...in terms of freelance work with nothing for months; the middle of the year was okay, then things went downhill again in October. Come November I was thinking about Christmas temp jobs – the Royal Mail uppermost in my mind, so I applied online. It was a grim prospect: literally on the other side of the city, a 6am start which probably meant leaving the flat before 5am and minimum wage, although the logistics weren’t the real obstacle. It was the contract that really worried me – signing away my right to privacy lock, stock and barrel; a subject for another post – but I was talking myself into being a proper grown-up, putting aside all the teenage leftie concerns about the small print and turning up at the assessment day. Then a friend suggested Sunshine Books. ‘Don’t they have temps at this time of year?’ she said. After a noodle around on the website, I just walked into my local branch and asked. One CV and covering letter later, plus a job interview exercise that consisted of finding possible Christmas presents for four imaginary shoppers, I was in. (‘Have a look round the shelves then recommend something for a teenage girl, for a teenage boy, for an uncle who likes military history, and get something literary as well.’) Right place, right time, right attitude – luck played a major part.
The job lasted six weeks. It was all backshift, 5pm-11pm weekdays. Three nights a week for the first fortnight, then five nights a week for four weeks. The daily routine became straightforward: start ‘through the back’ sorting out the stock delivery for the first hour or hour-and-a-half, wheat from chaff, backlist from front-of-store books on promotion, stickering the titles on special offer. Then came shelving books and covering the till, serving customers, until the shop closed at 8pm. After a 20 minute tea break, the last two hours 40 minutes of the night involved running around like a loon and getting the stock out into the shop. The gross pay for each six-hour backshift was £36.66, or what AA Gill gets for 36 words and a typo.
Being a middle-aged bloke with a lot of communications jobs on his CV, dealing with the public was a breeze. After all, this was Sunshine Books in the early evening, not Burger King at half nine on a Friday night. Neds R Not Us. Learning the till was harder. It had two interfaces: a touchscreen till and a stock database that looked as though it dated to the early 1990s. The more time you spent, the better you got. I reckon I would have needed two to three weeks of solid till time to get up to speed properly on anything the public could throw at me – refunds, orders, exchanges, whatever – although I only spent around a week, effectively, serving the public during my six weeks’ employment. Busy times became like triage. If they just wanted to buy books or tat then it was fine (paradigm tat: Cath Kidston stationery, made in China). If it was some complex transaction, I got one of my more experienced colleagues behind the counter to deal with it.
Sorry for any of the Massive who work in retail – granny, eggs, suck – but even a simple transaction would involve hitting up to 15 keys on the till touchscreen, as well as scanning barcodes. Security log-in, manually entering prices, hitting discount keys, the total key, cash or card key, entering the cash amount offered or hitting the key at – ahem – key times as a card was in the PIN machine, not to mention Sunshine Books’ loyalty card scheme or its winter stampcard promotion. And a bag. And a happy smile. Two or three weeks’ practice and you’re fine. Dashing front of store because there’s a queue while you’ve been standing out back – with hat and jumper because the ambient temperature is the same as outdoors – and immediately becoming Customer Service Man meant I didn’t get as much till practice as I needed. That said, self-deprecation, a willing attitude, a smile and a rolling apology based around the concept of the feckless Christmas temp generally did the trick. The only sour moment was when I was halfway through pulling change out of the till for a cash sale one evening when the customer offered me another couple of quid, on top of the tenner he’d already given me, so he could get a fiver in the change rather than coins. All my instincts with ‘this bloody till’ told me that I’d have to do something insanely complicated and hark back several steps and push another 20 keys in sequence, so I was muttering my apologies to an increasingly tetchy bloke (‘Er, no, sorry, can’t, er…’) when a colleague leaned over and said, ‘It’s okay, just do the sum in your head, take the extra money, give the extra change and carry on as you were. As long as the till balances, it’s fine. No more buttons to press.’
If the customers were largely amenable, the staff were better: overqualified graduates in the main who were either temping for Christmas or who had settled for a fairly quiet, low-wage bookshop job rather than jump into the madness of the 21st century service economy at the more stressful end. That said, it’s not like there has been much choice lately. For me, it was weird. When I graduated in the mid 1980s, unemployment was high and I spent a few months working in a parcels warehouse, loading and unloading lorries. Twenty-seven years of boom and bust later, I was back where I started, sort of, although in a somewhat more civilised way. There was the guy in his early 30s who had never earned enough to pay back any of his student loan; the woman in her early 20s who moved back in with mum and dad after she graduated; the graphic design guy also in his 30s but not breaking into graphic design. Not everyone got paid the basic – minimum wage plus 3p an hour – but many did. Even staff who got a boost to their wages for doing responsible things with cash and locking up at night were on less than £7 an hour. And here comes interesting point number one.
I’ve been freelancing since the early 1990s and there have been ups and downs but the last time I took a low paid job with an attitude of ‘needs must’ was back in 1996/97 when I worked in a press cuttings agency. To me, there were obvious parallels with Sunshine Books in the sense that the wage rate was low but the staff were generally graduates and although some of the work was drudgery (for more, see below), there was also a definite need for numeracy, literacy, people skills, computer competence, applied intelligence and a responsible attitude. The press cuttings place paid £5odds an hour 15 years ago. Do some investigation on the web and £5 in 1996 is equivalent to over £8.50 now, based on a benchmark of the average wage. Use RPI and it’s over £7.30. Use per capita GDP and it’s over £8.70. Even erring on the conservative side, an hourly wage of £5odds from 15 years ago should really be at least £8 an hour now, maybe even pushing £9. Conversely, Sunshine Books pays £6.11 to its most junior staff. I’m interested in hearing arguments to the contrary, but this makes me think that low wages seem to be getting comparatively lower which causes me concern when thinking about UK service industry. Yes, I’m being highly selective with my examples, both within my own experience, but the idea kicked off an association and I went off to hunt for a quote. Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (1992).

