Meet the retail workers bearing the brunt of the Christmas season

Senior journalist and restaurant critic·Canvas·

8 Dec, 2017 10:11 PM12 mins to read

Christmas service with a smile from The Warehouse's Elle Amai. Photo / Greg Bowker

They wear flat shoes on the festive frontline. Kim Knight walks a mile behind the retail workers bearing the brunt of December’s big spend.

The letter was signed "Harassed".

It began with a plea: "I wonder if you could find space in your columns for the views of a shop assistant on this important matter ... "

The matter was Christmas. Specifically, the matter was Auckland's thoughtless, last-minute Christmas shoppers who should know that "because of the rush, service CANNOT POSSIBLY be as prompt and cheerful as it should".

It was December, 1936. Even then, it sucked to work retail.

There are exactly 16 sleeps and three shopping weekends (counting this one) before Christmas morning. On that day, when you quietly siphon sherry into your cornflakes and wish you were as brined as the turkey, spare a thought for those who have spent the preceding 16 sleeps and three shopping weekends on their feet. Blessed are the shop assistants — for they are the only ones who know where you can still buy an L.O.L Surprise doll.

Wednesday, 10am, at The Warehouse, Sylvia Park. We've just missed a "rumble" — store jargon for an all-hands assault on an urgent job. Today every available staff member raced to get three pallets of clothing on to the shop floor. At capacity, the stockroom holds 600 pallets. Right now, it's about half-full.

"All this bottom row is Christmas," says Elle Amai, assistant store manager. "One, two, three . . . 12 metres. And, to be honest, that's nothing."

It's only late November.

"Christmas is sometimes really too big."

Broad smile. Big laugh. Elle, pronounced Ellie, has been here since 7am. Once, she wanted to be a policewoman. Some people, she says lowering her voice, thought she was a bit of a hard-arse.

"Well, they used the B-word and I just think that wasn't fair. I like people though, I really do like people. I like interacting with all cultures, I like the older generation, I like listening to their stories ..."

Even in December?

"I would say that 95 per cent — no, 99 per cent of our customers are awesome. In the last two weeks, the last six days, that's the exciting part. That's when the feet start getting sore. I go home and I say to my son 'time for a rub-down' and he's like, 'No, not even!' You've got to have comfy shoes, your feet get a bit of a bashing but, like I said, it's an energy boost for us. You go on to the next level."

Smith & Caughey's Edward Caughey. Photo / Greg Bowker

In the war on Christmas, these concrete floors are the frontline.

Last December, shoppers swiped a record 153 million electronic card transactions. According to Statistics NZ, we spent $8.2 billion that month.

"How you going, bud?"

"Right there, ma'am?"

Elle is walking and talking. Overnight, the store received 450 online orders and she's "picking" the stock. Current mission: one pair of ladies Amco size 12 denim shorts. I volunteer to help. It is, frankly, astonishing how many different expressions of "denim short" are available to the modern shopper.

We never find them. Elle never stops walking. Through the slippy, slappy clear plastic curtains to the back dock. The conveyor belt is piled high with orders. A Minnie Mouse toy. A coil of garden hose.

"Anything and everything," says Elle. "If a customer doesn't have to walk in and get it ... but that's awesome though."

"Tic Tacs," confides another staffer. Some customers order Tic Tacs online.

Monday through Wednesday is, usually, slower. "But yesterday we had rain," says Elle. "We looooove when it rains, because everyone likes coming to the mall." There are 3793 car parks at Sylvia Park. There are more car parks than the resident populations of Paihia and Coromandel township combined.

Last night, Elle's team worked 16 pallets of toys. Tonight they'll do stationery and home decor. Stock is coming in twice a day, six days a week, now. Christmas is definitely, certainly, sometimes too big.

Soon, there will be parents begging staffers to put a bike together for them (they will). There will be kids insisting that Dad would really like a water gun (he won't). There will be men wondering what sort of perfume women wear. ("The younger generation are Victoria's Secret fans and the more mature ladies, they're the Red Door or White Diamonds.") And there will a million requests for an L.O.L doll.

"Honestly," says Elle, "They're the meanest craze."

