12/13/2025
"My name's Lorraine. I'm 72. I work the fitting rooms at Goodwill on Hampton Street. Hand people numbered tags, make sure they don't steal, fold the clothes they leave behind. Most people don't talk to me. I'm just the woman sitting on a stool counting hangers.
But fitting rooms tell secrets bathrooms won't.
Like the girl, maybe 14, who tried on the same prom dress four times over three weeks. Never bought it. Just stood in front of the mirror, took a picture, left crying.
Fourth time she came, I said, "That dress loves you."
"I can't afford it," she whispered. "It's $18. But that's my lunch money for two weeks. My mom doesn't know I'm even thinking about prom. We can't afford those things."
I bought the dress. Told her someone returned it, it was damaged, she could have it for three dollars. She knew I was lying but took it anyway, sobbing into the scratchy tulle.
Started watching others. The woman trying on interview suits, choosing the one with the stain because it was cheaper. The elderly man measuring his waist against pants, putting back anything that actually fit because smaller sizes cost more. The mother swapping tags between kids' jackets when she thought I wasn't looking because her son needed a winter coat and she only had money for a spring one.
I started doing things I could definitely get fired for. Swapping price tags. Marking things damaged when they weren't. "Finding" coupons that didn't exist. Telling people items were part of a sale I'd invented five minutes earlier.
Cost me nothing, it was Goodwill's money, not mine. But it cost people their dignity to walk out without what they needed.
Then corporate audited our store. Found pricing discrepancies. Traced most to fitting room transactions. Called me in.
"Lorraine, you've been changing prices."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because your computer says a winter coat is worth $15. But to a mother who's watching her son shiver, it's worth everything. So I make the computer wrong."
Expected to be fired. Instead, the auditor, young woman named Rachel, was quiet for a long time. Then, "My mom used to shoplift from Goodwill because we couldn't afford even thrift store prices. She got arrested. I was eight. That arrest record kept her from getting jobs for years. We stayed poor because she tried not to be poor."
She closed her laptop. "I'm not reporting this. But teach me. Teach me which prices matter."
Rachel created "Dignity Pricing." Stores can now reduce prices at point of sale based on customer need. No questions. Fitting room attendants trained to recognize when $5 is the difference between someone having a coat or not.
Started at our store. Now it's sixty-three Goodwills nationwide.
That girl wore her prom dress. Graduated. Comes back every year on prom season with dresses to donate. "For girls like me," she says.
I'm 72. I count hangers in a fitting room that smells like mothballs and other people's lives.
But I've learned this, poverty makes you choose between needs. And sometimes, the cruelest choice is walking away from something that fits because a computer says you can't afford it.
So I make the computer lie. In the name of dignity.
Because no one should stand in a fitting room mirror crying over $18 they don't have.
Not when someone's sitting right there who can fix the price tag and fix the world, one dress at a time."
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By Grace Jenkins
