I'm in the middle of doing my colouring guys.
I've done a few.
My colour's running out now.
So I've just had a message off a lady and I can't respond.
I'm having trouble with my messages.
I don't know what I've done.
I've beggared it up.
Anyway, this lovely lady has just messaged me now.
I've cut off her details.
Hiya Jane.
It won't let me comment on your post.
No, we haven't had to do.
So I'll try and add you now.
So I hope you don't mind me messaging.
Just wanted to check something about the booked shopping times if that's okay.
I have severe anxiety.
This is one of our mums, right?
So I struggle with shopping in public places.
This is why I've not been in your shop yet.
I can understand that.
Because our shops are very overwhelming, especially if they've got a lot of people in them.
Right.
I've lost it now.
It's very small to bear with me.
However, with these allocated times, I'm wondering whether each time is available for multiple people or can only one booking happen?
Absolutely.
If you've got an issue like this, guys, the way you can only commit, just just message us and we'll just book you in and that's your slot.
We'll book you in for like a 30 minute slot.
You might need three hours time to get around it all.
But we can book you in for like a 30 minute to an hour slot.
That's not a problem.
Right.
The only thing that we can't do is refund you.
For example, if we're booking you in £3.
Right.
If you can't come on the Tuesday, but you can come on the Thursday, that's fine.
I can transfer it, but I'm not going to be transferring it a week on and a week on and a week on.
Okay.
And I can also do a yearly membership as well.
We could say, well, I know 45 pound membership and you get £45 back.
I could keep that £45 legally.
I'm entitled to keep it as part of the CIC.
But we got enough stock to let you have that back.
You know, it's to cut out the riff raff.
Yeah.
We don't need these idiots in.
Daniel had a girl in the other day and she came in with her phone app and he stood up to say, ready to say to her, you can't video and filming you and take her out, you know, move her out to the shop.
And she didn't, she put the phone away and what have you.
And he didn't have to say anything, but he wasn't 100% sure whether she was videoing in the shop to be a nuisance.
We've had other people that's been a nuisance and the police are making an arrest this week on one that came in the shop and was a nuisance and has been bothering us ever since.
Since we stopped him on our vintage and somewhere else and somewhere else and on our TikTok.
And it's been constantly and constantly messaging us.
One message is harassment.
Okay.
So if you're doing it on multiple platforms and turning up at the shop and doing it on vintage, that's more than one.
So we got more chance of getting a conviction with her.
Right.
But I don't want people in the shop around my mother's.
Imagine if this mother had come in our shop now.
Right.
And this idiot, the one from vintage and all the rest of them, the one they're making the arrest on.
Right.
You imagine now if she'd come in and he was there creating a problem.
You imagine if she came into our shop and that Louise Edwards was out the front kicking off.
And I mean, she was, she disgraced herself.
Yeah.
She absolutely disgraced herself.
Even the haters disowned her.
You imagine this poor mother now that might be in our shop with her child.
Okay.
We're not going to let us know if you bring in a child, we're not going to charge for the children.
Right.
Cause we've got plenty of toys and stuff and stuff for them to play with.
Right.
We've got a play castle and all of that.
So let us know if you bring in the children, that's absolutely fine.
Yeah.
It's just £3 a book in.
So if it's you, your husband and two children, it's just £3 for the book in and you get that book in back.
Okay.
And we can do a yearly membership, not a problem as well and do it cheaper.
I don't mind.
Okay.
And then we know who you are coming in and out of our shops and we can screen it then.
And we don't have to have people who were annoying in the shops and causing problems all the time.
Do we?
You know, we go one guy that goes in, pulls all the shoes out and makes the right mess.
Well, we were stopping from coming in now.
You know, we'll say, well, no, you have to book.
And I know you'll say, no, I'm not paying.
Well, it's over there.
Off you go.
Then go somewhere else.
I don't need to be cleaning up the shoes every time he comes in.
Do I?