Does she see and hear sad stories? "Not really," says Elle. "Mostly it's a parent telling me the kids have already got one of whatever they want at home." But she remembers, back in April, a customer with a pile of food he couldn't afford. Nothing fancy, just some basics. He started choosing what to leave behind. She was about to step in, but a customer beat her to it.

"She said to me quietly, 'I'll pay for that'."

The average retail worker earns $21.29 an hour, but the entry-level rate is closer to $16. Figures from the Household Labour Force Survey's December 2016 quarter showed slightly more women (56.6 per cent) than men on the country's shop floors. Some 34 per cent were aged 29 or younger, 72 per cent were of European ethnicity, 94 per cent lived in a household with no dependent children and one-third of the country's entire Christmas retail workforce lived in Auckland.

"The crucial months will be November, December and early January," says Dennis Maga, First Union general secretary. "These are the challenging months, the peak periods."

First Union represents between 11,000 and 12,000 retail workers. The union's key concern for Christmas staff? Safety.

"We've had some incidents where members have been assaulted," says Maga.

He says the union was called in recently when a nightshift worker was allegedly beaten by a group of customers Maga understands had been drinking. He says when the worker fought back, he copped disciplinary action (the case has since been settled).

"When you are operating late nights, you have to anticipate that there will be drunk customers. Only a few retail companies provide security for their staff — you can't expect a shop floor person to inspect a bag if they don't have proper training, because otherwise the problem might escalate.

"Workers keep asking how can the company protect us during this period? I think that's a legitimate concern in terms of health and safety issues for retail workers, because while customers are enjoying their holiday shopping, retail workers are actually working very hard."

Christmas consumerism is not a new phenomenon or even a very modern malaise. In 1912, according to the Herald's Classifieds columns, the J.C.L Upper Store would be open until 9pm. In 1931, the Auckland Provincial Employers' Association reported its decision to allow shops to open until 10pm on Christmas Eve. In 1937, the pavements were "thronged" with customers (mostly women, "probably due to the fact that men must confine their shopping to the luncheon hour — and, of course, to the male habit of leaving Christmas shopping to the last possible moment"). Reporters were sent to cover parades, postal service overloads and, in 1922, a review of the city's gift offerings: "First of all, the point should be emphasised, to the fullest extent possible, Smith & Caughey's stocks are of British manufacture ..."

Soontariya Utto and the $1850 star of
Smith & Caughey's toy department. Photo / Greg Bowker — Soontariya Utto and the $1850 star of Smith & Caughey's toy department. Photo / Greg Bowker

Smith & Caughey's has been doing Christmas since 1880.

"We'll just take a right down here," instructs Edward Caughey, from the basement bowels of Auckland's oldest surviving department store. Where we're standing used to be stables. The main walls are solid brick and storage spaces have been created with rough-sawn timber framing and chicken wire. Dickensian-chic.

"Hamper Room" says the sign on the door hung with a garland of fake pine. It smells like fruit cake and dark chocolate; Christmas on a credit card.

Caughey, 32, is the store's kitchenware, electrical, fine food and wine buyer. He has a special ruler for ensuring the sauvignon blanc is in orderly rows and he has perfected the art of scrunching exactly the correct amount of straw for the festive hampers ($69 for the "Plymouth"; $229 for the "Prague").

"It's a whole world of temptation down here," says the man who was once a boy sitting in the upstairs cafe window of the family business watching the Santa Parade go by.

What's it like to grow up a Caughey? "It was just a normal childhood," he says. Watch him on the shop floor. Ten minutes helping an elderly woman select a mini panettone and a bar of nougat, which she asks to be put behind the counter while she thinks about it.

"You can change your mind anytime," assures Caughey. It's a week out from the store's 25 per cent off everything-except-beauty sale. On that day, he says, "we're expecting to do about 5000 individual items just in fine foods".

In the basement, I count seven boxes containing 69 rolls of silver wrap — enough paper to stretch from the city to the airport. Caughey thinks this year's Christmas shopping patterns could be interesting. December 25 is a Monday and retailers are preparing for an onslaught of customers who have left everything until the final weekend.

"They might come in here a bit stressed, but hopefully they'll leave happy."

