It Was A Woman’s World

When I first started writing blogs (September 2014) I couldn’t really have guessed just how they would be received. Would anyone read them? Would they get some lip service? Would they be genuinely liked? Who knew?

One particular earlyish effort was merely blogged because I was looking forwards to the return of the Sky 1 programme ‘Trollied’ – mainly because I used to work at a supermarket and found it was very close to the mark in its observations! I didn’t for a second think  that it would ultimately become the most popular blog I've written to date!

So on the back of that ‘Getting Trollied Again’ blog, I thought I’d give a further insight into those glorious retail years:

As previous readers will know, I spent the formative years of my employment working in a supermarket.
My first couple of years were enjoyed as a student on the Produce section and checkouts, before moving to working on the Delicatessen counter, initially as a student, but then as a full time member of staff once I’d left Sixth Form and was undecided about what I wanted to do with my life. So many people fall into this route, and I actually really enjoyed it for a long time before finding something outside of retail when I was in my early mid twenties.

A picture of a Deli Counter. Not mine though - I had some staff behind mine

After learning the Deli role inside out for a couple of years, I was fortunate enough to get a promotion to become the new Delicatessen Manager at a store in Brighton, starting just three days after my 21^st birthday.

It’s fair to say that up till that point of my retail career, I’d seen a few things that had opened my naïve innocent young eyes a little, but nothing prepared me for the response I received on my first day in that new role, and indeed the first couple of months.

What could be so wrong?

Well specifically it was three things about me that made some of my new staff not that keen on me at all:

1.       I was introduced to them on the first day as God.

2.       I was young.

3.       I was male.

Being introduced as The Almighty was horrendously embarrassing. I have no idea why my introducer opted to say that, but I think maybe because he had been looking after the counter in the absence of a manager and wanted them to think I was there to ‘save’ them. I REALLY had to underplay that title in the first few weeks to stave off fears of being called arrogant. Talk about a stitch up.

As for ‘being young and male’ – well they both sound ridiculously ancient don’t they!?
But it was a genuine issue as Delicatessen counters traditionally (although not exclusively) had been a rather female dominated environment, and here I was, this boy, taking over the running of their baby and many of them were not at all comfortable with it. To them, I was the Anti Milky-Bar Kid in more ways than one.
Had I not been their manager, and just been joining as an assistant, I doubt it would have irked them so much, but it took a ton of effort to win certain staff over and prove I was worthy.

For example, during that first week I remember cleaning out the bins. I wanted to muck in and do everything and not be some aloof ‘suit’, so I thought this might help somewhat. Nope. The opposite in fact, as this action extremely upset one of the senior ladies as she’d done the bins for the last twelve years, and boy had I now stepped on her toes!

Whilst she was being comforted and consoled by another elder stateswoman (because she WAS in tears), my confidence wasn’t helped by the deliberately loud comment ‘I told them we should have been given a woman manager’

This would take some skill to turn them!

Altogether I had 17 staff initially, which included two male students, three female students, and the rest were females old enough to be my mother or grandmother. It would be wrong though to say that ALL the elder females didn’t want me there. One Scottish lady in particular took to me quite early on and stated that she felt I’d been a bit stitched up, and that even before I’d arrived I was on a hiding to nothing as a colleague of mine at my previous branch had popped in the week before to ‘advise’ them about me. Her assessment being:

‘He’s a nice guy, but he’s not up to being a manager’

...which was ironic given that less than 12 months earlier, I’d had to cover her sorry ass over a Christmas period when she couldn’t cope when acting up as a deputy manager herself. It was a shame to be knifed in the back before I’d even started, but she’d always been a touch bitter, having felt mistreated by the firm over her own career path over the years. I felt sorry for her but why try and hurt me?

All this made me think that perhaps the dislike of me from these people who I felt didn’t know me from Adam, might actually be a bit misplaced through gossip, so I tried not to fret too much about it.

Rather soon, I lost my senior assistant to another department. She had also applied for the Deli Manager’s job and failed to get it, and she wanted some more responsibility. She was fair to me in that she knew it wasn’t my fault, but she wanted to be appreciated and after she helped settle me in, I was happy to help her get a promotion to another role in the store.

Perhaps I didn’t help improve my standing with the others though as when appointing her replacement, I (fairly) opted for the best person, following interviews. As it happened, another male!

The furore that kicked off simply because I’d given the job to a male was unbelievable. It took intervention from the Personnel Manager to sort out the ridiculous complaints (sexism, ageism, experience-ism!) that arose because of it.

After a few weeks had passed, they started speaking to me again...

Time heals, and ultimately as a team, we all contributed to making our Deli the best performing counter in the district, and second best in the region. Given we were bottom of that list before I’d arrived, I was very proud of the work we’d all done.

My reward was to be appointed as the Delicatessen District Trainer for our area, which in turn made our counter the jewel in the area that other Deli Managers came from afar to admire and seek advice from, which thankfully, my lovely staff took immense satisfaction out of and ultimately meant I had earned their respect.

Fair play to some of the stronger critics, as when I reluctantly moved on from the store, they apologised for their preconception of me and offered that I’d actually been a pretty good manager when all was said and done! Praise from them was more important than praise from above, and the best compliment I could pay them back in return was that the two years I spent at that branch were two of the best years of my working life.

Looks like a prison hospital doesn't it!?

Leaving was a huge wrench. A destructive one too, as within a week of working at my new store, I knew I wouldn't be staying long. That was October 1998, and I left the company in May 1999.

Those 8 months were as bad as the previously 24 had been good.

I’d gained promotion on the basis that I completed a pilot assessment centre training course for Managers seeking advancement. I had furthermore been promised to be fast tracked through the full management course as specifically I had management experience under my belt already.. Ideally it wouldn't take anymore than 6 months to get fully qualified and trained up before I’d be given a proper large department of my own to manage.

But literally the week I moved to my new placement, they changed it. Who they were, I’m still not sure, but I got thrown in with a dozen or so university graduates on a post-graduate scheme and no such real opportunity arose for an actual promotion.
Essentially, despite 8 years with the company, starting from joining in 1991 and working 10 hours a week as a school boy to what I’d recently achieved,  I now had to complete a mandatory full year of training – literally I was told I had to relearn how to stock shelves!

Just to rub salt into the wounds, the university grads went straight on to a starting salary that was nearly £6000 higher than me! If it wasn’t for real it would've been hilarious.

I should say that at no time did I blame the grads – It wasn’t their fault at all. Indeed they had a huge amount of sympathy for me being entrapped in this time wasting slavery scheme, and two of them were placed at the same store I was. They were two of the nicest girls I could have hoped to be paired with and they at least made my time at the store much more bearable.

When I resigned, the District Manager offered apologies and said I’d been earmarked to have been a ‘40 yearer’ with the company – the store manager added that in his opinion, the company had failed me ‘criminally’.

It was a sad end to my time in retail really, and prior to October 1998, I couldn’t have envisaged my departing so soon. But all in all the 8 years were mostly pretty good, and watching Trollied on Sky 1 brings back some fab and funny memories.

Would I want to go back to retail though? Well never say never.

But no! NO! NO! NO!