I am a former employee of this retail location, having worked for this company for approximately 15 months. I began in December of 2024 and was involuntarily terminated in March of 2025. I believe more people should know what I experienced in my time working with this store before deciding whether or not they should continue supporting it. Let me be clear, Goodwill as a whole is a fantastic company. They provide incredible services and education as a nonprofit, and most of the people I worked with were friendly, professional individuals. However, in my short time working here, I have become incredibly doubtful of the performance and overall competence of the upper management for Goodwill Middle TN's retail locations. As stated above, I worked for this company for roughly 15 months. In that short time, I had seen FOUR separate store managers. Not shift leads, not assistant managers, but managers; as in, the single person in charge of overseeing the location. I can only imagine what must be going on in this company that the highest position with the most responsibility needed to be refilled four times in just a little over a year. My third manager, who shall remain nameless, was by far the worst of all. She was also the one I worked with the longest. While she would normally be upbeat and supportive, in the event of a bad day, her mood would crash and she would immediately take it out on her employees. She would give instructions only to give the exact opposite instructions an hour later; she would berate and belittle employees behind their back when she thought nobody was listening; she would blame employees for situations outside of their control or her own shortcomings as a leader. It should be noted that she never properly quit nor was she terminated before she left; she simply stopped showing up. It is my belief that she was not emotionally mature for the position she held. During my time with Goodwill, I worked in the DEC area. Think of it like a small warehouse in the store where donations are collected and stored. It is easily the most physically demanding position in the entire store. DEC's duties include, but are not limited to: -Accepting donations -Separating donations -Bringing wares to the pricers -Bringing clothes to the clothes hangers -Replacing full gaylords with empties (approximately 18 set up at any given time) -Moving gaylords on/off the storage trucks -Moving palettes of supplies off of the truck -Moving furniture -And so on DEC is a three-man operation at minimum. For approximately six months (out of my 15 month career), I would spend 6 out of 8 hours a day, 3 out of 5 days a week, the responsibilities of this entire department would fall on me, and me alone. I was doing a three man job. By myself. For six months. There was another coworker with me during that time (name withheld), but he was of no help. If anything, he made my job even harder. I can say, without exaggeration, that this individual would spend an entire shift literally sitting in the corner and staring at the walls. To be fair, this man was mentally disabled. However, that does not change the fact that management refused to accept the reality that he could not perform the duties that were expected of him. Eventually they would hire more people, but they were not much better. Some would do the bare minimum of work to avoid getting in trouble, while others meant well but did not fully understand how to do their work properly. For most of my time working at this company, my job consisted of me spending an entire week cleaning up unorganized donations dumped on the floor, scattered furniture blocking pathways, and literal piles of work left unattended. Most of the time, I would have everything successfully cleaned up by the end of the week, take my days off, only to see that everything I had done had been undone in a mere two days. One day, I came in to see an excessive amount of furniture in the DEC area. I spent the entire day loading up the truck with furniture, constantly being interrupted to perform other duties, such as answering the door and moving gaylords. I was not alone during this time, with two other DEC workers in the back, chatting with each other and ignoring their responsibilities. By the time I had finished loading the truck, one of said coworkers pointed this out to a shift lead, who told us to unload everything. At that moment, I lost my temper and verbally berated my shift lead and coworkers. I spoke with the lead and assistant manager in the office, and later apologized to my coworkers. A month later, I was terminated. No official explanation was ever given. I tried to get in touch with HR, but could not get through. I fully admit this outburst was unprofessional. But it certainly wasn't unexpected. read more

Easy peasy drive in, unload, hi and hello and drive out. Good Will workers were very nice. I lost my guy at Walmart on Charlotte and Good Will on Sunday closer to the city did not take donations on the weekends. So while down in Smyrna for a hair cut, stopped in dropped off and on my way. Getting of 68B on your right, coming from Smyrna on your left. read more