Facebook Yard Sale Groups: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

A couple of months ago a friend of mine turned me on to a yard sale Facebook group. Now keep in mind that my friend lives in Arizona and I live in California. I went to visit her and stayed for a month, helping her move and get settled in. The yard sale group was for the new small town she had moved to, a town of about 8,000 people, I sold things for her on this site and she has since bought quite a few things from this group. I was hooked while I was there! I even bought myself a pair of brand new name brand jeans for $15. This group is great, they always have interesting stuff for amazingly low prices. What’s even better? Most people deliver!!!! Know what else is great? They sell food and deliver that as well! Homemade bread, salsa, sandwiches, tamales, and so much more, all delivered to your door! What a great group! Everyone for the most part is nice and friendly as well.

Fast forward to me coming home from Arizona and deciding that I should join a group here in my fair city of over a half a million people, not including the surrounding community. What a rude awakening and what a vastly different experience. I knew it would be different, I just didn’t know the difference would be so extreme. I knew that it would be rare to find people who would deliver items for sale, I mean the geographic location alone is too vast for that, so no surprise there. I had to join 4 different groups, hoping to find a good one, again, understandable considering the difference in population. What I didn’t expect? Lack of control over what was being posted, rudeness, illegal items for sale (like food stamps and other questionable items), and the lack of interest or support of fellow group members. For instance, I had an item for sale, a popular cleansing shampoo. Most of the groups I posted this item on had no comments, but the one comment I received was: “Doesn’t work”. Wow, thanks for helping me make a sale (which is what I commented back to said person). I saw many posts where people were fighting, threatening each other, and being unbelievably rude. The experience has really turned me off to the yard sale groups in my city. I think my friends’ new community is an anomaly in Facebook yard sale groups. I know one thing for sure…if I took everything that I wanted to sell to her little town in Arizona, I would probably sell everything and have a good time doing it!

So, if any of you are thinking of starting a Facebook yard sale group, I’d recommend that you be a vigilant Administrator if you want it to be successful. Oh yeah and if you’re an Admin, don’t pin the items that YOU have for sale at the top of the group, that is rude and unfair to others. Just because you CAN do it, doesn’t mean you should.

So have fun! I hope that you have better luck in your city or town than I had in mine. And….

In Search Of Common Sense.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about common sense. I know that some people just don’t have it. I’ve also begun to realize that some people have it but are not using it. Why? Laziness and impatience. Not stopping to think about why something is the way that it is.

Case in point. I had a conversation on Facebook a couple of months ago, scratch that, I had more than one conversation within the same post. There is a band that is a favorite of mine, I belong to several groups on Facebook celebrating this band. The original posting was all CAPS if I can remember…which we know means “yelling” in computer circles Anyway, this person posted that we should all boycott Target because they did not have the new CD of this band in the store when she went there. Others joined in on the boycott bandwagon. The first thing I did when I saw the post was to go on Target’s website and did a search for the CD. Bingo! There it was. I posted that it was available online through Target. What did this person say? That they did a search and it was NOT THERE! So I went back re-did the search and posted the link. Did this person say, “wow, I must have done the search wrong” or whatever? Oh no, they were still angry that it was not in the store.

So what does someone with common sense think of this. Well the first thing I thought was, “OK I’ve solved your problem for you by finding the information that you either a) did not really search for or b) you insist on having it RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, in which case their problem is patience. Because common sense would say, “hey, problem solved I can order the CD. Yay!”. But no, this person STILL wants to boycott Target. So I explained the absurdity of the idea, I said that if they want to boycott then they needed to write Target and tell them why they are boycotting them. I said, “Tell them that even though they have made the CD available online you are boycotting it because it isn’t in the store.” Did this person see the absurdity? Maybe. They never replied again. So you’d THINK after this “conversation” that people seeing these comments would “get it”, but alas no. Another person wanted to boycott Walmart for the same reason, with a twist, online it said the CD was “available online and at some select stores”. This other person read that as “available in stores”. So again, myself, and this time a couple of other people, had to explain what it actually said online and what that means. Meanwhile there are continuing comments on this same post about boycotting Target AND Walmart. Seriously? Some people may say that I should get over myself or not be condescending or any number of negative things. I will not get over myself, I am frustrated and I KNOW I am not alone. The difference is that I said something about it, because I TRULY want people to USE THEIR COMMON SENSE! Maybe I was born in an age where using common sense was practiced more. Perhaps as parents some of us haven’t taught our children how to use their common sense. Or maybe these days we are just a part of a society that insists on having everything right now, no waiting. Or maybe people just like to complain more. I mean, look at politics, there is nothing but complaining ALL OF THE TIME!

My younger son works at a big box electronics store and goes through this every day. He and I had a conversation on this very subject the other day. He talked about how angry people get at his store when they(his store) don’t have a certain brand of product or the EXACT cable, or a DVD from the 80’s, or any number of other things. The first thing I said was, “There is no way that you could have EVERY single thing that a person wants in one store”. and he said, “Right?!!! I have to tell people that all of the time, they get so angry and start yelling, even though the item is available online!”. I said, “Of course you can’t stock everything, otherwise your store would be 3 or 4 times the size it is. At least!” THAT my friends is using your common sense, taking a moment and thinking about WHY an item isn’t in a store. Common sense tells you why, but only of you take a minute to ponder it. Getting angry and yelling because you can’t have something RIGHT THIS MINUTE is what a 2 year old does. Aren’t we better than that? Haven’t we gained anything with age, besides wrinkles and gray hair?

Whether it’s daily life, shopping, politics, or why some people act the way that they do. It is so important not only to have common sense, but to practice it.