You know, we've had people come in, there's pulled loads of stuff out and being a nuisance of me.
We've had people, when we were doing the jelly cats, we had people just with the jelly cats.
Didn't we say, no, I am a customer.
We're like, yeah, you're not a customer.
We know what customers are.
Right.
You know, that that is an offer that we've put on for our customers.
But what I don't want is these idiots coming in the shop anymore.
And I don't have to have them in there.
We're at that stage now where we got such a good customer base that we don't need them in there.
And it can help us plan the week because we might not get any bookings for Tuesday.
And then I might have two volunteers that can work on Tuesday and I can say to them, absolutely get the shop because you haven't got anybody coming in.
They're coming in Wednesday and Thursday.
Or I can say, right, we won't open that shop on Tuesday because we got no bookings on Pontypool on Tuesday.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to move you where I need you.
I'm going to take you down risk a shop so that you can run risk a shop and then we can get in the donation centre.
So it enables us to run the CIC more effectively as well, doesn't it?
You know, so yeah, that that's why we're going to do it.
We don't need to have all these idiots in our shop all the time, do we?
We're not desperate for them to be, we're not desperate for them to be customers, are we?
We got good customers.
Yeah.
And like I said to Dan, you can still put your trolley out the front.
And if somebody goes past and just wants to buy 20 records for a pound, let them just buy the records for a pound.
But if they want access inside the shop where we got mothers, vulnerable adults, volunteers, myself, Dan, he's had enough.
That girl is obsessed with him.
She's got TikToks of him now and pictures of him.
That Louise Edwards, he's had to ring the police again this week now because she's now uploading pictures of a 25 year old male.
That's stalking and harassment.
And that's obsession.
We don't need these people in here, do we?
We don't need these people in our shop without decent customers, do we?
You know, and this mum, if she's got anxiety, yeah, we can book her and we can say, what time do you want to come in?
9 till 10.
Not a problem.
It'll be you and Dan.
Is that all right?
There's CCTV or there'll be you and so and so and me and so and so will be there and that's it.
And we just let you get on with your shopping.
Yeah.
And then we haven't got to worry about any idiots coming in.
I mean, the day that Louise Edwards was there, Daniel had children in the shop with their mothers, young children, toddlers, right?
And they were in the back of the shop.
They were in room three, looking at the baby clothes and everything.
And he stood in the doorway and she wanted to come in.
And I mean, he shouldn't have let her in anywhere when she's behaving like that.
I mean, how many people said she was drunk?
I mean, I think that's her personality, but how many said it?
But he knew that I have already told him and trained him not to allow people like that in the shop when there's children in there, because that's not fair on the mothers and it's not fair on the children.
We need to safeguard the children.
So by doing this, nor only do we retain our customers and have some exclusivity to our shops.
And again, that will add to the buzz of the shops because people will be like, well, you can't go in there now unless you're booked, you know, then also we can control the clientele is coming in a lot better.
Yeah, because I know my mother's my mother's are on the live now, for example, my mother's are not going to come in and video and report us to the fire and report us to trading standards and the bloody Ghostbusters and whoever else and the pope.
Oh, yeah, yeah, she's she's she's restricted access now pope, you know, ring, ring Charles and Camilla and say, oh, yeah, she's restricted access now.
You're not going to do that, you know, because you are our loyal customers and our loyal donators and we appreciate you.
So why should we have to worry about your safety as well from these idiots that keep coming in the shop?
We don't need to have every single person working in our shops.
I might not do it on all the shops, but we're going to trial it in our most popular shop at the moment because that's the one that people want to come in.
We have a lot of good stuff.
We have brilliant donations.
You know that, right?
They hate us.
They slag it off and say it's all tat.
It's not tat, is it?
Right.
We know it's not tat.
And we know we get collectors in.
We get people who run businesses in.
We get the resellers come in and the resellers that come in pay our prices.
Yeah.
And we, like I said, if they're just getting on with it and they're just coming in and they're paying the half price, I'm not bothered.
