Abstract
This article presents a vivid account of the day to day reality of a female manager in a busy UK city centre food retail store. Insights into some of the transformations in retail work are illuminated, namely restricted store budgets, lean staffing and a long-hours culture. The combination of these factors has resulted in increasing workplace demands and time pressures, with health and well-being consequences. This unique account enhances understandings of the twin challenges for managers in attempting to accommodate work-life balance for their staff and themselves personally. Despite these workplace pressures, the narrative is peppered with instances of practical and emotional concern and support.
Introduction
The lived experience of a female food retail store manager, and the associated challenges and pressures of work, are the focus of this article. Retail is one of the largest sectors of the UK economy, comprising around 11 per cent of the workforce, but in recent decades the retail industry has undergone significant change (Bozkurt and Grugulis, 2011). There has been a concentration of ownership, with the sector becoming increasingly dominated by a limited number of powerful multi-national operators (Cox and Brittain, 2000: chapter 1), often to the detriment of local high-street outlets. This has created an intensely competitive environment, where there is constant pressure to maximize profitability and reduce costs (Sparks, 2000). Furthermore, socio-economic transformations with the expansion of evening and weekend opening hours have resulted in changing shopping patterns and consumer attitudes (Akehurst and Alexander, 1995). All of these related factors have significant implications for retail managers and employees, in terms of staff scheduling, budgetary restrictions and workplace demands.
The development of contemporary retail management policies and practices are, therefore, driven by the need for operational rationalization, with the effective and efficient deployment of human resources. This is typified by the adoption of numerical and functional flexibility on the shop-floor, in order to meet varying customer demands (Broadbridge, 2002). Such practices have created a segmented workforce largely consisting of full-time managerial grades and part-time shop-floor employees, often comprising women and students (Mason and Osborne, 2008). However, the centralization of business processes, budgets and organizational policies has curtailed the autonomy and discretion of many retail store managers (Grugulis et al., 2011).
Set within this context, the narrative presented here is from a 42-year-old retail store manager, who has taken the pseudonym Fiona. The store, part of a large UK-based private-sector food retail chain, will be referred to as RetailCom. Also employed in this store are two full-time supervisors and eight part-time shop assistants, of whom four are women with familial responsibilities and four are students. Fiona has worked at RetailCom for over 20 years. She has been married to long-term partner Niall for 16 years, and although they do not have any children, she does have a large extended family. In the narrative she discusses the competing pressures of limited budgets and long working hours, with attempts to manage work-life balance, together with dangers and dignity at work.
This vivid account incorporates a number of inter-related themes regarding contemporary retail work. Some of the most salient features of Fiona’s testimony are the long-hours culture and competing pressures of limited budgets and stretched staffing levels. This resonates with current debates on both the intensification and extensification of work in the UK (see Burchell et al., 2002; Green, 2006). While there is only limited research into work-life balance in the retail sector (see McKie et al., 2009; Nickson et al., 2004), the narrative reveals the twin challenge for Fiona in attempting to reconcile such matters for both the staff and herself personally. Regarding shop-floor employees, this involves scheduling hours so that women can fit work around their caring and familial duties, while enabling students to ‘balance’ work with their studies. However, recent studies have highlighted the lack of ‘balance’ for workers and managers, in general, due to ever pressing ‘business needs’ and long working hours (see Crompton, 2006; Ford and Collinson, 2011; Hyman et al., 2005). This situation is particularly evident in the case of Fiona, due to short-term demands that inevitably impact on home life. Warhurst et al. (2008) examine these challenges facing managerial grades with the spatial blurring of work, which again is apparent with Fiona often having to take work home. Furthermore, there are inconsistencies in organizational policies, as job share is available to human resource staff, but not to retail store managers. These work-related pressures and demands can have negative health and well-being implications (Broadbridge, 1999; Bunting, 2004; Green, 2006), as can be seen in this scenario. Retail work can also be dangerous, and Fiona recounts instances of staff being subject to verbal and physical abuse from customers. She claims that centralized management controls and cost savings are the reasons why the company does not employ a full-time security guard, which further contributes to workplace stresses. Fiona refers to the trade union’s campaign for dignity at work, and there is growing academic interest in this notion. Bolton (2007) argues that dignity involves respect, recognition and value, as employees need to feel safe at work. The barriers to dignity have been conceptualized by Hodson (2001), comprising overwork, mismanagement and restricted autonomy, factors which broaden the agenda and encompass issues that are highlighted throughout the testimony. However, interwoven in this rich narrative are webs of reciprocity and compassion between fellow colleagues.
