This week I have been mostly...

...leaving my job.

After five and a half years of retail and pandering to halfwits in the customer service sector, Sunday saw me leave work with a leaving present of a crate of Stella Artois.

That might be a little unfair, not everyone who walks into a high-street retailer is a complete halfwit, but the ratio seems to be getting further weighted in that direction year upon year.

And so it's time for me to move on. After Thursday afternoon, I'll be liberated from the incompetence of Trinity & All Saints College and moving on to the next step, free from 6:30am Saturday morning starts and with a bit more pocket money to boot.

Like with any change, there's bit that you miss and bits that you won't. In many respects the former outweigh the latter but at the same time, those factors wouldn't encourage me to stay in retail or customer services much longer.

What it might also mean though is that updates on here from this point onwards might be even more sporadic than usual!

(PS, I don't travel home from work in a helicopter)

Shop till you drop

Consumer magazine Which? has announced the results of it's 'High Street survey' and it doesn't make good reading for many of the countries big names.



The survey considers everything that they feel the modern shopper might experience and what might influence their buying decision; price, product range, layout, customer service and staff knowledge.
Electrical retailer John Lewis has emerged top of the pile (although I have yet to see a John Lewis store in my life) whilst at the bottom is sportswear retailer JJB Sports.

I had the misfortune of visiting the said store only two weeks ago. My task was simple, some football socks and some shorts - how hard could that be? Very actually.
JJB Sports is actually quite unique in that despite it being a 'sports' shop, no sports equipment is to be found. Ask the 16-year old assistant for a cricket box or rugby shoulder pads and he'll think you've dropped down from Mars, ask him for the latest chav trends however and he'll happily oblige.

It's no surprise as well to find the three DSG stores in the lower regions. PC World, Currys and Currys.digital are all in the bottom seven of the survey, being much criticised for their staff.
That's one bone of contention with me though. I've said before, that most customers walk into a store (especially an electrical one) and expect to be able to speak to an expert on whatever subject they happen to throw up. Quite simply, it doesn't work like that.

Experts don't work on a Saturday afternoon for £5.50 an hour. They don't work in Dixons or PC World and generally speaking, they prefer not to work with the general public. The "pay peanuts - get monkeys" saying rings true when it comes to any industry, retail is no different.
I've experienced this first hand - it happens in the retailer I happen to be at (none of the above mentioned). Occasionally, you'll get one or two bright sparks. Probably someone who is going through a University course or has just left education and using the job as stop-gap before starting his career. Obviously, those people don't hang around for long.
It used to be that we'd hand all potential employees a test. If they passed the test then they got the job but that created more problems than it solved.
The only people who tended to pass were those with degree's, NVQ's or various other qualifications. After three months, those people would be long gone and whilst we used these tests on new applicants, our staff turnover almost tripled. As much as we wanted to keep those people, we just couldn't.

It'd be easier to say "well just pay staff more" or "train staff" but it's not as simple as that. In an ideal world, that would happen but in an ideal world, you wouldn't have shareholders, investors and directors hounding you to maintain profit and sales targets.
Staff training just doesn't happen. It's expensive, time consuming and in an industry where products turn over quickly, it's pointless. B&Q famously admitted as such and if you dug far enough, you'd find that other retailers are exactly the same.

That's one reason why Internet shopping has grown. When making your purchasing decision, you have a wealth of information, reviews and price comparison quite literally at your finger tips. In a shop, you're having to rely on a teenager reading a catalogue.

The survey has it's merits and Which? is a very well respected publication. But it's telling that only five out of the 50 stores in the survey scored more than 50% for customer service. That's just how the industry (on the whole) is I'm afraid.

Bargain Hunt

Retail figures have been released in their droves recently and they aren't making good reading.








Aside from a surge in Boxing Day, footfall in UK shopping malls have fallen by about 7%, with entertainment stores barring the brunt of the drop. Woolworths and HMV are shaking whilst Music Zone have called in the administrators.
Elsewhere, sales at Next have also fallen although I've no sympathy with them. Any store that calls it's staff in during the early hours on Boxing Day just so that it can open it's doors at 5:00am to appease senseless sales shoppers deserves all the misfortune they get.
Across the board though, Internet shopping has boomed, which will probably explain why Music Zone might end up going the same way as Beanos in London.

I can't say I'm surprised though. This sort of thing was going to happen anyway because of the rises in cost of living, utilities, blah de blah, but some of it will be down to the sales themselves.

January sales have always been over-rated. The gormless and the ignorant lap them up but for the rest of us, feelings are fairly indifferent.
Sales are the perfect way for shops to get rid of the junk they don't want. Whether it's last seasons clothes or discontinued electronics, you'll see red sale stickers adorning it throughout January. Disappointingly, that £2000 plasma TV you've had your eye on since November will still have the same price tag on it after you found out that Santa couldn't fit it down your chimney.

