If you're not from Massachusetts, you undoubtedly have never heard of the organization "Got Books". Consider yourself lucky. The company presents itself as a charitable, non-profit organization, but it is the biggest fucking scam going. They have drop boxes all over the state. The parking lot of the bank I go to even has one. The company claims that you should donate books, CD's, and DVD's to them so they can donate them to library, schools, and our troops, and has a "charity" books every week. Their website even lets you sign up to donate to them without leaving your house. They'll come to your house and take your shit, completely free of charge to you. And yes, they do indicate that it's a free service on the website as if donating to charity would ever require additional payment. What does this all mean? It means they have a ridiculous warehouse full of inventory that they got for almost zero cost. While they give the absolute minimum amounts possible, through some sort of legal loophole that I don't understand well enough to explain, they are classified as a charitable organization so people willingly give them all sorts of stuff for free. Ironically, if those same people brought the same stuff to where I work, they would complain and argue in an attempt to get every last penny they possibly could for their stuff. I assure you, however, that while that may bias me, it could only serve to make me angrier at this company than I already am. Even though they are a for-profit company, because they are classified as charitable, no one cares to find out whether or not they're actually a non-profit.
So what do they do now that they have all this free shit? They have people sitting at computers, undoubtedly making minimum wage, whose sole job is to put that stuff they got for free on Amazon. People donate books, CD's, and DVD's to them under the guise of charity, and they immediately list everything that's worth anything on Amazon. None of the money made from that goes to charity. Most of the stuff that doesn't go on amazon then goes into their bookstore. I believe the storefront is a pretty recent addition to their douchebaggery, but it fills me with complete contempt. The owner of the store actually bragged to one of our customers that the store does $3,500 a day in sales, which means it's math time. They're open 5 days a week. Let's say they're open 350 days a year because of holidays, though I'm sure there are few holidays they close for. That makes $1,225,000 in sales a year. For one store front. The employees are definitely not being paid well as it's all menial labour, and there is almost no cost of inventory. Even if I'm extremely conservative and say that overhead and taxes for this store total to 60% of the total sales, that still leaves the company, meaning the single owner of this operation, making $490,000 a year. Off that one store. That doesn't include the Amazon sales.
Oh yeah, there's still the matter of all the shit that wasn't good enough for Amazon and won't sell in the store. That stuff gets blown out every Sunday at a charity book sale. Everything is $1.00 and 50% of the profits goes to charity. So of everything that this company does, only 50% of the profits of the absolute shit goes to charity. And I'm sure thanks to some creative accounting, there's almost no profit from those charity book sales.
You might think that, "Hey, they're doing some good for people. Who cares if the owner wants to make an ungodly amount of money while helping some people out? This is America!" Well, I thought about that. One of my bosses goes to church and library book sales on weekends, and went to a library book sale shortly after that library had been "helped out" by Got Books. At the sale, the library had a huge sign saying not to give them your books, and outlining much of the information I've just provided. I know most of the Sydlexia.com viewing audience is not from Massachusetts, but if this keeps even one person from helping to fuel that terrible company, I've done my job. Speaking of which, I'm not late for my actual job.
50% of my hate mail for this entry will go to charity
© 2008 by Dr. Jeebus