Eighteen years of service with a smile
Gloria has been volunteering at the Armidale Family Store for 18 years.
Gloria Dell was approaching retirement age when a friend suggested she might like to try a morning of volunteering at the Armidale Salvation Army Family Store.
Pleasantly surprised to find “a happy bunch of people” working and shopping there, Gloria came back the next week, and the next, and the next. In fact, she has been coming back every Wednesday morning for more than 18 years to sell or sort bric-a-brac.
The 77-year-old grandmother, who also volunteers at the local hospital auxiliary kiosk, is now the longest serving volunteer at the Armidale Family Store.
Asked if she sees herself working into her 80s or 90s, she laughs and says: “I don’t know - we’ll see how it goes! I have no plans to retire at the moment”.
After serving customers in the bric-a-brac section for many years, Gloria recently asked manager Noeline Corcoran if she could take on a role behind the scenes sorting donated bric-a-brac items.
For her, the “good atmosphere and good people” make the experience extremely positive. Though no longer working directly with those who come into the store to carry out community service hours, she enjoys the interaction and watching their personal growth.
“Many come in quite shy at first,” she says, “but they soon warm up, because everyone here is nice to them. They seem happy to come and their confidence really grows.”
The only downside of the job, Gloria explains, is that a minority of people donate junk, filthy clothes, or items such as fry pans, crockery and mugs that haven’t been cleaned.
“And, oh yes”, she smiles. “there is another small downside – I do get tempted to buy things from the store at times.
“I don’t worry so much anymore, but when I was younger there were so many beautiful things, and I would think ‘I could do with that’, and so you’d buy it. But then you’d get it home and look in your cupboards and see how much stuff you already have, and then bring it back and give it to the store the next week,” she laughs.
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