THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS
They wear flat shoes on the festive frontline. Kim Knight walks a mile behind the retail workers bearing the brunt of December’s big spend.
They wear flat shoes on the festive frontline. Kim Knight walks a mile behind the retail workers bearing the brunt of December’s big spend.
The letter was signed “Harassed”.
It began with a plea: “I wonder if you could find space in your columns for the views of a shop assistant on this important matter ... ”
The matter was Christmas. Specifically, the matter was Auckland’s thoughtless, last-minute Christmas shoppers who should know that “because of the rush, service CANNOT POSSIBLY be as prompt and cheerful as it should”.
It was December, 1936. Even then, it sucked to work retail.
There are exactly 16 sleeps and three shopping weekends (counting this one) before Christmas morning. On that day, when you quietly siphon sherry into your cornflakes and wish you were as brined as the turkey, spare a thought for those who have spent the preceding 16 sleeps and three shopping weekends on their feet. Blessed are the shop assistants — for they are the only ones who know where you can still buy an L.O.L Surprise doll.
WEDNESDAY, 10AM, at The Warehouse, Sylvia Park. We’ve just missed a “rumble” — store jargon for an all-hands assault on an urgent job. Today every available staff member raced to get three pallets of clothing on to the shop floor. At capacity, the stockroom holds 600 pallets. Right now, it’s about half-full.
“All this bottom row is Christmas,” says Elle Amai, assistant store manager. “One, two, three . . . 12 metres. And, to be honest, that’s nothing.” It’s only late November. “Christmas is sometimes really too big.” Broad smile. Big laugh. Elle, pronounced Ellie, has been here since 7am. Once, she wanted to be a policewoman. Some people, she says lowering her voice, thought she was a bit of a hard-arse.
“Well, they used the B-word and I just think that wasn’t fair. I like people though, I really do like people. I like interacting with all cultures, I like the older generation, I like listening to their stories ...” Even in December? “I would say that 95 per cent — no, 99 per cent of our customers are awesome. In the last two weeks, the last six days, that’s the exciting part. That’s when the feet start getting sore. I go home and I say to my son ‘time for a rub-down’ and he’s like, ‘No, not even!’ You’ve got to have comfy shoes, your feet get a bit of a bashing but, like I said, it’s an energy boost for us. You go on to the next level.”
In the war on Christmas, these concrete floors are the frontline.
Last December, shoppers swiped a record 153 million electronic card transactions. According to Statistics NZ, we spent $8.2 billion that month. “How you going, bud?” “Right there, ma’am?” Elle is walking and talking. Overnight, the store received 450 online orders and she’s “picking” the stock. Current mission: one pair of ladies Amco size 12 denim shorts. I volunteer to help. It is, frankly, astonishing how many different expressions of “denim short” are available to the modern shopper.
We never find them. Elle never stops walking. Through the slippy, slappy clear plastic curtains to the back dock. The conveyor belt is piled high with orders. A Minnie Mouse toy. A coil of garden hose.
“Anything and everything,” says Elle. “If a customer doesn’t have to walk in and get it ... but that’s awesome though.”
“Tic Tacs,” confides another staffer. Some customers order Tic Tacs online.
Monday through Wednesday is, usually, slower. “But yesterday we had rain,” says Elle. “We looooove when it rains, because everyone likes coming to the mall.” There are 3793 car parks at Sylvia Park. There are more car parks than the resident populations of Paihia and Coromandel township combined.
Last night, Elle’s team worked 16 pallets of toys. Tonight they’ll do stationery and home decor. Stock is coming in twice a day, six days a week, now. Christmas is definitely, certainly, sometimes too big.
Soon, there will be parents begging staffers to put a bike together for them (they will). There will be kids insisting that Dad would really like a water gun (he won’t). There will be men wondering what sort of perfume women wear. (“The younger generation are Victoria’s Secret fans and the more mature ladies, they’re the Red Door or White Diamonds.”) And there will a million requests for an L.O.L doll.
“Honestly,” says Elle, “They’re the meanest craze.”
Does she see and hear sad stories? “Not really,” says Elle. “Mostly it’s a parent telling me the kids have already got one of whatever they want at home.” But she remembers, back in April, a customer with a pile of food he couldn’t afford. Nothing fancy, just some basics. He started choosing what to leave behind. She was about to step in, but a customer beat her to it.
“She said to me quietly, ‘I’ll pay for that’.”
THE AVERAGE retail worker earns $21.29 an hour, but the entry-level rate is closer to $16. Figures from the Household Labour Force Survey’s December 2016 quarter showed slightly more women (56.6 per cent) than men on the country’s shop floors. Some 34 per cent were aged 29 or younger, 72 per cent were of European ethnicity, 94 per cent lived in a household with no dependent children and one-third of the