July 2024 by Claire Lucas
The system of 'colour blocking' clothing
as opposed to grouping them in sizes is unnecessarily discriminatory and uninclusive, as constantly having to look up and down from the garment to the size, then back again, is really unpleasant and unhelpful for myself with autism, my sister who has CFS and mother who has mild dementia, (but who can still shop independently).
Hence, three of us from a family of four, find this system so stressful that we sadly don't bother with this shop anymore.
I'd love to know how this system is deemed better than the old one of size blocks.
With the latter system we dont need to move our eyes up and down with EVERY garment - we know everything on the rail is our size and we automatically see the colour as we look - we don't need to be steered to 'These are red and those over there are blue' - we can see what colour the garment is as we go through them ! It doesn't take any extra effort to subconciously register what colour an item is.
The 'mixing up the sizes and types of garment system' DOES involve an extra level of difficulty however.
Why would you want to introduce THAT when there is no need ?
The last time we tried to struggle through rails of size 8 trousers next to size 16 dresses, just because they were brown, we gave up, exhausted and irritable and went on to have fun browsing and unwinding in other charity shops (we actually went to another town ) which don't use this ridiculous system.
This shop is discriminating against customers with many common conditions which involve processing information.
Their loss, sadly, as we often spend up to £30 each on our charity shop outings.
I have many friends who also don't bother with charity shops who have introduced this unecessarily challenging and unpleasant shopping experience.
When we (politely and amicably) ask the staff 'why ?' they don't actually know the thinking behind it.
And when we say how it affects us with our conditions they're not concerned.
This is going backwards in today's climate of inclusivity and greater awareness of dementia, neurodiversity and other 'hidden' disabilities.
Please don't 'fix' it if It ain't broken and please stop thinking up ways to make supporting your charity more difficult.
