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Woolies
Woolworths has gone into receivership. The news shocked me slightly. It had always been there. It was a fixture of the British high street. Not that I'm sorry- except for the staff, for whom its a bummer- because I never loved it. I had my reasons. One reason is I'm a snob, another is I don't like my shops brassy, ugly and fluorescent and a third is that in 1959 one of their shop assistants grabbed me, told me I looked a mess, straightened my collar and rolled my sleeves up neatly- and if there's one thing I hate it's being fussed over by mother hens. Ailz's pa says it's her fault for doing all her shopping online and- while we've never ever done our real-life shopping at Woolies so can't be accused of deserting it- he does have a sort of a point. Woolies is the lazy store, the one that that refused to move with the times. It was the prototype of both the budget shop and the supermarket, but stayed exactly where it was- continuing to offer the mid-century shopping experience- cheap, cheaper, cheapest- whilst the fully-evolved budget shops and supermarkets under-cut and outstripped it. When you think about it ,"The wonder of Woolies" (remember that slogan?) is that it lasted as long as it did .
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I used to love reading her copies of the staff magazine. They were all so prim and proper in those days.
Do you watch the tv programme about the independant department store. My daughter works in one like it. Family run,very old fashioned but hanging in.
Have an earworm for the day :-)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=RJNJCarL5ik&eurl=http://lj-toys.com/?journalid=142928&moduleid=140&preview=&auth_token=sessionless:1227870000:embedcontentiurl=http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/RJNJCarL5ik/hqdefault.jpg
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I haven't see the department store show. What's it called?
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We get it here in the culturally deprived States, too.
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"I'm free!"
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I really enjoyed it,but then my whole working life has been in shops apart from a short stint in a factory to earn more money!
x
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00fqpn0/The_Department_Store_Peters/
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Nancy Griffith wrote one of my favorite songs (of hers) called 'Love at the Five and Dime', she claims it was inspired by seeing Woolworths when she flew back 'home' for a visit.
Woolworths closed, here in the States, back in the 80's. All that's left of what's left is the Foot Locker stores.
And
Woolworths Group plc originally was the British unit of F.W. Woolworths, but has operated independently as a separate company since 1982. On 26 November 2008 Woolworths Group plc anounced that they are in too much debt to maintain their outgoing payments and went into administration with many stores expected to close within weeks, meaning the loss of thousands of jobs.
AND
On February 1, 1960, four African American students – Ezell A. Blair Jr. (now known as Jibreel Khazan), David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain – from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, a historically black college/university, sat at a segregated lunch counter in the Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth's store. This lunch counter only had chairs/stools for whites, while blacks had to stand and eat. Although they were refused service, they were allowed to stay at the counter. The next day there was a total of 28 students at the Woolworth lunch counter for the sit in. On the third day, there were 300 activists, and later, around 1000.
This protest sparked sit-ins and economic boycotts that became a hallmark of the American civil rights movement.
That Woolworth's counter is in the Smithsonian.
Sorry, I get carried away sometimes.
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After all, I bet that lunch counter wasn't serving 1000 meals a day during normal times!
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I'm glad that the lunch counter has been saved for posterity.
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You caused me to remember out Woolworth's stores, where I could get a hot fudge sundae for 25 cents or a banana split for 50 cents. A hot dog and a cola cost only 25 cents for both.
Our Woolworth's stores disappeare around 1980.
I have moved my longer post to my own LJ.
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I don't believe our Woolworths ever had ice cream counters.
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I loved Woolworth's -- do you remember the one at 13th and Chestnut here in Philadelphia? When I was young and had little money, and my friend Sally was similarly straitened, we used to allow ourselves $5 for our discretionary shopping for the week. We would roam the aisles of Woolworth's choosing our purchases, often taking things out of the cart and putting them back as many as five times before proceeding to check-out.
My friend Sally and I got together last summer at a discount store, Marc's, in her home town and reminisced about the old days in Wooworth's. Our budgets are a little more generous now but we still filled and emptied our carts repeatedly.
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But my British training would have prevented me from going in. :)
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(Anonymous) 2008-11-28 11:44 pm (UTC)(link)Since I am a "post-depression" "pre-war" baby, I associate Woolworth's with post war prosperity here in the US, coupled with the now long-gone Yankee "thrift".
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(Anonymous) 2008-11-28 03:35 pm (UTC)(link)Woolies is definately in a difficult position in terms of what they sell, especially with shopping moving out of town and online. Their biggest day of the year is just before Easter, and there stores are very large for glorified sweet shops. P.s. don't touch the pic'n'mix.
Tom F
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I'd forgotten you'd worked in Woolies. I should imagine that was pretty good fun.
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(Anonymous) 2008-11-28 04:45 pm (UTC)(link)The trouble with pic'n'mix is that small children tend to "pic" out sweets 'n' mix them with their saliva, then put them back in.
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Yeuk!
Sorry for the essay
It was still a shop where you could get crap that you couldn't think of where else to buy. That said, the past 2 or 3 I've been in for things (a pie dish, A4 padded envelopes, apple-flavoured bootlaces) they were out of stock and the store was poorly organised. It's a shame to see such an historic company go under (especially counting the US Woolworth's) but no, like you I'm not sorry.
Re: Sorry for the essay
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I wonder what happens next. There's a very large Woolworths in Oldham town centre. It will be depressing if the premises has to be boarded up for any length of time.
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Here is OZ, Woolies is a muscle flexing monster, one of two chains who dominate the market, set prices, bully delivery networks and screw fresh food suppliers by setting ruinous prices which they then jack-up astronomically for re-sale. They are very powerful and exceedingly ruthless ... it's obvious that they share only the name with their British namesakes.
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That doesn't sound at all like the British Woolies. I'm not sure exactly how things developed, but it seems the overseas Woolies are/were independent of the parent company in America (which no longer exists) and of one another.
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I was such a compliant little thing that, on the rare occasions when I said "NO!" and meant it, it left my parents in a state of total disbelief.
Twosuch occasions were my absolute refusal to keep going to boy-scouts where I was bullied, and my point-blank refusal at the age of 12 to continue with the haircut that my father approved.
That one provoked scenes like the "Please Sir, I want some more" moment in "Oliver Twist".
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Later I got thrown out of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme for failing to get any points and embarrassing the school by an act of trespass (which was really the teacher's fault for not checking beforehand that the land he was sending us orienteering across was private property- I was the victim of a cover- up!)
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The only thing I have ever been thrown out of was the Griffith Arts festival concert ... this incident bagan when two Isadora style dancers in their white gauzy greco costumes performed an Arcadian interpretive dance that left my companion and I primed for a giggling fit.
They were followed by a contralto of a certain age, ample figure and extreme buxomness who proceeded to sing "Climb Every Mountain" ... (to understand the effect you will have to sing it to yourself with the final word of each line sung absolutely flat) ...the effect is hilarious. Needless to say, we were the only ones in the audience who cracked up, and we and were escorted, howling with laughter and very much ashamed of ourselves, from the auditorium.
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I left, after being forced to exchange the cutlery for something else, and never set foot in there again. Told everyone I knew what had happened too, and some of them also stopped shopping there. You want to keep your customers, you don't treat them like that!
I do remember once upon a time that woollies was a decent shop, but no more. I shan't miss it at all.
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To me it was wooden floors, popcorn smell, glass bottles of pill-sized round candy hard as rocks, ten-cent Japanese figurines in big bins, plastic flowers, rings with red-glass rubies for 29 cents, pencil boxes, Whitman puzzles, Big Chief notebooks, glass windchimes, Evening in Paris perfume for Mother's Day.
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