Who wants to work in retail?

When I was 16, I had a Christmas temp job in our local branch of WHSmith.  I stocked shelves, rang up purchases, and dealt with random customer queries face-to-face.  I wore a uniform with a laminated name-badge on it, and a painted-on smile.  My granddad called me the “queen of retail” (I hope for a joke).

It was a horrible job.

Stocking shelves was dull.  Most of the customers were dismissive and huffy; stressed about their Christmas shopping.  One time my dad came in, looking like a homeless person with his newly-grown beard and flat cap that only his then-girlfriend liked.  I pretended I didn’t know him.  The music department played M People’s Elegant Slumming and Mariah Carey’s Music Box albums on never-ending rotation.

(Many decades later, if I hear a track from either of those albums I get the urge to grab a Cliff Richard calendar and bash the nearest person hard over the head with it).

The manager and assistant manager were a ‘Two Ronnies’-style duo, but only in looks.  They patrolled the shop floor constantly, straightening products, dusting shelves, and looming over us on the tills to make sure we weren’t “being dishonest.” Sometimes I’d look at them both, and I’d wonder if this was who they’d really wanted to be when they grew up.  It wasn’t who I wanted to be.  I vowed never to work in retail again, and I didn’t.

I went back to WHSmith as a customer only.

Last week I went there to post a parcel.  Its top floor, once home to pristine shelves heaving with bestselling books, is now a branch of the Post Office.

The atmosphere in there is depressing and unloved.  Paint peels off the walls and there’s a deathly stench of B.O. that you worry (or at least I worry) will follow you home.   Oh, and none of the self-service machines ever work, so you’ve always got to join the queue for the monosyllabic person behind the one open window.

It feels like my 16-year-old attitude – the one of why would anyone want to work in retail? – transferred to everyone who actually does.  I left WHSmith feeling nostalgic for the Two Ronnies, because internet or no internet, no-one can be bothered anymore.

Case study: our trip to Curry’s to buy a video doorbell. 

In dull summary, my husband David decided we needed a video doorbell for when we went on holiday.  He started browsing online, but I insisted we went to Curry’s instead, because in-person retail needs a boost.  Besides, their TV ads are always going on about how knowledgeable the staff are, and I don’t know anything about video doorbells apart from the fact that they’re… well, video doorbells.

The knowledge bit turned out to be a misnomer.  The man we asked about video doorbells knew as much as I did.  Resplendent with hangover hair and a dark stain on his purple Curry’s top, he typed our questions into his little tablet, then… nothing.

(Curry’s latest TV ad features a blind man and his guide dog going into a branch for some advice, which they get and everything’s dandy.  But if they’d gone into our branch, they’d have been forgiven for thinking they’d wandered into a Trappist monks’ funeral parlour by accident).

“Shall we just go home and look a few doorbells up online?” I ended up asking Hangover Hair Man.  “Yeah, probably for the best,” he mumbled.