The chippy where no one wants to work
Joe Shute puts in a shift at the shop that sparked a national debate about the benefits system
There is an art to frying fish properly. You pinch the fillet by the tail and generously slop it around in the batter, before gently lowering it into the vat of bubbling oil. As I learn early on during my lunchtime shift at Haughton Chippy, the process may sound simple – but is easier said than done. My first effort sends boiling fat cascading up over the edge of the counter.
It proves a fitting metaphor for the recent national furore sparked by the owners of this family chip shop on the edge of Darlington.
To recap: earlier this week Frank Suhadolnik, who has run the chippy with his wife Pamela for the past four decades, wrote a letter to a national newspaper lamenting his inability to recruit staff. The 69-year-old’s family has recently invested £100,000 to open a second chip shop in a different part of Darlington. But despite having 10 available jobs, in a town where seven per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds are unemployed, they simply cannot find anybody to fill them.
Not that they’ve been short of applications – there were 300 to 400 in just a fortnight, but when the chip shop invited people in for a shift they never replied. “We were inexplicably getting CVS from all over the country,” says their son Robert, 37, with whom they run the business. “We just didn’t hear back from them. When they do reply, we have tried to organise an interview and trial shift. If you are lucky, about one in 10 show up.”
To keep the new business open, Mr Suhadolnik and his 71-year-old wife – who had been hoping to wind down a little – have been forced to fill the extra shifts themselves.
With Universal Credit having been rolled out in Darlington in March, Frank (who originally hails from the US) believes the new benefits system has made people “work-shy”. That one word alone has proved enough for the nation’s media to descend on this unassuming family business.
The crux of the matter seems to be this: part of the requirement for Universal Credit is demonstrating that you are actively seeking work – even if you have no intention of becoming an employee. Robert believes this might be why he is receiving so many clearly unsuitable applications. He has been told by potential recruits that if they work too many hours, their benefits will be reduced to the point where they are essentially earning about 37p for each hour of employment. This attitude seems in direct contradiction to the Government’s stated aim of Universal Credit “making work pay”.
As I turn up for my shift and handed a white apron and branded black polo shirt, Robert tells me that he has been invited to debate Britain’s benefit system with everyone from BBC broadcaster Andrew Marr to the Prime Minister. He has declined them all. After all, there is still a business to run.
The lunchtime rush starts early at Haughton Chippy. By 11.30am we have cleaned and chipped the potatoes, fired up the deep-fat fryers (they use proper beef dripping in these parts) and begun cooking the first Icelandic cod fillets.
Before joining the family firm, a decade ago, Robert studied business and finance at Sheffield University. “I was working after my degree, but then I thought my mum and dad were getting older and I wanted to repay some of what they had done for me and kick them into retirement,” he says.
Although, he admits as he scoops out a freshly battered fillet and lays it on the rack: “I thoroughly enjoy it”.
Matters reached a head on Monday night when a girl who was supposed to work a trial shift at the new shop didn’t show, meaning both his parents had to fill in instead (Robert was busy looking after his four-year-old daughter).
“My parents love working,” he says. “This is what they’ve done their whole lives. But my dad felt, at this age, why do they have to go to work when we’re trying to get younger people in?”
Since the story was first reported, he has managed to fill four of the vacant 10 positions with local candidates, but the unsuitable CVS keep coming. In the post this morning is the latest: from Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, a 400-mile round trip to work a shift at the national living wage of £7.83 an hour.
Robert says he can understand why those in receipt of benefits might be unwilling to work if it means their wages will simply end up cancelling out the money they already receive. He puts it down to a fault in the system, rather than laziness. If he found himself in the same position, he admits, he would probably prefer to stay at home with his daughter.
The customers of Haughton Chippy prove rather less forgiving. Jeff Florentine, a 65-year-old motorhome salesman, says. “I’ve lived in Darlington all my life and always worked since the age of 13. I don’t know what it is about the younger generation, but it’s inbuilt in them that everybody owes them a living.”
Trevor Gunton, a 49-year-old supervisor at a plastics factory, has arrived with his two-year-old grandson for spam fritters and chips (haggis is also on the menu). “A lot of people don’t want to work,” he says. “It’s laziness, to be honest.”
Certainly a shift in the chippy is hard graft – as the sign on the tiled wall reading “Anti-stress Kit: bang head here” attests. An hour or so in, the queue is snaking along the counter and grease feels as if it has permeated my every pore. Emma Wheeldon, a long-time employee, mans the counter, while Robert drops more loads of potatoes into the fryers.
Noticing my failure to adequately pack a bundle of chips, customer Vanessa Paxton leans across and tells me, “you’re out of your comfort zone, aren’t you?” The assistant pub manager is here with her 82-year-old father and 23-year-old son, and admits she too has struggled to recruit staff locally. “I’ve always been bought up to believe you have to work for what you want,” she says. “But I think young people just don’t want to.”
As the lunchtime rush dwindles, a girl appears in the doorway. She is 18, but looks younger, and is clutching a CV. Cherie Hunter lives locally and left school with no qualifications. She says she has struggled to find a job ever since. She works in a card shop but only for six hours a week, and is desperate to increase her hours.
“I’ve applied more or less everywhere,” she explains. “Warehouses, sales, waitressing, anything I thought I’d be able to do.”
Her mother is waiting in the car. “It’s very tough for her, but I tell her to keep going,” she says. “She has the ambition to do something herself. I tell her that every knock-back builds your character a bit more.”
Robert assures Cherie he will be in touch. For all the carping, the fish and chip shop may just have found itself a new employee. Only five more to go…
‘A lot of people don’t want to work. It’s laziness, to be honest’