I worked retail for 8 years, and for 7 of those years I worked for a company that had, or rather still has about as much common sense, human compassion and moral decency of a rock that has been used to wipe Hitler’s peach after a particularly bad batch of Bratwurst.

I dunno if it was mainly contained to our branch or if it was universal but there was a terrible atmosphere that the management team went out of their way to create. That they, despite being responsible for 90% of fuck ups and lost revenue, were better than us and that they, in their benevolence, were somehow doing us a fantastic favour by abusing our contracts and cutting our hours whenever it suited them.

For 6 and a bit years I was on a 6 hour contract, and when I was a fresh faced 17 year old starting his National Diploma that was alright. It meant I could get Christmas presents, no matter how trivial or small, for my loved ones. That was why I took a job that paid a measly £3.50 an hour in the first place. £3.50 was absolutely ridiculous, considering when I was an Xmas temp the year prior at Argos I was getting £4.22, generous overtime and flexibility that I wouldn’t see again for years. In those six years at this place, that (whilst I seriously doubt they understand any kind of law around Libel given how little they seem to observe any laws around employment) I won’t name on the side of caution, I consistently beat sales targets, stayed late, covered no end of managerial cock ups, covered sick days, missed college (on request from the managerial team at the time) and dealt with no end of issues caused by the gross negligence of those above me. We worked in food, and every year there would be extended periods where we went without a working dishwasher (Late 2013 -2014 saw us go 6 months without one) It wasn’t rare to have no hot water (completely illegal to trade like this might I add) or working drains and we were always, always short staffed. I once nearly lost my job (final written despite no prior trouble) because, when incredibly fatigued, whilst dealing with a crushing personal issue that the store was aware of, I incorrectly signed an internal Document that led to 3 Sandwiches been left in our under counter fridge for a few hours over the Best Before. This may seem fair play, I mean I did cause a fuck up, and it would be, if Management hadn’t had us redate out of date produce for years prior to this, covered for a supervisor who routinely left out of date stock out and given others, who left four month out of date condiments out for the customers, a light talking to.

And whilst that might all seem a bit unfair, it wasn’t a patch on the complete lack of accountability they awarded themselves. The store was constantly losing money (many, obviously thick, people attribute this to the store deciding to stay open till 8pm on several nights during the week seemingly at random when no other shop was open and no fucker would come in past 4). There were numerous reasons for this, management insisted we had a lot of food on even in quiet times that only ended up getting binned (our fault for not selling things to non existent customers) Management wasting money on “Exclusive” nights (Exclusive as in no one came in) and on their staunch refusal to assess a situation and act on it. How did they counter these losses you may ask. Surely they stopped these crazy late nights, or talked with the food department and followed their advice on sales, or closed early on dead days? No, they cut their already stretched work force’s hours down with no notice and no apologies.




And this is where it stems into my political stance. This big, multi million pound company that exists solely off the backs of hard working people that it treats like shit and takes from them all it legally can whilst the fat cats are busy refusing to be even remotely accountable for any of their countless fuck ups that a child could amend is beyond similar to our country and Government.

You see, that’s probably the easiest way to look at the mess we’re in. We’re all employees (and simultaneously investors) of a big company. One that would crumble without us but seems absolutely determined to treat us as poorly as it can. The big wigs fuck up constantly, they cost us millions upon millions in stupid ideas that I can only assume a chimp with a keyboard in a broom closest somewhere in Westminster has been knocking out whilst on the piss and who foots the bill? Who has to invest more tax to fix it and who sees their vital services cut as a result? Us.

Let’s look at the banks. The plunged us into the worst recession in living memory, bankrupted hundreds of companies and literally tens of thousands of people through deliberately misrepresented policies and agreements. We’ll say that they’re managers within the company in this scenario, not senior management, but those middlemen who seemingly do nothing but drink coffee and bark orders at far better people than themselves. Senior done nothing to reprimand them, instead they took money from the employees and shareholders and low down, normal hard workers to cover the cock up and financially rewarded those behind it whilst putting sanctions on and blaming us. Imaging if Joe Public cost a company he worked for a couple of grand, he’d be out on his arse. But when these clowns cost us billions, they get a bail out and several million in pay offs. In what world does this seem like it’s a fair deal? It’s a crock of shit, the boys looking out for the boys.

Now let’s look at the NHS. Let’s, for the scenario’s sake we’ll describe it as the worker’s hours. Because of cock ups from upstairs the company has had to divert money again, and instead of cancelling management’s 5 figure bonus this year or cutting down on expenses they decide the best thing to do is hit everyone who’s on minimum wage and shit contracts with massive hour cuts. As a result not only are the people who desperately in need of the hours left in shit creek literally scraping by, but every department in the store and company is now stretched to breaking point with a skeleton crew running it and no additional funding which they all need. Broken dishwashers don’t get replaced, dirty old displays don’t get replaced, the old till with loose wires that has shocked several people doesn’t get replaced, the paint doesn’t get replaced. Everything looks like an artistic representation of 1980s Leningrad. And guess what’s on the agenda during the busy period? Temp workers with little to no training who are gone as quick as they arrive and after that even more cuts. All these cut hours and cut funding is leaving the company in absolute shit, but management don’t care, because they got their bonuses again. Anyway, it’s the working class’s fault for being so poor in the first place, right?








With all this shit going on you’d be forgiven for thinking that the workforce might be getting wise to it all and rightfully angry, and they are. They’re considering speaking to the Union (voting for a fringe party) and sticking it to the man. This just won’t do, it won’t do at all, so the Big CEO and gang gets in their top PR Spin Doctor in (We’ll call him Ted Sun) Ted Sun has a plan. He’s getting paid a lot of money to make sure the workforce is complacent and he’s gotta keep the big boys in or he’ll suffer too. So he writes up the weekly news letter for the employees, he knows he can’t outright lie this time about Head Office, even the knuckle draggers won’t fall for that line again, so he takes note from the Germans. He blames someone else. Let’s say there’s a religion that is mostly comprised of people who came from elsewhere, and let’s replace them with workers from another company. They’ve left the other company because, scarily enough, it was even worse than this company, and Ted Sun has an idea. He’ll take bad things happening at the other company, twist them so they’re even worse, add a little bit of his own creative flair and then claim that the workers from the other company are behind it and will implement it at our company and we’ll be paying for it. Suddenly a lot of workers are now worried about this crock of shit and forget all the crap HO has been up to and instead start blaming the blokes from that other company for all their problems. Suddenly it’s all so clear. HO HAD to cut everything because things were happening at another company and the workers there are all very bad people and we should treat them terribly and blame everything on them. Suddenly everyone forgets why our company is falling apart and how badly we’ve been treated. Ted Sun has another cracker of an idea and starts a rumour that the new guys are getting paid more, despite all proof being to the contrary, people still inexplicably believe it because a man in a shoddy red suit with poor grammar told them so.