There are certain Christmas songs which will always take me back to the clothes shop in Dublin where I worked in my university holidays. The four winters I spent running around the floors of Next clothing, I discovered that nothing rivals the pulse of a shop as the festive season enters full swing.
Though I probably shouldn’t admit it in the newspaper that now employs me, these were probably the fondest memories of my working life. Every Christmas, I briefly wish I could trade places with my teenage self.
I know my recollections of that time are hued with nostalgia. The same can be said for an FT colleague who so loved his part-time job selling school uniforms in London's Peter Jones department store that he seriously considered signing up for their management trainee scheme. Witnessing the Polish uprising while on holiday whetted his appetite for global affairs, and the rest is history.
His part-time job came with a heavily subsidised staff bar. Mine, in the early 2000s, coincided with the headiest years of Ireland's Celtic Tiger economic boom
Still, the memory of £20 tips from wealthy foreigners, the joy of the store and the camaraderie with colleagues from all walks of life has never left him. “Nothing quite matched that, ever,” he says, more than 40 years and many career accomplishments later.
A lot has changed since his day and mine. His part-time job came with a heavily subsidised staff bar. Mine, in the early 2000s, coincided with the headiest years of Ireland's Celtic Tiger economic boom. Holiday work was easy to come by, and customers had plenty of money to spend. As our crisis-time finance minister, the late Brian Lenihan, so memorably put it, "we all partied."
Homeless cafes
Today’s students are not so lucky. A walk around Dublin reveals homeless people queueing for food a few doors down from the Next store where I worked. It is one of a handful of homeless cafes which have erupted over the city as the pandemic has tipped many struggling residents into poverty.
One student describes having handed out 20 CVs in recent years and only getting one response. That was before Covid. Another describes how the pandemic led to staff shortages and uncertainty about hours, amid ever-changing rules on openings.
Recent supply chain woes, which led to stripped shelves and frustrated customers, has made the mood on shop floors today very different to the one I remember. I go to another Next store across Dublin. Less than four weeks before Christmas, there are only a handful of people in the store. The buzz of my retail past – when finding sizes, ushering people into fitting rooms, bagging up clothes and entertaining bored children was part of so many Christmases – is notably absent.
Now, Next plc tells me, online shopping has led to a step change in how the holiday season works in retail. Next takes on "dramatically" fewer seasonal staff in high street stores than it did in my day. What was a rite of passage for many of us is becoming an increasingly rare opportunity.
I remember how we sang, and laughed, and ate, and put red dots on labels so we'd know what was in the sale and what wasn't
Some, whose memories of Christmas counter service are less favourable than mine, might say that’s no bad thing. But I will forever disagree. My favourite Christmas memory is still bound up with the camaraderie of a festive all-nighter. At Next, all staff had to work some part of Christmas Eve. The country students who wanted to get home in time for the celebratory build-up usually took a shift that began the evening of the 23rd and finished at dawn. We’d work through the night, ticketing shoes and tops and dresses for the post-Christmas sales.
Quality Street
I remember the boxes of Celebrations and Quality Street sweets. I remember my beloved Christmas tape blaring throughout the store. I remember how we sang, and laughed, and ate, and put red dots on labels so we’d know what was in the sale and what wasn’t.
I remember one year using some of the money I’d earned with all those holiday shifts to buy a DVD player on the way to my Christmas shift, and feeling like Santa bringing it home to my mother, sister and brother.
I remember making my way to Dublin’s main train station on Christmas Eve mornings when it was still dark out, and embarking on the two-hour journey to my hometown, where I’d arrive in the late morning, drunk-tired, bleary-eyed and never happier the whole rest of the year. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2021
