Buy Nothing/sale group admins who get off on nonsensical 'rules'

[Anonymous]

I’ve let BN posts “simmer” and then drawn names out of a hat to choose someone who gets the item or items. Every single time I’ve had someone flake. Even when setting things out for porch pick-up it becomes a pain to keep messaging people and to set labeled bags outside at the correct times. I do a lot of “speed gifting” just to be sure the recipient is motivated and will follow through.

Since these groups are a community, you get to know people in them. There are folks who whom I will never “randomly select” again because they are flaky about picking up. Similarly, BN members who don’t like my speed gifting are welcome not to engage with me. We don’t all need to be besties.

[Anonymous]

I left the Olney by nothing group because they were very inconsistent about following their own rules. I think they have their favorite people and people they don’t know or like they’ll delete the posts.

One of the rules is that you can’t request donations for others but there is a fair amount of requests them are exactly for that. For example teacher’s asking for supplies for their needy students and families.

When I asked for household goods for a couple of needy families and my posts got deleted citing that rule. So that I asked for household goods without mentioning or being transparent, and they got deleted again. After the third time that happened, I left the group and I now request items on Facebook or Nextdoor.

Rules are fine if they are applied equally to everybody.

[Anonymous]

OP, I agree! Left the Facebook BuyNothing group.

[Anonymous]

We have an offshoot group for this reason too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish they would make the zones bigger. There isn’t one North Arlington group, but several. Our zone is so small that it’s the same bunch of wealthy women passing one used mug or dress back and forth. So instead of being able to give a away a bunch of baby blankets to someone who needs them, your get “oh, I’d love the purple one because it matches the decor in the nursery”. At this point honestly I use BN to make me feel less guilty for,just throwing stuff out because I tried to find someone to use it.

If you are in that really small north Arlington group on the McLean border you’re also allowed to be on the larger with Arlington group which has thousands of members.. That’s what I do

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Only time I ever got scolded was when I posted an item, someone PMd me to say he wanted it as a surprise for his wife who was also in the group. I agreed, and added to the post that it had been gifted. I was immediately told by admin that I couldn't gift via pm. I explained the situation and it was fine, but there are those awkward moments.

The those rules due generally serve to keep out the chaos though I guess.

That's nuts.

As someone who has posted and received PMs saying "I'll take it. I can come tomorrow afternoon," I definitely prefer posting publicly who gets it and asking them to PM.

I also like keeping posts up -- it's no harder to edit and add "Taken" than to delete -- because I like seeing whether something I want gets offered pretty regularly, or if something I want to get rid of had a lot of interest recently.

But if you don't want to follow BN's rules, it's totally fine to get rid of stuff another way. IME, the no-show hierarchy, from least- to most-frequent, is

BN
Freecycle
Craigslist

[Anonymous]

So no one here followed the buy nothing movement on cyber Monday?

[Anonymous]

OP here. Our busybody admin has been going off again in grand style. She actually posted this today, when talking to grown adults:

“@everyone #AdminTips
Why do we encourage simmering on your gifts? To include as many people as possible.
Busy Becky works all day, then drives her kids to activities. By the time she relaxes with her tablet, it’s 10 pm. She checks in to Buy Nothing and sees several items she would have loved to request, but they’re already gifted.
Fast Freddie keeps his phone in his pocket all day. It chirps whenever there’s a Facebook post, and since he works a desk job from home, he peeks in many times per day. So lucky Freddie puts his name in for many gifts and they’re his in just hours.
Unless you need an item gone the same day, or very quickly, please let it “simmer” for at least one whole day, so that everyone can see it. Give poor Busy Becky a chance.”

[Anonymous]

I feel like I’m in trouble today. I am giving away 3 things and got confused and told the people for thing three that I had put it out front when what I had put out front was thing 2. They showed up and DM’d me “where is it?” And I’m at work and didn’t see the DM right away.

