My (short) life at Simpsons

A job in retail was a badge of pride in the ’60s , says Mick Brown Its full name was Simpsons of Piccadilly – the use of the address an important signifier of its status as a clothing store for the gentry and affluent classes. It would later attain some notoriety as the inspiration for the sitcom Are You Being Served?. Writer Jeremy Lloyd had once worked as a sales assistant on the very floor where, as a teenager, I took up my position as a trainee buyer – the first step, or so it was hinted, on the path to a glorious career in retail. But it soon became apparent that I was hopelessly unsuited to it, and the only comedy to be derived from my time at Simpsons was the idea it might lead me anywhere other than to the door.

Much of the day was spent sorting and folding and replenishing shelves, and following a suitable period of training, there were occasional forays on to the sales floor to deal with customers. At this, the floor manager, a stickler for discipline named Mr Joyce, quickly made clear, I was a grave disappointment.

It wasn’t that I saw service as demeaning – quite the opposite. Too often, it seems, to serve in shops, restaurants, wherever, today is seen as being beneath one – a relic of a class system. It didn’t used to be like this in the late 1960s when I was at Simpsons.

And it’s still not in certain countries.

I have always been struck by the Japanese custom in which employees of large corporations are sent on courses of knocking on people’s doors and offering to clean their toilets – a practice that cultivates humility, and the belief that true grace consists of doing service for others, as well as a reminder that there are

With the proliferation of fast fashion, speed became key. ‘Service went out the window’

people who perform this labour on your behalf whose efforts go largely unthanked.

I was never called upon to clean the toilets in Simpsons, but to serve the customer was almost akin to a sacred calling back then – a model of politeness, helpfulness and knowledge of what you were selling for anybody working in retail today. My problem was, in the parlance of the sales floor, I couldn’t close the deal.

I wasn’t around for long. My real life was waiting for me. Perhaps Mr Joyce sensed that too on the day he took me to one side, told me I clearly wasn’t cut out for the job, and fired me.