Fiona’s story
I’m a store manager within the food retail section of RetailCom. My job is basically to run the unit. We run it as if it is our own business, basically. I have a budget set by head office and I staff this floor according to the monetary budget that they set me, but how I spend the money is up to myself to cover the business. It’s also my role as manager to run the day to day operation of the unit and to recruit store managers for the future. I’ve worked for RetailCom for just under 24 years.
I do think that RetailCom, in general, is a good company to work for. The reason I joined in the first place is because of RetailCom’s values and principles and they’re still very important to me. Although the salary is good, it’s also the policies, ethics and principles, they’re very important and I don’t feel that other retailers could offer me the same service.
I didn’t intentionally set out on this career path. I was actually going to go to university to do a degree in accountancy and, at the time, a careers adviser that was a friend of the family heard that RetailCom were looking for trainee managers as part of the trainee management programme; they sent me to college to do a retail and accountancy qualification. When I actually started, I then became quite successful, more on the practical side of things rather than the academic side of things, and was offered promotion very quickly.
I’ve never actually heard of people making a conscientious choice to do selling as a career. Obviously like myself, I’ve fallen into it by accident. I have been successful, hence I’ve stayed the course for 24 years, but I think I’m in the minority. But there is a high turnover of staff, especially in the city centre stores. Traditionally, shop keeping has always been kind of looked down on as a job you would only do if you couldn’t get anything else. That’s kind of the feeling I have from family and friends. I know from my family, they’re disappointed I chose it as a career. They would rather I had taken on… it’s all lawyers and teachers in our family, so they’re quite disappointed but… you know, I was wanting to do this; but I think, in general, people do see working in a city store in a supermarket as the, sort of, last job on earth that they would want to do. So I think people do it as a stopgap or, for women with kids, it’s handy, it’s local, you know, they’re earning a reasonable wage, compared to the marketplace.
Workplace pressures and the long-hours culture
For me, being a manager in a retail store can be very hard at times, to be honest. Although nothing is ever actually written down in stone for us, if for example the back shift supervisor were to call off sick tonight, I would be expected to make arrangements to cover the store and, if not, cover it myself. They do have guidelines that you would work a maximum of 12 hours and that you shouldn’t work any more than 45 hours in a working week, but I think you’ll find in retail, generally, that most store managers will do about 60 hours a week, if not more. And there’s always that underlying… not vocal, not written, but that underlying expectation of having to cover.
Next week, for example, I’ll probably have to be in six or seven days just because we’re short staffed and there are no arrangements to pool. There is no central pool for the area, if someone is off sick, basically I have to fill all the missing jobs at the moment. The company have no facility to cover sick leave at all. It’s a question of if your store budget has the facility for extra hours and someone is willing to do it, fine. If there’s no money in the budget, then you just have to do the work of the man that’s down.
It has that always been like that; in fact, it has actually got tougher. We actually work with less staff now than we did 10 or 15 years ago, with longer hours into the bargain. The job’s getting harder; it’s certainly not getting easier.
Initially when I started, the shop opened at 9 a.m., closed at half five [p.m.], late night used to be on a Thursday to seven o’clock in the evening. Then they brought in the eight [a.m.] till eight [p.m.] pattern. Then they squeezed in the Sunday openings. And now that’s extended to the full day, then Sunday just became eight [a.m.] till eight [p.m.], seven days a week, so Sunday was like any other day. Then the eight o’clock got squeezed up to 10 o’clock at night, and the eight in the morning got squeezed down to seven, and now in some stores they’re actually open from six [a.m.] till 11 [p.m.].
I used to be manager in one of the stores that are open 24 hours a day and don’t close. So if your night shift manager phoned in sick, well basically you had to cover that shift. The business can’t close; it’s very much frowned upon if you had to close the doors. I had to do a seven to four shift one night, for example, go away and come back at 10, do 10 at night shift right through to eight the next morning, and then they were able to get me a day shift person to do my shift for the day shift the next day, which actually turned out as a sleep day because you’ve been on the go for 24 hours. But I lost that day and I didn’t get it back, as they had no money to pay me for it, because there’s no facility built into the store budget.
Those two bags [at the side of her desk] are homework for tonight – the paperwork generally goes home – if there’s admin things for the day that I can do at home, I’ll do them at home and that will take me another couple of hours. Other than that, I would have to… sometimes I have to come in maybe an hour early to get a start on to the day and maybe stay two or three hours late to catch up with things.
