Breaking: Circuit City Goes Under
Every year, full time employees at Circuit City would receive three new shirts. I worked there for four years, though I was not technically full time for that first year, so I only got two shirts then. I also got some other shirts when I was promoted, and again when I began my management training.
In all, I have about 22 Circuit City polo shirts. I’ve just had them in a trashbag in my closet for the last three years, not really wanting to let go of them, but not knowing exactly what to do with them.
I recently organized my closet and added in some more shelf space, and in the process decided that I finally needed to let go of the shirts – they were out of business, if I couldn’t get rid of the shirts now, I would never be able to get rid of them.
I could have thrown them away, but my girlfriend suggested donating them. She has had a lot of experience donating clothes since she used to work as an au pair for a wealthy family with two growing kids. She knows which are the places to avoid and which ones actually do some good in the world.
So I deferred to her. I got my big bag of polo’s and handed them over. At the time this was happening, she happened to be on rotation in the psych ward at the hospital. She pointed out to me that often times patients would come in during a breakdown – not expecting to be at the hospital at all, so they wouldn’t have any clothes. Because of this, the hospital takes donations for clothes so that the patients don’t have to wear the same clothes for their entire stay in the psych ward.
So she decided instead of Good Will, or some other donation agency, she would donate my shirts directly to the psych ward of this hospital. Picture this, if you will, 20 psych patients, people who have mental problems ranging from schizophrenia to manic-depression, to dissociative identity disorder. Or if it would be easier, and you don’t mind me taking a bit of creative license, you can imagine the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. In reality of course, a psych ward is nothing like the movie - you wouldn’t be able to guess these patients had ever been to a psych ward before if you saw them on the street. But for the purposes of this article, it’s a lot funnier if you imagine McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) and Chief Bromden (Will Sampson) and eighteen others roaming around the psych ward in Circuit City stores.
It’s eerily reminiscent of the actual stores – people that have no interest in selling anything to you, that don’t have any product knowledge, and are escaping from their real job (though not necessarily intentionally).
I guess if I ever want to reminisce about Circuit City, I can just go to that psych ward and feel like I’m right back in the mix.
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