I realise I may have come off like a selfish ass at some points in this. I've been doing volunteer work a couple times a year at a few local soup kitchens/food distribution centers since junior high. I'm a huge believer in karma, so in a way it is in my own self interest, making up for the past and racking up a comfortably positive padding on my Karma score. Our school district even has a star they tack onto your high school diploma for getting a "Service Hours Award" where you achieve 200 hours of documented volunteer work before graduation, which I would have received...had circumstances not required me to get a GED instead of a HS Diploma (Still went to college though) But the large majority of people working at Goodwill stores are employees who are, like at any job, hired and paid*. I wouldn't volunteer at a soup kitchen expecting to be able to take home free food, no. But Goodwill is more of a business, a retail store targeted at low-income / poverty level families. If you're below the poverty line and you go to Goodwill, you still have to pay for items, they are just cheap. They are a retail/thrift store chain. I do not feel any guilt at all for thinking this way because Goodwill is not a good company (see * note at end of post for an example).
*The majority of the employees are paid. There are a lot of articles all over the internet about how Goodwill exploits the system, I forget the technical term, to where they can hire disabled workers and pay them less than minimum wage. Something about how a disabled worker cannot perform their job comparably to a non-disabled person, and therefore do not deserve the minimum wage. Outrageous, really changed my opinion of the company as a whole.
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