Also, I’ve just been informed that an extra-curricular activity has been arranged for Sunday night after the store closes and there’s no cover been arranged for it at all, and basically my boss has said to me, ‘This is going ahead, you have to cover it.’ If no one volunteers to do it, then basically I have to be in from 10 o’clock closing through night shift until the job [which involves contractors modernizing the store lighting system] is finished. And I’ve had five days notice. Basically I’ve been told it has to happen and it doesn’t matter what plans I have, I have to cancel them. So basically it doesn’t matter what your plans are, you are sort of handcuffed to the front doors at times, it does feel like that. Sometimes you’re worried about making plans because they’re never guaranteed on a week to week basis; if something changes or crops up, then you may have to cancel your plans. The only time you are really guaranteed to be off is your holidays, basically.
I can decide when I want to go on holiday, there are no stipulations at RetailCom other than that you can’t have the month of December because, traditionally in retail, it’s the busiest month of the year. Also, I can schedule my own hours, you know, I don’t have set hours, but I have to schedule myself to suit the needs of the business. We phone in to our boss on a Monday with our hours, but we have to do one late night a week now, that’s not negotiable any more. We must do a late night, we must do one in four Sundays per month, and we have to phone in and let him know when our day off is.
I would like to reduce the hours. I would like to go back to even eight o’clock closing, because at least at eight o’clock at night you still felt as though you had some of the evening left. But by the time you finish at 10 or 11 at night, you know, you’re going into work in the morning in darkness and coming home in darkness. But I would want there to be something in writing where there is a physical cap on the amount of hours and something in writing in the event of so and so going sick, with a planned course of action, so that we don’t have to be here from six in the morning.
Managing work-life balance issues
We have a broad spectrum of ages at this store, and that helps with shift patterns and work-life balance matters. We usually have older workers mostly during the day. It tends to be mostly students at night, because people in general don’t tend to want to do weekend work or back shift work unless it suits their circumstances at that particular time. The students are studying during the day, so it suits them to work at night but it is usually only something they want to do short term; it’s not something they want to do long term.
Many of the women who work here have kids and they mix and match work with childcare. Louise has just left; she was a single mother with a young child, so she was working while her child was at nursery. Jane, out there just now [in the shop], she’s only had the one son who’s grown up and has a family of his own now, so she’s free to work during the day but she tends to still only want to do Monday to Friday, so that she has the weekend with her husband and to see other members of the family.
Well, basically the staff don’t have set hours in here, as such. I generally schedule it on a Friday, for their hours the following week. What I try to do is give them all at least a minimum of one full weekend off each month. If possible, I try and give them one or two weekends off. They all know that they can come and speak to me if they have a function, something coming up. With students, I’m very conscious with them too, I don’t like them to work the night before they have an exam. So I get them to give me their exam dates so that I’ve got a note of them when I do the schedule, I try to schedule round exams. I try when I’m recruiting as well not to take on two students that are on the same course, so that I can get flexibility there, because I appreciate they’re here helping me for the business. But from their point of view, that might not be their long-term goal, but we do want them, if we can, to stay with the company, so we want to try and make life suitable for both parties.
I do know that some store managers just prefer people to work set hours, so there’s no flexibility. Basically if you’re on Saturday night, then that is your shift and there’s no flexibility there.
I’ve never said no to any flexible working requests from any of the staff in my entire time in this store. I’ve always found a way round it. One lady, her husband had heart surgery a few weeks ago and there was no one to cover her shift, so I came back and did it myself and she’s actually 59 (years old) and she’s the best worker I have in this store. She is very reliable and loyal. So obviously when she… she’s in a time of crisis, upset, this has happened to her husband, she’s not really entitled to have time-off because she’s not sick but I wouldn’t say no to her, so I did the shift so she didn’t need to worry about it and she’ll repay that favour to me. If I was stuck for a supervisor tonight, she would run the shop and I would just need to come back and lock up. So there’s mutual help there.
What I would like to see personally happening is job sharing for store managers. I happen to know there’s a girl over on the other side of the city who’s just had a baby, needs to work because she’s just had the baby but would like to stay in her current role but be able to do it on a job sharing basis, but RetailCom don’t offer job sharing within the food retailing management process. They do in human resource jobs, for example, but they don’t accommodate it in the managerial roles out on the shop floor.
Danger and dignity at work
One of the problems for us in a city centre store is that shoplifting is horrendous, we have no permanent security, only a mobile guard who comes four hours maybe three days a week. And this increases the pressure on the job, you know, being out there and being physically threatened by people with weapons and being abused is not pleasant and I don’t feel that the organization does enough to protect us from that kind of environment. I think we are the only retailer that doesn’t have permanent security in store.
