asleep and the curtains were pulled. Dick.

He looks at the filing cabinet. "There's shit on it," he says, referring to a TV sitting on it. He comes back out and says, "we can't take it, bro. It's wobbly. And there's no back." Now I'm pissed. Fuck you, you can't take it. It's NOT wobbly, it's not supposed to have a back, it's actually a very nice filing cabinet that we have had in our home for five years. I say, just tighten the screws on the side if you think it's wobbly. "We don't do no maintenance stuff." They take the desk and leave.

Bottom line: I can't stand people I don't respect judging my stuff. Plus, the Salvation Army makes their people pray before they give them food. Assholes.