November 2026 at Experienced Goods
By Jennie Reichman ~ We live in a world of automated systems. From phones to cars to airplanes to grocery stores, it's all about pushing buttons and hoping for, believing, we will get the correct result. We are more or less forced to have faith in these systems, however mysterious they are to most of us, and so we get on airplanes, pay with our credit cards or phone apps, and, as I did recently, send packages through the mail. Specifically, I sent a birthday present to my friend Rebecca who lives in Nebraska, a beautiful handmade pottery mug I bought at Experienced Goods and that I knew she would love. I wrapped the heck out of it in bubble wrap and padded the box with lots of newspaper and sent it off near the end of September to get to her in time for her birthday.
A week and a half later I texted her and asked if the box had arrived: Nope. I had sent it priority mail and had a tracking number, so I went to the USPS website and tracked the package. It was in St. Louis, MO, but was “in transit to the destination”; odd, but fine, I would wait a few more days and track it again. This time the tracking said it was in Nashua, NH. What?!? “The package is in transit to the destination,” read the caption. Like heck it is, I thought, there is no way that a package sent 2 weeks prior, winding its way from Vermont to Missouri to New Hampshire is in transit to Nebraska. It continued to be stuck in Nashua for a few more days, so I called the USPS customer service number and got, you guessed it, an automated system! No matter what I did, I couldn’t button-push my way to an actual human, so I hung up and sent them an email instead, detailing the circuitous journey of my humble package. To my great surprise, a few hours later I got an email back from a lovely woman at the very post office in tiny Bayard, Nebraska where the package was destined to go. “Your package has been looping through many facilities,” she wrote. She had reached out to her district consumer affairs office and was working on getting the package to her post office. Real human assistance! Real human empathy!
I like to think this is the way we do things at Experienced Goods. We are a cheerful, efficient, thoughtful team of employees and volunteers who are all about good customer service and positive interactions. We chat with customers and donors, help people hunt down what they are shopping for, listen to any complaints and try to make things right for everyone. We recently added a new member to the EG team who really shines in this respect. Nicole is a Brattleboro native who comes to us after many years working as a manager in the restaurant business. To say she knows customer service is an understatement; she is calm, friendly, virtually unflappable, and incredibly industrious. She doesn’t like to be bored, so you will see her working at the cash register, tidying the sales floor, filling and beautifying the jewelry cases, hanging and tagging clothing in the sorting room and learning all the many non-automated systems that keep Experienced Goods humming. We are so excited that she has joined us! Please say hello to Nicole when you see her, but be quick, she’s always on the move to the next task!
So dare I say the “C” word? Christmas! And Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and all the other December holidays are just around the corner. Halloween costumes and décor are done, Thanksgiving flies by like it always does (do see us for your turkey day cooking and serving gear, though, we have lots), and holiday everything is filling the store. Plus, we have ice skates, warm, puffy coats, hats, gloves, scarves, oh my! Let winter do its worst, we have you covered, literally.
AI and automation are a reality we have to contend with and acclimate to in the modern world, but can you imagine robots running our store? Me, either. I think stores like Experienced Goods will, for the foreseeable future, be staffed by humans caring about and helping other humans, islands of creativity and quirkiness keeping us real and connected.