He's in his office now, past a corridor lined with Le Creuset, pulling up yesterday's fine foods stats. Sales are almost double this time last year. They've been cleaned out of manuka honey and a couple from California have just ordered six $50 organic Christmas puddings to be freighted home.

"I particularly enjoy it at this time of year," says Caughey. "There's a real buzz about the place."

In late November, Retail NZ issued an extraordinary press release. Some 27 per cent of all of the organisation's members reported that, this year, they would not be decorating their stores for Christmas.

Greg Harford, general manager public affairs, said many thought decorations would not boost sales. Equally, says Harford, shoppers no longer consider Christmas sacrosanct from consumerism.

"In our 24/7 global shopping environment, consumers are increasingly seeking the best possible deal, and retailers are responding to that demand. There are lots of Boxing Day sales that now start online on Christmas Eve — and there are lots of consumers who will be making the most of these deals, even shopping online on Christmas Day."

Harford says he hears the "odd story" of stressed-out shoppers losing the plot, "but I don't think it's as bad as you'd expect. I think most customers are understanding of the fact that it's busy out there. And it depends what day you're talking about. Certainly grocery will be manic on Christmas Eve."

In case you're wondering, retail begins planning for Christmas in January — but the C-word doesn't make its first public appearance until September 24.

"Three months out," confirms Harford. "Christmas shops will start to pop up, and then it will build slowly from there."

It's hot. You're on your fourth coffee and your second credit card. But google "shopping stress" and be glad you're not on the other side of the counter. Back in May, a survey by Australia's Shop, Distributive Allied union surveyed 6000 retail workers and found more than 80 per cent of retail had been subjected to verbal abuse from customers over the preceding 12 months. Emily Madriga, writing for online magazine Thought Catalog, offers 13 things no one understands about working in retail, including the fact that the customer is not always right, that workers don't set prices, that unsupervised children are really very annoying and "in back" is not a real place.

"Customers must think we have a magical meadow in our teeny tiny back room where we grow new products for them because they are always assuming we have what they need 'in back' ..."

And if you are rude to a salesperson? "You are a bad person. Period."

One Kmart employee, who spoke to Canvas on the condition of anonymity says, simply, "people can be horrible".

"During the week it's pretty good, we have our regular customers. But on the weekends, it's like a different breed. I don't know if they're working people and they're busy and they're impatient, but they've got no tolerance, they expect everything to be laid-on for them and they've got no empathy for you at all. They just rip you apart, basically."

Smith & Caughey's Soontariya Utto. Photo / Greg Bowker

Walk a mile in a shop assistant's shoes? "I had no idea before I did this," says the worker. "You just honestly don't. It's just all about yourself and your shopping."

Three levels up from the Smith & Caughey's basement, Soontariya Utto is a high-fashion blur. She wears head-to-toe black (with yellow pom-pom earrings) and she meets us by a giant stuffed leather giraffe ($1850).

Soonty, 26, is the kidswear, toys cards and gifts buyer; a constant clip-clop over the original slatted wooden floor that's due for a varnish but won't get done until after the Christmas rush. By noon, there is an orderly queue at the kidswear counter. They include a cherubic blond toddler with a moneyed blond minder who buys $800 worth of Junior Armani.

Do they sell L.O.L dolls? Soonty draws a blank. On this floor, the toys are made of sustainably sourced wood and natural rubber. She keeps an eye on Instagram to see what's popular with young mothers (and doting grandmothers) and says this season's on-trend colour is red. Every single tiny item of clothing ($62.50 for a baby Hugo Boss tee) is studded with a security tag.

She spends two full days picking the store's Christmas card selection. Last year, they had sold out by October. "This year, we just tripled the order." Glittery reindeer antler hair clips ($15) are popular, tourists want New Zealand-made, and she's got high hopes that the giraffe will sell, because a lion from the same range has been incredibly popular.

We shadow her for an hour and she never stands still. Current mission: a christening outfit suitable for a baby boy. They have long, lacy gowns, but she wonders if ivory pants and a collared shirt might work. She rejects a teeny linen number with rolled sleeves (too casual). She photographs the options, emails the customer, and then phones to check the images have been received. When the shopper asks for time to think about it, there is just one correct answer: "Of course."