What You Learn Working in a Polish Pawn Shop

This post originally appeared on VICE Poland.

Pawn shops never really caught my attention. I always regarded them as just another element of the urban landscape—like hair salons and knockoff electronics stores. But walking around one of Wroclaw's poorest neighborhoods one day, I realized the only buildings messing up the mundane gray of the housing projects were basically 24-hour liquor stores and pawn shops.

Struck by this picture, I walked into one of those pawn shops and got to chatting with Marek, who works there. He painted a picture of Poland I'd rather not have seen.

VICE: Did you ever think you'd end up working in a pawn shop?
Marek: It's a job. I'm not sure anyone dreams of working in a pawn shop. But looking at the chances of having any job in Poland, I think my situation could be much worse.

Do you have to have any specific skills to work behind a pawn-shop counter?
First of all, you have to be trained in gold—being able to validate the authenticity of any piece and quote an appropriate price for it is crucial. Training takes three days and you start working straight afterward. Besides that, you also have to deal with bureaucracy—everything requires a lot of paperwork.

I've certainly seen the number of pawn shops in Poland increase in the last couple of years. Why do you think that is?
People are poor. People earn as little as PLN 2,000 [$500] per month—they simply cannot make a living between paydays. A lot of people have their expenditures carefully planned so the problems begin when they come across unexpected costs—having to buy new shoes, fix a car battery, send your kid on a school trip… Unfortunately, we earn money mostly thanks to those who don't have any money.

How does it all work exactly?
The people turning to us are the kind of people who don't want to borrow money from their family members or friends, or take a bank loan. They know what interest they have to pay and they are sure they will get their goods back. That interest rate, however, is huge—in one month it can approximately reach a quarter of the loan.

An additional advantage for us is that that earned interest is not taxable. The biggest pawn shop chains could even start with ten new subsidiaries, even in towns with a population of a couple of thousand. But that doesn't only happen in Poland—I recently traveled to England and saw it is also stuffed with pawn shops. We are talking about a global pauperization of Western society. The middle class is fast becoming the lower middle class.

How many contracts do you sign on daily basis?
It depends on the shop's location. As I said, the best place to open a pawn shop is where poor people live. People earning the lowest salary allowed by law are the best customers—in most cases they return after getting their paycheck to buy back their goods, only to pop them again some weeks after.

Do you have regular customers?
Most of our customers are regulars. I recognize the majority of their faces. Recently, a woman who had pawned a ring in December 2012, came in. She paid much more than it was worth—that's the price you pay for sentiment. However, we usually try to meet such cases halfway.

What is your average customer like?
The average age of the customers is 20–35 years. These people are not afraid of pawn shops—it's the older generation who think of pawnbrokers as criminals. The youth people need the cash fast—to go out in the weekend or buy weed or cigarettes. One of my clients comes every Friday after work, buys back a bracelet he wears on nights out, and pawns it again on Monday.

Do thieves ever bring in stolen goods?
Sometimes you can tell when something has been stolen. Once, a pal brought in a gold chain that had been broken and had blond hair tangled in it. But what can I do? It's not my job to prosecute him. Often, I'll get visits from guys directly asking if I need something in particular—they steal on demand.

Have you ever been assaulted by a client?
Not really, I work in a peaceful location. I often get called names, but it's never escalated into something dangerous. The plexiglass around my window is thick, and I also have CCTV and wiretaps installed so the chances of having the store broken into are rather low.

Do you cooperate with the police at all?
We don't like each other. Policemen come to my pawn shop in order to snoop around. Sometimes they confiscate something, the proceedings last up to one year, and we never see it again.

What kind of objects do you put in hock?
There aren't really any rules. People will pawn anything—from micr SD cards to their whole flats. However, I am not entitled to sign huge agreements—my boss has to do that. The most precious thing I ever took was a golden chain for PNL 4,000 [$1,100]. But I heard that someone tried to pawn a dog at another pawn shop once.

How often do people try to deceive you?
Very often. I am burdened with financial responsibility so I have to be cautious. We have an intranet, so news of smartasses trying to fool us spread fast around pawn shops. But it happened to me once to take a ring which was supposed to be made of white gold but turned out to be a fake. I only lost PLN 112 [$30] so it was not a big deal. I was mostly pissed off by the fact that someone fooled me.

What can you tell about Polish society by standing behind the pawnshop counter?
In the course of recent years, the number of Polish millionaires expanded but so did the working class. The Polish working class is saturated with penury, uses horrible language, lacks teeth, and its existence is reduced to mere existing.

No one pawns their possessions to buy books, but many do so to buy a flask of vodka and cigarettes. It is a sad summary, but people's IQ decreases in the vestibule of my pawnshop.