On 8th January of this year I returned to my hometown of High Wycombe to celebrate my 24th birthday with family and friends. My whistle-stop homecoming tour took in cosy meals with uncles and aunties, and reunions with lapsed high school chums. One erstwhile acquaintance that was no longer around for a nostalgic catch-up, however, was my old Woolworths store. 

Woolworths was once perhaps the country’s best-loved high street fixture; a mandatory destination for families nationwide and an indispensible part of the community – but not anymore. A number of high-profile BBC documentaries have recently highlighted the plight of the laid-off staff, so four months since the January closure what better time for an inside perspective on the fallout for both the workers and the high street?

My personal love-hate relationship with Woolworths began as a 16 year-old in the High Wycombe branch, and the eight years that followed included stints in Beaconsfield, Edgware Road, Slough, Amersham, Teddington and, finally, Kingston-upon-Thames. I always worked part-time, predominantly in evening shifts, so maybe when the axe fell I was one of the lucky ones being that I wasn’t dependent on the wages to fund some horrific mortgage or pay to feed children.

Store Manager Brian Bower joined the company in 1973 and spent 13 years as the head of the company’s flagship Edgware Road branch. He was one of the thousands who was hit hard by news of the company’s closure:

“It was like a bereavement, it really was. I was in a state of disbelief, and that didn’t go for some weeks. Right up until the end though, we always had a belief that we might see our way out of it, like Marks and Spencer did a few years ago. I was there for so long it was like an extension of my family,” he said.

Since the economic downturn took hold in 2008, it has threatened a number of retailers. Some of the more notable names include: Dixons, JJB Sports, MFI, Officer’s Club, Roseby’s, Adams, Land of Leather, Whittard and, two weeks ago, Bay Trading Co. In the last twelve months, each of these has either been placed into administration, swallowed up by a competitor, or ceased to exist entirely. Woolworths, of course, stumbled into the latter category – and provided a delighted media with its most visible example yet of the credit crunch.

The reasons for the Woolworths collapse are numerous and well-documented, and didn’t begin in 2008. Ignoring fundamental problems during the good times allowed head office to paper over the cracks and pretend the bad times might never arrive. Former Maidenhead and Wycombe Store Manager Mark East sited a number of factors for the company’s demise:

“They got caught up in too many white goods which made them a huge loss. They should have concentrated on the things they were good at – toys, and home and wear. There was always the wrong product at the wrong time of year.” As well as problems with the buying and distribution infrastructure, not owning their own premises proved costly. “Going back to the 80s, selling all the properties and leasing them back instigated it,” says Mark.

If the company being put up for sale for £1 (plus £300 million worth of debt – but let’s not split hairs) – was tabloid gold in the winter, the spring brought with it the opportunity for human interest stories aplenty, direct from the dole queue. The BBC in particular have been quick to capitalise airing two primetime shows within a fortnight of each other in April. “How Woolies Became Wellies” was the genuniely heart-warming story of Claire Robertson, the store manager of the Dorchester branch who re-opened the store as Wellworths and took back the majority of her 20-strong team. Next, “Panorama: Life After Woolies” followed five former staff in their (largely successful) quests for new work.

Anu Bains, 28, is a similar success story. After graduating from Luton with a BA in Media Performance and Radio in 2003, Anu unwittingly fell into the role of store manager at the Teddington branch having worked for Woolies part-time during her studies. Redundancy rechanneled her determination to work in radio and this month she began co-hosting the “London Local” Wednesday evening slot on 91.8 Hayes FM.

“It’s my dream, it’s what I’ve wanted to do since I was 13. When the administration was announced I was already looking for a new job but when I was made redundant I felt like I was free to do what I wanted. I decided I was going to try again to get into the media, and I’m loving it!” said Anu.

During the six weeks between administration being announced and the stores closing for good, dubious reporting was a constant. Bad pic-n-mix puns were expected, and clichéd recollections of buying Wham! cassette tapes in the local branch as a kid are fine. The events being depicted as a nation cheerfully coming to terms with the predictable loss of an old but useless family friend suffocated any anger or protest over a bigger issue – the livelihoods of 27,000 thousand people being calculated as an acceptable loss.

The papers loved to describe female weekend staff as ‘Saturday girls’ – a cute phrase but not one ever used in the stores, and had an unhealthy fixation with pic-n-mix, handily ignoring the many other retailers who have sold it for some time. Harder to stomach was the humiliation of crass articles such as the BBC website’s “What’s the point of Woolworths?” (tastefully posted minutes after the administration announcement) and David Mitchell’s amusing but patronising comment piece in The Observer a week earlier.

Brian’s feedback from customers during the closing down sale, he says, was largely compassionate – “I thought initially the customers were sympathetic. Then there was a massive influx of people who were just bargain hunters, but in general people were positive.”

The government, though, were right not to rescue Woolworths. Gordon Brown correctly judged that the debt levels and structural problems meant a rescue package simply wasn’t viable. This isn’t a repeat of the miner’s collapse of the 1980s – they had specialist skills which couldn’t be transferred. Shop workers are at the other end of the spectrum though – and while there is a high street full of similar workplaces, how valuable and unique are the abilities to operate a till, tidy a stockroom, or stack shelves?

The stores closed down in instalments, staggering on in Hatton-esque fashion before being put out of their misery. Wycombe closed to the public on 6th January and staff stayed behind for a few days to tidy up. Two days later they were almost done and, passing by, I popped in to say goodbye to old friends – Chris, Mark, June; but mainly, my adolescence. I don’t ever envisage finding a workplace with the same atmosphere and like every staff member nationwide, I will cherish my memories – the café girl agreeing to go out with me, and playing ‘supermarket sweep’ when we first got trolleys are personal highlights. It’s painful but inevitable, and as with all aspects of growing up we must be thankful for the good times and move on to better things.