It wasn’t that long ago that retailers worked ‘normal’ hours. Do you remember when stores opened at 9am and closed at 5pm Monday to Friday, and 9am to 1pm on a Saturday? Wasn’t it wonderful? And of course just about everything was closed on public holidays. I remember when the company I was with at the time bought a small department store that closed every day between 1pm and 2pm so that the staff could have lunch! But then things changed and nowadays stores are open all hours an
nd staff need to be rostered on accordingly.
Admittedly they get paid penalty rates, but regardless of this, having to work weekends, public holidays and late evenings is not always conducive to a happy family life.
There is another angle to this. How do we attract young people into an industry which is a pretty tough gig? I was on an assignment in Manly, NSW recently and every morning when I passed the ocean at about 10am or 11am, I noticed surfers in the water enjoying themselves. I couldn’t figure out where all these surfers came from every day.
Sometimes a few dozen, but on most days, a hundred or more. It wasn’t school or uni holidays. And then it suddenly hit me. The utes along the beachfront told the story.
Builders, electricians, plumbers, arborists, carpenters, TV antenna technicians, pest controllers – these are the people surfing at Manly almost daily.
So as a young person, which would you choose. Do a trade and buy a ute and work 7am to 4pm Monday to Friday with a surf thrown in when you feel like it (or when the boss thinks you are on site) and no public holidays, or would you rather go into retail? A no brainer for most but there has to be a solution to encourage people into retail.
What if one of the political parties promise to legislate that if they win government, retail hours will revert to those that applied in the old days? Of course it will never happen. In fact the opposite will apply and every retailer will be able to trade whenever they like. It is just a matter of time. If you believe in reincarnation, would you come back as a retailer or a tradie?
Call me masochist. I would come back as a retailer.
Stuart Bennie is a retail consultant at Impact Retailing www.impactretailing.com.au and can be contacted at stuart@impactretailing.com.au or 0414 631 702
NOTE: On August 1 Mrs Fay Morley turned 100 and I interviewed her on that day. She had a little haberdashery shop in Manly NSW. The article was published two weeks ago in these columns on August 2. On Monday August 5 I popped in to give her a copy of the article which I had laminated. She was delighted and started to read it immediately. She died a week later on Monday this week – August 12. I was privileged to have met her. To those who wrote to me asking her whereabouts and promising to support her – Thank you