We have drunks coming in, you know, and basically the company training video tells the staff to refer to their store manager. So basically, I then become the security on the front line, so it could be me and two 18-year-old girls out there and I’ve got a shower of football hooligans in. How are we supposed to deal with that? It’s alright the company saying they want you to be pleasant and polite and get them out and don’t put yourself at risk, but you are at risk the moment these people walk through the door. I would like to see a permanent guard in the store.
I have had to call the police on several occasions. There have been two members of staff assaulted. I’ve been in this store three years and I’ve had two supervisors physically assaulted in the store and verbal abuse is a daily occurrence. It’s a big problem just now. The union have actually been campaigning over the last year about the verbal abuse that shop workers are having to take; it is part of the dignity at work campaign. It’s about treating people at work with respect, because obviously we have a job to do. If we have drunks coming in and it’s against the law for me to sell alcohol to a drunk person, I have to then refuse that sale. That person then becomes abusive and I’m then subject to both verbal and physical abuse by that person, and I have no security guards here to help me, so you’re out there on your own basically.
Senior management don’t believe that we need a guard here permanently because incidents don’t happen every single day, every day of the week, so they put them in sporadically. That’s the guard just arrived just now, so he’s here for a few hours tonight. He might be here for a few hours over three or four days this week. Senior management say they don’t feel we need a permanent guard here because incidents aren’t happening every shift, every day.
Well, every other retail store in this city has a security guard on the door. They’re a visible deterrent and the staff identify a safety element with that, because there is someone else there to help them if something happens, you know. I mean, we do tell the staff to buddy up if someone comes to the till and they’re not happy about serving them and they feel uncomfortable. We’ve got codes in the shop that we can use, you know, so that you can get assistance so that you don’t have to deal with that person on your own, but it’s very dependent on the co-operation of the team in the store. Whereas sometimes, even the physical deterrent at the door stops these people even coming through the door in the first place.
It’s also hard because we’re held accountable for our stock results in the store and you get an allowance of 1 per cent. So you’re very conscious and when someone is coming in shoplifting, it’s like they’re stealing from you personally because if you don’t get the accounts to balance every quarter, then it’s your neck on the chopping block. So it’s alright RetailCom saying, stand back, don’t detain these people, blah, blah, blah, but at the same time you must get the figures to tally. So it’s like being caught in a table tennis table, you know, you’re the net and the bats are at either side.
I think it’s that aspect of the job, to be honest, that is the reason why younger workers tend to look for something else, because people need to feel safe at work. The safety issues do worry me and I can’t say it’s great. I can walk out of here at 4 o’clock in the afternoon and go home and my day is finished, but I can’t switch off because I do think, you know, there’s a football match on and it’s just Darren and Tracey on tonight, I hope they’re OK. And I’ll be watching the clock to see if I’m going to get a phone call, you know. At just after 10 o’clock, the shop’s shut now, everything must be OK. You shouldn’t need to feel like that. You should be able to go home and switch off and know everyone is safe.
The consequences of demanding work
I think stress and anxiety is a major problem with the job. I was actually off work for a year with depression and it was due to a work-related incident. I put a complaint in against my area manager at the time, who I felt was bullying me and that caused my health to suffer. I was on medication for a year. Now, if anything, it has taught me that my health is more important. I tend to have a voice now. I tend to say no and stand up for myself an awful lot more than I did, earlier on. Now, I will say, you know, I’m sorry no, because my health… I’m now anaemic, which I wasn’t before, and I think that’s down to the job and the pressures of the job. So now I know physically within myself when I can’t do any more, I say, ‘No, I’m sorry, that’s it.’
I know from speaking to other store managers in the area. One woman has recently left; she’s taken on a different job now just because of the stress of the job that she was in.
I’ve recently decided that 24 years of being a manager in a supermarket is perhaps long enough and it’s time for a change. I don’t see it getting any easier, and the long hours certainly have been a deciding factor in that.
I never wanted to go into field management or operations management, you know, there’s enough stress and pressure looking after one store without looking after 20, but I’ve always been very fond of training and the personnel side of things and I would like to have opportunities opened up to those areas. Hence, although I said I feel I needed a change, it’s within the organization. I wouldn’t like to go outside. I would rather progress within it, because I am quite proud of who they are and what they represent.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (RES-000-23-0905). We would like to thank Robert MacKenzie and the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. We are also grateful to Linda McKie for her helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this article.