Retail Day
Retail Week, today
Barrowloads of trouble
I’m not a very popular man in Barrow-in-Furness. My comments about its town centre earlier this week have elicited a furious response from the local council and the local paper, who rang me yesterday demanding that I retract my comments. I can only conclude that there isn’t much going on there.
This morning I was on the sofa on BBC Breakfast talking to Bill Turnbull about older workers and why retailers and customers alike like them. By coincidence my collague Charlotte has written a feature on older workers in retail which will appear in this Friday’s issue, and she’s found some really great examples, including a chap who works in a B&Q store who’s 94! Make sure you read it, it’s a great piece.
Putting my shopper hat on, I find older staff in stores an absolute pleasure. I think it’s simply a generational thing - they usually have the basic good manners and courtesy which retailers struggle so much to persuade their younger staff isn’t an optional extra, and best of all, it comes naturally to them.
I’m not sure many of us are looking forward to working into our 70s, but maybe one of the pluses will be that we’ll get more great service from older store staff, and that their natural customer service skills will rub off on their younger colleagues.
on Aug 13th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I always seek out the “grey hair” in a large shed as I know the customer service will be miles better than “Mr Whateva” who can’t wait till the store closes and customers stop hassling him from thinking about the girl on checkout number 4*. It’s incredible to think that most people will spend the vast majority of their life working for a living, learning new skills along the way and becoming more experienced but suddenly they are hit with a declining job market and the threat of redundancy. For a lot of people over the age of 50 trying to get a job in this climate is daunting and they often lose out to new younger talent on the way up their own career ladder. What B&Q and other companies like them have realised is actually these older people are extremley valuable, hard working, honest, reliable and approachable not to mention have the relevant experience and will actually enjoy the job they are given rather than the usual indifference we have all experienced at some point or another dealing with shop floor workers who just don’t want to be doing that job.
But the other point worth considering is that although the current so called “silver surfers” are feeling the pain because of low interest rates on their savings, cost of gas and electricity, and council tax increasing etc they are from a generation where if they have been sensible will have benefited from booming house prices and final salary pensions. When it comes to my generations turn (born in the late 60’s) to reach this stage of life there will be a lot of pensioners having to work just to make ends meet rather than taking the opportunity to top up their savings I suspect. Will be interesting to watch the change in attitudes …an army of Victor Meldrews I suspect !
*Ok they are not all thinking about the girl on checkout 4 ….3 and 5 get a look in occasionally.
on Aug 14th, 2009 at 8:14 am
I think that’s a really interesting point Martin - it’s fine if they’re old people choosing to carry on working, but I’m sure it’ll be different if they’re there because they have no option