At your service — but for how long?
I HAVE spent my whole career in retail, working for Tesco, Safeway, Wickes, B&Q and Wyevale Garden Centres. I am amazed so many shoppers question service levels in shops and the seeming lack of knowledge, application and standards. These are the same people who harangue a shop worker for a decision clearly taken by head office, or talk on their mobile phone for the entire time it takes to serve them. Would this level of rudeness be accepted in reverse? Retail is in crisis because it has suffered from decades of senior management being allowed to inflict their plans and ideas on a company, then leave for another lucrative role before the error of these plans catches them up. The foot soldiers are left to try to make the best of things on the shop floor. No one who has any other choices sees retail as a good career to pursue any more. It is poorly paid — I received the same salary in my last role that I was earning 15 years ago — with 24-hours a day, seven-days-a-week opening, bank holiday working, bonus schemes that are not worthy of the name and pressured working conditions as a result of staff shortages and unrealistic expectations from management. Mandatory minimum wage rises have not been an improvement. Head office won’t pay out more in the overall salary bill, so the number of staff is cut in stores to compensate. Retail is in crisis because it doesn’t use its staff as a foundation for its business model. The lack of inspiration in store for staff and customers is woeful and sends people running to the internet, where they get no real service, but at least they can buy on their terms. Retail needs to inspire its staff and the customers will follow. Too many people describe retail jobs as menial and unskilled, filled by those who leave school without any qualifications. Let me tell you that to provide a choice of goods in such abundance every day is incredibly skilled. If you start valuing shop workers and treating them with common decency and respect, your own shopping experience will be much more pleasant. Otherwise, with the speed that internet buying is growing, who knows how long we will have shops on the High Street?
MARK HAGGERSTONE, Swindon, Wilts.