Then of course, there's the buy-ins. These are items of cheap tat that the retailer buys in a few months before January for absolute peanuts from a supplier that wants rid of them. Throughout that time, they stick a massively marked up price tag on it. Come Boxing Day, people stand in amazement as that "£55 t-shirt" (wink wink) gets reduced to £5.50, not realising that the profit margin is still more than healthy enough for the companies shareholders.

An hour long browse around Leeds should just that. Only moderately busy shops but clothes racks full of tat.

Thankfully, they'll all be over soon.

Off the Record

Time for a quick straw poll: Whilst you've been doing your Christmas shopping this year, how many of you have been to a 'proper' record shop?

I'm not talking about the likes of Virgin, Music Zone and HMV, I mean 'proper' record shops.






Beano's, Europe's biggest second-hand record store is set to close it's doors for the last time after seeing business fall in recent years. After competing with the multi-national chains and the Internet, the Croydon store has decided to throw in the towel and sell-off it's remaining stock.

It's just a shame that independent retailers are being ousted this way. Surprisingly, Dave Lashmar doesn't blame the rise of the Internet for his businesses decline. As someone who has always maintained that shops still have an edge over their electronic counterparts, Lashmar has resisted the temptation to branch his business onto the world wide web.
The web however could well be the death-nell for numerous independent music dealers. If we're not importing chart CD's from the VAT-free haven of Jersey or raiding eBay auctions, we're downloading music from legal, illegal and "miscellaneous" channels.

At worst, we're going into supermarkets and HMV and handing our hard-earned to anonymous shareholders who staff their stores with minimum wage workers, many (but not all) of whom will know little of the subject matter and who wouldn't be able to provide you with gig tickets for the next event at the Cockpit or Students Union.

In Leeds, we're lucky that we've still got two 'real' record stores. We've got Crash Records on Eastgate which is held in high regard in the music scene and we've got the lesser known Jumbo Records who still seem to be doing a strong trade despite having to compete with the nearby high-street chains of HMV, Virgin and Music Zone.

Hopefully these stores will still remain for years to come. The owner of Beano's is more critical of the decline of the local area, as evidenced from the number of people who 'used' to shop in Croydon. The same can't be said of Leeds.

Here in Yorkshire we have the biggest financial district away from the capital, much of that being based on the fact we have a successful city centre and retail district, one that attracts tourists from across the North.

Whilst most of us have shifted our spending patterns to supermarkets and computers, it's still a shame to see true retailers vanish in this way.

Where in the World can you buy a PC?

Having worked in retail for five years, I know that not everything runs smoothly.







These days, a customer expects to walk into an electrical store, have sales staff fall at their feet before they have stepped on the doormat, expect to speak to an expert on the subject in question and they expect the whole logistical system to work like clockwork.

It doesn’t work like that.

Staff budgets are tighter than a lap dancer’s thong, experts won’t work for £5.20 per hour and retail logistics departments are run by buffoons sat behind a desk from 9 until 5 – that and DHL.

The time has come lately for my brother to require a laptop computer to assist in the completion of his A Levels and hopefully, subsequent university course. So yesterday we spend a good while searching various websites for laptop deals, reviews and prices. After finally concluding our search and picking a certain Compaq unit, I set off for the local PC World superstore, brother in tow.
On our arrival the laptop of choice is inconspicuous by it’s absence. After having to wait ten minutes for a sales advisor, we are told that said laptop is indeed out of stock but there was one at PC World in Burnley. Not thrilled by the prospect of a 120 mile round trip across the M62, we asked him to check Currys (all part of Dixons International). We were told that Currys at Birstall, less than five minutes down the road had two, ready and waiting to unleash their 1.7 GHz processing power.
So a trip to Birstall and again, it proves fruitless. They do indeed have two computers in store, but one is obviously the display model whilst the other happens to be in ‘un-saleable’ condition. At this point, most people would start shouting various expletives, obscenitys and "minimum wage monkeys" at the sales assistant in the vain attempt that he'd say "Oh wait - I'll magic one from thin air!" but I'm more understanding. The guys in both shops were doing their best, they'd just been let down by some muppet getting paid a lot more than they were who hadn't done his job properly.

Disappointed but not yet defeated we cross the road and head to Comet.
In here we find an even better system. It’s 2GB of RAM as opposed to the Compaq’s measly 1GB and it’s got twice the graphics power of the Compaq’s 128MB offering at the same price.
Again we here the line ‘not-in-stock’ but there are some at Huddersfield. Desperate times call for desperate measures so tomorrow I’ll be making the half hour trip. Unfortunately the said laptop also happens to be a Comet exclusive (according to Pricerunner anyway) so I can’t do the ‘sod you then’ thing and take my brothers not-so-hard-earned elsewhere.

This is what happens when you let a small group of powerful retailers take hold of the market. The problem is that the more powerful the business, it usually means the more idiotic are the people running it.