We had been working for ages and ages, and my back was aching, and my feet hurt, and I was exhausted.
I checked the time, because I thought we were nearly halfway through the 4-hour shift. To my surprise, it read 1:22, and the afternoon shift at the Hooker Warehouse Sale had only started at 1 p.m.
Oh, dear, it was going to be a long day.
It wasn’t the sale’s fault I was so tired and achy. Everyone else was bouncing around energetically and happily, and nothing you read here should discourage you from volunteering the next time the sale is held. I just hadn’t planned well. I was already tired because I had started heavy yardwork at 7 a.m. just to have the afternoon free for volunteer work. Instead of wearing proper shoes, I wore too-loose flats that did nothing to support my feet or cushion them from the cement of the warehouse floor. I hadn’t had lunch because I didn’t want to stop yard work to take the time for it, but after I had been there for about an hour, I did have a slice of the pizza that was offered at the volunteer sign-in table.
Twice a year Hooker Furniture holds a massive furniture sale in its warehouse on 58. The furniture was amazing, and the prices unbelievable – a mere fraction of the retail price. I could have gotten an entire fine, sturdy and comfortable living room suite for the price I recently paid just for the fabric to reupholster my beat-up rickety old living room furniture.
Hooker employees wore matching yellow T-shirts and community volunteers wore matching black T-shirts. Some of the yellow-shirted folks explained to me: The sale opened at 7 a.m. for Hooker employees exclusively; at 8 a.m., each Hooker employee could bring one guest. The sale opened up to the public at 9 a.m.
Proceeds of the sale benefited the SPCA and Boys & Girls Club, tremendous assistance for those two worthy organizations.
General volunteers received $50 vouchers to use toward furniture purchases, and Hooker employee-volunteers told me they got $300 vouchers. Hooker kept us fed and refreshed with cold sodas and water, pizza and an assortment of mini candy bars.
As well as benefiting the charities, the Hooker Furniture sale makes having a beautiful home full of fine, useful and built-to-last furniture accessible to people across income levels. What a service to our community.
By the time I arrived at 1 p.m., the sale was over, and it was pick-up time. Groups of volunteers were assigned to one of the docks. I was at Dock 8 with eight or 10 others. We were armed with huge packing foam rolls, two utility knives for cutting it, two sturdy handheld tape dispensers and boxes of clear tape and plastic wrap.
The customer would back up to the dock. One Hooker employee would have that customer’s list of purchases and send other Hooker employees to go get them. Once the yellow-shirted experts returned rolling the furniture over on carts, we’d get to work wrapping and taping it.
Sometimes it would be just a couple of pieces. It would get real exciting when it would be a table with many chairs, and especially when it was orders of several differently sized and shaped pieces.
Some people got the furniture wrapped as perfectly as if it were a Christmas gift. Others gave their wrapped pieces the wild shape of a ball of crumpled up paper.
Taping it all up seemed obvious and easy, but: Sometimes when we’d wave the tape dispenser across a package, the tape would get all twisted up and often get dislodged from the dispenser and occasionally even get all tangled up. Sometimes a warehouse worker (who, like the others, was volunteering) would kindly take the tape dispenser and whip it at lighting speed up and down and around the package, leaving stripes of perfectly placed, even, straight clear tape, then wink in a friendly manner as he gave the dispenser back.
The line that stretched from the warehouse through the parking lot and way on down the road was slow and the day was hot and the wait in line was hours and hours, but all of the drivers we saw were cheerful and excited about the furniture they had gotten, clearly worth well more than worth a little money and a day’s wait.
It could get entertaining watching some of them back up to the dock. I chuckled at their attempts while certainly admitting I’d never in a million years want to have to back up a trailer to a target myself.
One car tried, no lie, at least 60 or 70 times to back up to the dock, in a car with a trailer attached. He’d pull forward, then edge back sending the trailer off at some angle or other, over and over and over again. Little by little, we at Dock 8 lined up to watch the attempts which just got crazier and crazier. Had we all not been kind, respectful people, that would have been made into a viral video that would have set the internet into gales of laughter, but all phones stayed in the pockets or purses where they belonged.
When the fellow finally got the trailer close to the dock, but still not lined up, a very strong Hooker employee went over to pick up the trailer, move it slightly to the right, set it back down, and repeated a few times until it was lined up to the dock. The driver got out of the car, and we on the dock applauded.
While the camaraderie was great and the atmosphere light-hearted and cheery, my back, body, feet and eventually head hurt and I didn’t think I could take it much longer. I felt guilty for feeling that way, because those yellow-shirted Hooker employees next to me had been working there since 6 a.m.
Our shifts ended at 5 and I couldn’t wait to get out. In fact, since 1:22 p.m. I had been counting down the hours and then the 15-minute blocks and finally the minutes until 5. But –
But then word got around that the pick-up line was so long that the pick-up would be extended until 7 p.m., not 5. Hooker volunteers – who had been there since 6 a.m. – were asked to stay.
At 5 p.m. most of the volunteers exploded out of there like fifth graders on the last day of school. I could barely stay awake on the way to the car.
I picked up a delicious, spiced chick pea dinner from Dew Drop Inn behind the Leatherwood Food Lion. At home, I took a Goody’s headache powder and changed from the useless flats into sturdy, supportive hiking boots with Dr. Scholl’s gel arch-support inserts. My daughter and I ate a quick but delicious dinner.
That boots-Goody’s-dinner combination worked miracles. My daughter granted me another couple of hours’ worth of absence.
A new woman, refreshed and optimistic, I made it back to the warehouse quickly, and by 5:45 I again was working along with the volunteers, now a skeleton crew of mostly yellow-shirted Hooker employees who had been there since 6 a.m.
We got the last piece on our dock wrapped by 7:30 p.m. and headed out for home.
I would definitely work the sale again, and now I know how to show up better prepared to work.
But instead of preceding my working shift at the Hooker warehouse by yard work, I may precede it by some furniture shopping instead.
