Craigslist Rant
Aug. 10th, 2009 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ymarkovI can mostly sympathize with the guy who just posted the following to the Free Stuff section of Boston's Craigslist:
Following up on all of today's posts on this topic my experience has been that a free posting here more often than not brings the rude freaks out of the woodwork rather than putting an unneeded item in a grateful worthy's hands. The worst occasion I remember was a Newton Corner woman who asserted she wanted our entire children's bedroom set but showed up alone in a teensy car and proceeded to take one drawer from each dresser or desk, one finial from each bedpost, and the hardware from the mirror. She wanted to be sure we would be unable to give these things away to anyone else before she supposedly returned with a van or truck. I wasn't there when she did this to my wife, or I'd have thrown her out on her a__.
Anyway, we wrapped all this now useless to anyone but her stuff up and tarped it on the front landing for the woman's eventual return. Not only did this never happen, but in one of her endless "I'm delayed" emails this freak told us for the first time that she had no children and that all she really wanted were the dressers --- from a multipiece matched children's set --- for an art project. Meantime, of course, we had received apparently genuine requests for this furniture from families in tough straits, whose stories would melt your heart, but we could not help them.
I really am now of a mind where if the weather is forecast to be good for several days I simply put the item out front three days before trash day with a "Works!/Free!" sort of sign on it. It disappears just as quickly as if I had posted it here, and we are not in a high traffic area. M-A-Y-B-E I don't get to meet an interesting person who has been looking for exactly this item forever and is falling all over me thankful but I also don't have my time wasted by screwball pack rats and people who think they can do business selling everyone else's good intentions on eBay. I see some suggestions here to use Freecycle instead. I regret to report that I found it generated just as many bizarre requests and some of the users are... well, let us say, different.
Following up on all of today's posts on this topic my experience has been that a free posting here more often than not brings the rude freaks out of the woodwork rather than putting an unneeded item in a grateful worthy's hands. The worst occasion I remember was a Newton Corner woman who asserted she wanted our entire children's bedroom set but showed up alone in a teensy car and proceeded to take one drawer from each dresser or desk, one finial from each bedpost, and the hardware from the mirror. She wanted to be sure we would be unable to give these things away to anyone else before she supposedly returned with a van or truck. I wasn't there when she did this to my wife, or I'd have thrown her out on her a__.
Anyway, we wrapped all this now useless to anyone but her stuff up and tarped it on the front landing for the woman's eventual return. Not only did this never happen, but in one of her endless "I'm delayed" emails this freak told us for the first time that she had no children and that all she really wanted were the dressers --- from a multipiece matched children's set --- for an art project. Meantime, of course, we had received apparently genuine requests for this furniture from families in tough straits, whose stories would melt your heart, but we could not help them.
I really am now of a mind where if the weather is forecast to be good for several days I simply put the item out front three days before trash day with a "Works!/Free!" sort of sign on it. It disappears just as quickly as if I had posted it here, and we are not in a high traffic area. M-A-Y-B-E I don't get to meet an interesting person who has been looking for exactly this item forever and is falling all over me thankful but I also don't have my time wasted by screwball pack rats and people who think they can do business selling everyone else's good intentions on eBay. I see some suggestions here to use Freecycle instead. I regret to report that I found it generated just as many bizarre requests and some of the users are... well, let us say, different.