If they're a nuisance, we'll charge them the full price.
But we don't need to have them in anymore if they're a nuisance.
And the videos and the customers that we've had in previously and the posts I've had to put up about the bad customers, maybe you put that mother off.
And maybe that mother has been struggling and maybe she needs to spend, you know, maybe she would be better off coming to our shop and meeting our mothers, like the mothers we've got on the live now, like the mothers are coming.
She might make friends with some of the mothers that come in and help her.
But in the meantime, we've got this little bunch of idiots that keep coming in the shop trying to bring our shops down.
Well, they don't need to be in there, do they?
You know, and like I said, if I wanted to say, well, it's £3 before you come in then you've got to spend whatever.
I could, but I'm not.
As far as I'm concerned, you can take it back in stock because we've got tons of it.
The only thing we want to do is refund it.
I can transfer it.
So if you say you're coming on a Tuesday and maybe you've got a child to sell and you've had to go to school and pick them up and you say, well, I can't come in now on my slot.
Can I come in Thursday?
We can do that for you as well.
So I think all around, it'll be a good idea.
I might put it up to £5 later down the line, but let's keep it at £3 because £3 is roughly a pack of nappies.
And that's how I gauge everything, really.
You know, I just think, well, that's worth £3.
That's worth £3.50.
You know, pack of nappies, two and up, size two and up.
It's £3.49, something like that, isn't it?
We don't need this riffraff in our shops, do we, guys?
So let's make it exclusive.
I could, because we've had issues with some weirdos in as well, I mean, male weirdos.
I could actually say, well, it's only for women, because it's the same if you go to, is it Lamu?
Lamu?
I don't know how you say it.
Lamai?
I'm not sure.
And it's a domestic violence charity.
Well, obviously, they're only going to have women in there, aren't they?
Because they work with women.
They might have a separate branch for men.
I don't know.
But primarily, they work with women.
I could say that.
It's only for mothers and children.
I'm happy to have our current customers in because we know them all.
And most of you will spend £3 in there anyway.
So that's why we've kept it at that.
But I think that's absolutely brilliant that our mother has overcome her anxiety to message tonight to say that that's going to work for her.
And how lovely would that be now if she came in with our regular mothers?
Or she came in and I could say, well, there's you and another mother that's coming in at 10 o'clock, and that's it.
And then maybe she'd get to know that mother.
But how brilliant is that?
And then what we haven't got is these idiots backing for the shop all the time and they can't.
What can they do?
All they can do is take pictures through the window then, can't they?
But I'm really, really pleased with our message tonight and pleased with some of the feedback I've had.
We're going to get negative feedback.
I mean, the two people who give me negative feedback tonight, right?
They've said, oh, you're supposed to be a charity shop.
We're not a charity shop.
The other one said, you're supposed to be a charity.
We're not a charity.
It's a private event.
We are now hosting private selling events.
We're not open to the public.
We're open to the public, but only if you book.
OK, so we're not just having walkings up and down the street.
And if you look at the high street, the high street is changing.
Yeah, people are not walking the high streets anymore.
Pontypool High Street have been dead for a long, long time.
There's a lot of businesses struggling over there, but I can best place my staff now because I might not get any bookings for Tuesday.
And I might get 50 bookings for Wednesday.
And I might get 10 bookings for Thursday.
And I can say, right.
On Tuesday, rip it all out over dust.
Put it all back because you haven't got anybody until Wednesday or Thursday.
And then if you're dropping off donations, we can have a bell on the door.
You can buzz the bell and you can come in.
Yes, come in and drop off the donations.
Yes, it will affect some people that are not on Facebook and haven't seen this, but we can explain to them as we go along and we have.
It's going to be a lot safer for our volunteers.
We don't have to put up with these people, do we guys?
So can we be exclusive?
Yes.
Shall we be exclusive?
Yes.
Shall we make the heaters wait outside in the rain?
Yes.
Shall we do it?