The Retail Apocalypse (Incorporating Casual Dining Closures)

It's almost as if, when you claim bankrupcsy, it's an easy way to remove employees from a bloated company, avoid paying debts/taxes, and yet still pay their bonuses to their leadership, and just restart with a clean slate under a different ownership.

I'm sure that's not the case though.

Nostalgia for Woolies is so strange, it was a terrible store. Horrendously overpriced VHS and DVDs, always sold at RRP. Loads of Easter Eggs and sweets at Christmas but again at full price. Pic n Mix was a buffet of hard jelly babies and pink shrimps.

They offer nothing that can't be found in larger quantities and lower prices in Asda or B and M. B and M toys are fantastic, as is their chocolate selection.

Godzilla wrote:Nostalgia for Woolies is so strange, it was a terrible store.

This.

I also see a lot of nostalgia for Blockbuster (the video rental store, not the game show).

I think people just forget how terrible those shops were.

I had a Christmas temp job restocking the shelves in Woolies in the evenings. Would have been maybe about 2004? I think American Idiot had recently come out as Boulevard of Broken Dreams was on the in store mixtape that played every night.

The pick and mix was gross. Sweets came off the floor at the end of the day and went back into the display units. :dread:

And some of the staff would stick their hands straight into the boxes of pick and mix sweets in the stock room and help themselves while restocking. I remember being told about some boxes of sweets arriving with maggots in, I presume those ones got binned.

The problem was though, for all it's faults, Woolies was normally the only store outside city centres where folks could get a lot of the stuff they needed.

During the 90's and 00's, i would pop into the store on most days, especially when there were new CD's/movies/games being released as nowhere else sold them.

I even used to buy my games consoles from them (the last being my PS3 in 2008).

PuppetBoy wrote:I had a Christmas temp job restocking the shelves in Woolies in the evenings. Would have been maybe about 2004? I think American Idiot had recently come out as Boulevard of Broken Dreams was on the in store mixtape that played every night.

One of the staff at the Seaton store was a fan of the Bee Gees, as their music would always be playing whenever she was serving customers.

I think it depends on where you live and what that particular store was like. The video section in my Debenhams for example was superb - they had the front of an American yellow taxi cab, in the air, crashing through a brick wall. Blockbuster was done up like the foyer of a cinema. Some stores in the ‘90s really went all-in with their physical set building and it’s something I look back on very fondly because shops these days wouldn’t dream of that expensive and outlandish extravagance.

KK wrote:The video section in my Debenhams for example was superb

One thing i remember about Debenhams was that at one time, the basement floor of the Exeter store was home to an outlet of GAME.

I miss Maplins.

*press F*

Vermilion wrote:
KK wrote:The video section in my Debenhams for example was superb

One thing i remember about Debenhams was that at one time, the basement floor of the Exeter store was home to an outlet of GAME.

Yes, my one had an Electronics Boutique concession.

KK wrote:
Vermilion wrote:
KK wrote:The video section in my Debenhams for example was superb

One thing i remember about Debenhams was that at one time, the basement floor of the Exeter store was home to an outlet of GAME.
Yes, my one had an Electronic Boutique concession.

The one i remember was almost certainly that too, as sometime around the millennium (but i can't remember quite when), all the EB stores became GAME.

That does remind me though, that a little while back i was going through some things and found my old EB loyalty card. :lol:

The first time i ever set foot in the main Exeter EB store (located almost opposite the old HMV and McD's on the high st), it was actually called Future Zone!

Cuttooth wrote:
Dual wrote:
Qikz wrote:
Cuttooth wrote:
Qikz wrote:
Godzilla wrote:UK's best supermarket is one again leading the way.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-l ... e-67373472

Booths supermarket puts staff back behind its tills

A supermarket chain has become the first in the UK to go back to fully-staffed checkouts, axing almost all its self-service tills.

All but two of Booths' 28 stores will see staff back on the tills, the firm, which trades in northern England, said.

The exceptions are two of its seven shops in Cumbria.

The firm, which has 16 stores in Lancashire as well as outlets in Yorkshire and Cheshire, said it was responding to customer feedback.

"We believe colleagues serving customers delivers a better customer experience and therefore we have taken the decision to remove self-checkouts in the majority of our stores," a spokesman said.

"We have based this not only on what we feel is the right thing to do but also having received feedback from our customers.

"We will retain self-checkouts in two of our stores in the Lake District in order to meet the needs of our customers during very busy periods."

Wait Booths are counted as a supermarket?

What else would they be?

I thought they were mainly classed as a chemist.

My face when I realised we had a new larger/lager moment.

I've only just had the pleasure of seeing this :lol:

. Brilliant!

Oblomov Boblomov wrote:
Cuttooth wrote:
Dual wrote:
Qikz wrote:
Cuttooth wrote:
Qikz wrote:
Godzilla wrote:UK's best supermarket is one again leading the way.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-l ... e-67373472

Booths supermarket puts staff back behind its tills

A supermarket chain has become the first in the UK to go back to fully-staffed checkouts, axing almost all its self-service tills.

