‘Junior Sales’
Fetch the brooms!” a voice boomed down the stairway. We were downstairs in the old servants’ quarters. It was my first day as “Junior Sales” at A. E. Hawkins and Sons in Chatham, Kent. I was shown where to find my broom, and dutifully followed the other assistants upstairs to the new world of work.
I was to work in menswear, selling vests, pants, socks and other items for the discerning male. Fortunately, trousers, suits, jackets and hats fell under the direction of Mr. Mortley, the manager, and his experienced assistant.
I had my work cut out learning all the different types of vest. There were string, aertex, interlock and cellular, to name but a few. There was a similar confusing range of pants, together with odd snippets of “useful” information for a sweet 15-year-old, such as the extra supporting nature of X-fronts as opposed to Y-fronts. Luckily the manager usually imparted such assurances to the customers, who were mostly female and didn’t argue.
My very first task, on my very first morning, was to dust the shoeboxes. A lot of time went into cleaning the stock in those far-off days. I knew I had to learn about the stock, so I peeped inside the boxes, and by the time I had finished I had found a pair of shoes that fitted my face, as my gran would say. My first week’s wages were nearly spent! I had to give my mother £1, with another pound earmarked for clothes (my mother made my navy blue work dress). I had to save £1, leaving 10 shillings pocket money. As there was a sweet shop next door, this didn’t last long.
I came into my own at Easter. There was an Easter egg raffle for about three weeks beforehand and I bought so many tickets to satisfy my sweet tooth that I won first prize in the first week, second prize in the next, and third prize in the final week.
Shopkeeping was so different in the 1960s’ drapery. Even then there were few left. Nothing was wasted, everything possible was recycled. Paper from parcels was saved to wrap the customers’ goods. String was saved from incoming parcels. It was carefully rewound, and reused on purchases.
You also had to be good at sewing. French knots were all the go, as every price ticket had to be sewn onto the garments. Many afternoons, in between keeping the stock clean and tidy and topped up, were spent sewing.
It seemed like a lifetime before I was allowed to serve the public. The manager would hover behind you like a ventriloquist, whispering the words you were to say. We were also advised to shout, and thus bamboozle the deafened, unsuspecting customers into buying something. After all, we were experienced drapers and obviously knew best what the customer wanted!
I was allowed to go solo at the age of 15¼ and soon had an underling to teach. Her name was Kate, and she was terrified of the customers. She was more than happy to let me serve her customers, which I didn’t mind, but the manager did. We also had a good laugh about the woman who came in every single week to buy vests. What she did with them all we didn’t know, but we were in fits of laughter imagining things. We used to see her coming down the road opposite, and would start our guessing. How many would she buy this week? What had happened to last week’s? Had she ruined them in the boil wash? So we went on, until I had a job to serve her and keep a straight face.
You had to be quite versatile to be a shop assistant in those days. Skills as a needlewoman, cleaner, designer and psychologist were all needed. It wasn’t just a question of stacking shelves or operating a till. Expertise in stock
control was necessary. Records were kept as to what was sold to ascertain what needed reordering. There were no computers, no barcodes, and no central ordering. It was all down to the assistant to keep her department replenished.
The art of cleaning, dusting and polishing had to be learnt. Windolene was applied to the glass counters on a regular basis. The floors were swept every morning, and the boxes that the stock was kept in had to be dust-free. These boxes were piled quite high, so climbing was another required skill.
The displays were hung on poles, and in my case on models of the male form, which had to be changed regularly. Knowing just where to place a safety pin came in very handy. Colour coordination was a useful skill, as was how to carefully arrange a shirt or woolly on a stand.
Window dressing was quite complex. In our shop an example of everything we sold was placed in the window. Apparently, if it wasn’t in the window a prospective customer might think that we did not sell it and would go somewhere that did.
As we always sold the same things, it took a bit of imagination to ring the changes. Under the artistic direction of Mr. Mortley the new window took shape, the old window goods having been carefully refolded and put back with the rest of the goods. Calls for price tickets filled the air, which I dutifully supplied. Cries for dressmaker’s pins were also heard, and again found. These Mr. Mortley ran through his greasy hair, which acted as a lubricant, enabling the pins to go through heavy stubborn 1960s materials.
The clothes displayed were old fashioned, even for the times. The shop itself was reminiscent of the Edwardian era. The floorboards were covered with vinyl linoleum, which came from the hardware department, possibly a slowselling line. Whether it was the same roll that Hendy, the old retainer, managed to get rolled up in, we shall never know.
All one lunchtime, while her assistant was away, she stood motionless inside the roll, frightened to move in case it tumbled over with her inside it, perhaps crashing down and causing all the other rolls to fall like ninepins. Fortunately Mr. Jack was passing through the department and heard her cries. Mr. Jack didn’t appear very often, so this was indeed timely. How he got her out, I don’t know, but when asked how she got stuck in the first place she said she was measuring it.
When the shop underwent a refit, as well as new flooring, two dual-purpose booths were built. These were to act as offices, one for Mr. Jack (who inherited the store from his mother), and the other for Mr. Mortley. They were also to double as changing rooms for the poor unsuspecting male, who often must have wondered how on earth he had ended up there! He had probably been deafened by Mr. Mortley, suggesting loudly that this or that would be just his style. Whether this item was what he came in for is debatable, but hardly anyone went out without a purchase of some sort.
It was important to sell something, and I became quite adept at it. To Mr. Mortley’s cry of “Forward Miss Payne”, I approached the customer, or sometimes customers. You were expected to serve more than one at a time so that they didn’t have any excuse to escape. This was an art in itself that had to be learnt, because Mr. Mortley said that by Christmas the shop would be “black with people” who all needed attending to.
Attending to the customer’s needs was paramount, as was achieving a sale. Stock had to be shown to the prospective buyer, sometimes a great deal of stock, before a decision was reached. It then all had to be carefully folded up and put away, often on the highest, most inaccessible shelf. Some clothes just required folding, but shirts were a different matter. They were folded in a special way and pinned back into position; there were no plastic clips then. This required some skill and a great deal of patience.
Having sold the goods, they were wrapped in the carefully folded reused paper, and tied up with the carefully rewound, reused string. Tying a parcel was learnt early on. I found it quite complicated as I couldn’t, and still can’t, tie a shoelace in the conventional way. First of all a loop was made in the string, which was placed around the middle of the parcel. The string was passed through the loop and pulled tight. It then went round the parcel the other way, being tied at the back, then finished at the front with a loop for the customer to hold.
Once the last customer had been served it was time to shut up shop. The dustsheets would be put over the displays, the blinds would be retracted, and finally the flood boards would be placed behind our department’s door.
I have never forgotten my first job, in my first shop. There were to be more jobs, in more shops — but that’s another story.