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Long hours, low pay, not much job security and rude customers — why would anyone work in retail? Spare me the gloom. I was never happier than when I worked in London’s department stores between the ages of 17 and 20.
Warm memories washed over me when I read this week that Ted Decker, CEO of Home Depot, plans to make senior managers work an eight-hour shift in their stores each quarter of the year. The idea is that white-collar employees should “truly understand the challenges and opportunities our store associates face every day”.
To which I say, well done, Ted. All the same, I’m disturbed by the implication that shop floor work is more drudgery than fun. That was not my experience.
Take Peter Jones, the Chelsea store where I was a temporary worker in Towels, Furnishing Fabrics, and Lightings and Fittings before finding my true home at Boyswear on the third floor. Ah, joy! Friendships made on the shop floor lasted for years outside the store.
True, training for temps was minimal. You were taught how to use the electronic till. That was about it. As a result, when mothers arrived to spend a fortune on school uniforms for their sons, I had, at first, no idea what size shirt, cap, trousers, gym kit and so on they needed.
What’s more, I was squeamish about measuring the neck or inside leg of an 11-year-old. After one of my worst guesses, a mother complained I’d brought a pair of trousers a couple of sizes too big. “They shrink in the wash,” I said hopefully — before fleeing her irascible stare to get a better fit from the stockroom.
Meanwhile, I would hear a mischievous staffer answer the phone in front of customers: “Good morning, Empire Pool Wembley — I beg your pardon, Peter Jones Boyswear . . . ” That’s right, he never became an executive.
The point was, you learned fast. After a few weeks, I could glance at any boy emerging from the lift with his mother and correctly estimate all his sizes. To this day, I look at politicians or businessmen I’m talking with and my mind calculates: “16 neck, 36 waist . . . ”
This was the 1970s, the decade of soaring oil prices, so there were plenty of high-spending customers from Opec countries. Tips fluttered from their pockets like confetti. A £20 note could keep you in beer for a week at the Royal Court pub across Sloane Square.
And because this was the 1970s, the store closed at lunchtime on Saturdays. Time to put on the safety pins, leather tie and white T-shirt with the crimson word “scurvy” emblazoned on it (not an item sold in Boyswear), and join the punks parading down the King’s Road.
Sometimes we would head over to the Chelsea Drugstore, but not, as Mick Jagger sang, to get our prescriptions filled.
At Boyswear, we all had punk names. Mine was Mark Acid. Nicky Vamp, recruited from Girls’ Shoes, quit to run a gift shop in the spa city of Bath. Vince Vomit emigrated to Australia and made it big time, becoming a board member of the airline Qantas.
For sure, London retailing had its downside five decades ago. Selfridges was soulless. Worse still was Harrods, recently in the news because of claims of sexual assault against Mohamed Al Fayed, the store’s owner from 1985 to 2010.
I worked at Harrods before Al Fayed’s tenure, but it was a grim place even then. Management barked like prison wardens at me and other temps.
The only light relief took the form of a lift attendant who used to say to a new employee: “Do you want me to keep an eye on this package for you?” If the employee said yes, the attendant removed his glass eye and put it on the package.
We temps were unanimous that, among London’s grand department stores, Peter Jones was the place to be. I liked it so much I had dreams of running Boyswear one day. Eight hours a quarter on the shop floor? Worth every second.