All but two of Booths' 28 stores will see staff back on the tills, the firm, which trades in northern England, said.

The exceptions are two of its seven shops in Cumbria.

The firm, which has 16 stores in Lancashire as well as outlets in Yorkshire and Cheshire, said it was responding to customer feedback.

"We believe colleagues serving customers delivers a better customer experience and therefore we have taken the decision to remove self-checkouts in the majority of our stores," a spokesman said.

"We have based this not only on what we feel is the right thing to do but also having received feedback from our customers.

"We will retain self-checkouts in two of our stores in the Lake District in order to meet the needs of our customers during very busy periods."

Wait Booths are counted as a supermarket?

What else would they be?

I thought they were mainly classed as a chemist.

My face when I realised we had a new larger/lager moment.

I've only just had the pleasure of seeing this . Brilliant!

I still have never seen a Booths :slol:

Qikz wrote:
Oblomov Boblomov wrote:
Cuttooth wrote:
Dual wrote:
Qikz wrote:
Cuttooth wrote:
Qikz wrote:
Godzilla wrote:UK's best supermarket is one again leading the way.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-l ... e-67373472

Booths supermarket puts staff back behind its tills

A supermarket chain has become the first in the UK to go back to fully-staffed checkouts, axing almost all its self-service tills.

All but two of Booths' 28 stores will see staff back on the tills, the firm, which trades in northern England, said.

The exceptions are two of its seven shops in Cumbria.

The firm, which has 16 stores in Lancashire as well as outlets in Yorkshire and Cheshire, said it was responding to customer feedback.

"We believe colleagues serving customers delivers a better customer experience and therefore we have taken the decision to remove self-checkouts in the majority of our stores," a spokesman said.

"We have based this not only on what we feel is the right thing to do but also having received feedback from our customers.

"We will retain self-checkouts in two of our stores in the Lake District in order to meet the needs of our customers during very busy periods."

Wait Booths are counted as a supermarket?

What else would they be?

I thought they were mainly classed as a chemist.

My face when I realised we had a new larger/lager moment.

I've only just had the pleasure of seeing this . Brilliant!

I still have never seen a Booths

I think the furthest south they go is Manchester, which is probably why.

Southerners: let's book a holiday to Booths.

Woolworth in Germany is shite though. Nothing like the UK one was

John Lewis planning major job cuts over five years

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68118092

John Lewis has confirmed it is planning to further cut its workforce over the next five years.

Up to 11,000 jobs at the retail partnership - amounting to 10% of the workforce - could reportedly go, according to the Guardian.

John Lewis said the losses would include redundancies and not replacing vacant positions.

It would not confirm numbers to the BBC, but said plans to return the business to profit would mean cuts.

The group currently employs 76,000 people across its supermarkets, department stores and head office. It is owned by its workers through a trust, who are known as Partners.

Do John Lewis think they're a video game developer?

Godzilla wrote:John Lewis planning major job cuts over five years

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68118092

John Lewis has confirmed it is planning to further cut its workforce over the next five years.

Up to 11,000 jobs at the retail partnership - amounting to 10% of the workforce - could reportedly go, according to the Guardian.

John Lewis said the losses would include redundancies and not replacing vacant positions.

It would not confirm numbers to the BBC, but said plans to return the business to profit would mean cuts.

The group currently employs 76,000 people across its supermarkets, department stores and head office. It is owned by its workers through a trust, who are known as Partners.

Gee, who could have seen this coming literally days after they announced they were halving their redundancy packages going forward?

KK wrote:Southerners: let's book a holiday to Booths.

Nah, i'll go to France and stay at C&A instead.

Lagamorph wrote:
Godzilla wrote:John Lewis planning major job cuts over five years

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68118092

John Lewis has confirmed it is planning to further cut its workforce over the next five years.

Up to 11,000 jobs at the retail partnership - amounting to 10% of the workforce - could reportedly go, according to the Guardian.

John Lewis said the losses would include redundancies and not replacing vacant positions.

It would not confirm numbers to the BBC, but said plans to return the business to profit would mean cuts.

The group currently employs 76,000 people across its supermarkets, department stores and head office. It is owned by its workers through a trust, who are known as Partners.

Gee, who could have seen this coming literally days after they announced they were halving their redundancy packages going forward?

I genuinely don’t know what has happened to them. I put 5 years into the partnership and we were like a family. The sadness in Sheffield for the store closing in 2020 is still felt today. I made some great friends there and we always planned to go back in retirement and work part time. There’s so much I would still buy from them given the chance.

The Waitrose problem is they’re bloody everywhere in London and nowhere up here. We have one big store but a small one in town would clean up. M&S is busy every night; people are always willing to pay a big more to get better stuff from the swill they peddle in Tesco.

The Retail Apocalypse (Incorporating Casual Dining Closures)

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