I worry they will kick me out of the group lol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Our busybody admin has been going off again in grand style. She actually posted this today, when talking to grown adults:

“@everyone #AdminTips
Why do we encourage simmering on your gifts? To include as many people as possible.
Busy Becky works all day, then drives her kids to activities. By the time she relaxes with her tablet, it’s 10 pm. She checks in to Buy Nothing and sees several items she would have loved to request, but they’re already gifted.
Fast Freddie keeps his phone in his pocket all day. It chirps whenever there’s a Facebook post, and since he works a desk job from home, he peeks in many times per day. So lucky Freddie puts his name in for many gifts and they’re his in just hours.
Unless you need an item gone the same day, or very quickly, please let it “simmer” for at least one whole day, so that everyone can see it. Give poor Busy Becky a chance.”

I haven’t checked today, but my busybody admin has posted this exact same thing multiple times. We’re either in the same non metro but nothing or it’s a buy nothing script. It’s hilarious to me because one of the admins is absolutely a “Fast Freddy” when claiming items and believes she should get them for being fast.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Our busybody admin has been going off again in grand style. She actually posted this today, when talking to grown adults:

“@everyone #AdminTips
Why do we encourage simmering on your gifts? To include as many people as possible.
Busy Becky works all day, then drives her kids to activities. By the time she relaxes with her tablet, it’s 10 pm. She checks in to Buy Nothing and sees several items she would have loved to request, but they’re already gifted.
Fast Freddie keeps his phone in his pocket all day. It chirps whenever there’s a Facebook post, and since he works a desk job from home, he peeks in many times per day. So lucky Freddie puts his name in for many gifts and they’re his in just hours.
Unless you need an item gone the same day, or very quickly, please let it “simmer” for at least one whole day, so that everyone can see it. Give poor Busy Becky a chance.”

Notice the subtle gender stereotypes being used here to manipulate the target audience.

[Anonymous]

My former Buy Nothing Group mod was majorly power hungry, and people tried to suck up to her to get her approval - case in point. We sold our old house but had not yet moved. (A long rent back) we bought our new house and were having it remodeled. So I joined the new group but did not leave the old group. I used the old group to get rid of things while packing and the new group to give away packing materials, etc.

Someone I must know in real life- but did not know the whole moving timeline, reported me for moving but not leaving the group and the Mod came at me publicly about how I was ruining the Buy Nothing community by trying to be in 2 groups. ridiculous

[Anonymous]

Here’s the thing. The people who volunteer to be administrators for this sort of thing, are the tiny percentage of people who care the most about that particular system and are therefore willing to donate their time. You will not get people who are chill about it, to volunteer countless hours of time to a chore they aren’t invested in. I tend to think, ok, if this person is willing to spend 10 hours a week making buy nothing work, so that I can use it to offload my crap reliably, then I’m willing to put up with their being a bit over the top because it goes hand in hand. If someone is being genuinely unfair as opposed to annoying, then I will provide that feedback once, but I’m also willing to walk away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Our busybody admin has been going off again in grand style. She actually posted this today, when talking to grown adults:

“@everyone #AdminTips
Why do we encourage simmering on your gifts? To include as many people as possible.
Busy Becky works all day, then drives her kids to activities. By the time she relaxes with her tablet, it’s 10 pm. She checks in to Buy Nothing and sees several items she would have loved to request, but they’re already gifted.
Fast Freddie keeps his phone in his pocket all day. It chirps whenever there’s a Facebook post, and since he works a desk job from home, he peeks in many times per day. So lucky Freddie puts his name in for many gifts and they’re his in just hours.
Unless you need an item gone the same day, or very quickly, please let it “simmer” for at least one whole day, so that everyone can see it. Give poor Busy Becky a chance.”

Notice the subtle gender stereotypes being used here to manipulate the target audience.

We had a version of this go around but I think it was "Essential Worker Emily" who we should have held things for.

[Anonymous]

on my buy nothing people offer things and some people respond and the items is seemingly never given away. No response back from the offerer, it's very strage.