When it gets down to it – talking trade balances here – once we’ve brain-drained all out technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they’re making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here – once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles than can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel – once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity – y’know what? There’s only four things we do better than anyone else

music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery

But he was talking about the USA and this is the UK. Either way, book-selling isn’t on the list although a paper-thin layer of what we wouldn’t recognise as prosperity is implied and apparently now manifest. The reward for the clever bits of working in Sunshine Books now are less than the late 20th century equivalent. Welcome to the smearing process.
The other interesting thing about working in the shop was the realisation that, admittedly, part of the job was at the trained monkey end of the employment spectrum – hence confounding the expectations of some friends. They had imagined a placid existence talking to customers about the collected works of Sorley MacLean and gazing into middle distance like a literary Prof Brian Cox. Some days, deliveries of stock could be calculated in weights of over a metric tonne – and it all had to be shifted and sorted. Caitlin Moran for example. In all her tweeting, writing and media appearances she seems to be a sound woman and – sexism alert – really rather cute. She has also written a well-wrought and popular book in the shape of How To Be A Woman which has her mugshot on the front cover. But once you’ve placed discount stickers on hundreds of copies over several weeks, standing in the freezing cold out the back of the shop, you really don’t want to look at Ms Moran’s face anymore. (Sorry Caitlin.) Ditto Steve Jobs, Rob Brydon, Lee Evans, Jamie Oliver et al. At the end of the night, I also usually drew the short straw in taking the discarded packaging to the recycling bins. Since this was a branch of Sunshine Books in a shopping mall, given all the other shops were long deserted by 11pm, given that the service corridors of the mall looked like something out of Zombie Apocalypse VII, and given that the recycling bins had been filled to bursting by early evening, it meant a cold and lonely walk, listening for the distant threat of the undead (‘Braaaaainnnzzz, grr, argh…’), pushing a trolley of garbage past breeze block walls with a box cutter in my back pocket and somehow fitting everything into a big bin already stuffed with cardboard boxes and old displays from HMV. After a few days, it clicked why I had got the job rather than some of the willowy young girls whose mums had asked if Sunshine Books had any Christmas vacancies. The assistant manager had plainly fast forwarded to the image of a box filled with weighty Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall hardbacks, and to Twilight Zone junk disposal and reckoned I’d be more robust. Or expendable.
[There was actually one real zombie in the byways of the mall, a late shift caretaker. He was only ever glimpsed from distance, toting a dustpan and brush, pushing a trolley of cleaning materials, shuffling, sniffling, never talking. He looked around 108 and we think he was called Renfield.]
Anyway, it’s all over now. I finished at 11pm on 23 December and in traditional Dickensian style was unemployed again from Christmas Eve. I now know how to work a till, use a stock database and price tat by looking up the barcode number. I know that lots of people in Scotland use bookshops in malls to buy The Broons Annual, whatever cookbook is popular on any given year, books for kids, cuddly toy pandas or Moleskine® products. Conversely the only sale of one-handed erotica in the whole six weeks was to an awkward young couple who bought three romance novels as well as Tie Me To A Chesterfield With Silk Restraints or whatever it was called. The strangest customer however was a guy of around 30, skinny, dressed entirely in black, shaved head, and anxious enough to imply that he lived exclusively off methamphetamine. Every question I asked made him jitter. ‘Anything else sir?’ ‘Card or cash?’ ‘Do you have a Sunshine Books loyalty card sir?’ ‘Would you like a bag?’ He bought three Alexander Solzhenitsyn novels which I placed into a jolly red Christmas carrier.
To pull together some conclusions before this gets entirely out of hand:

• As ever, working with good people made it a decent job.
• The public in bookshops are nice, even when they’re in a rush. Mostly.
• Sunshine Books’ business model is partly based on well educated staff accepting low wages for the benefit of a relatively benign working environment. If the company had to pay proper wages, they’d be out of business before next Tuesday. To keep three staff members on from 8pm-11pm weekdays, stocking up the shop, in the run-up to Christmas cost less than £70 a night for three people for three hours for example, including employers’ NIC.
• A low-end branch of the UK service industry stuffed with graduates now seems to pay significantly less than it might have done 15 years ago. The gap between us and the Pakistani bricklayer (see Neal Stephenson quote, above) is closing, gradually. Knowledge economy, my arse.
• I have a new-found respect for people behind tills.
• I have written too much as usual. The New Year will be along in four hours or so. Here’s to 2012.

Except that this is one of the best things I've ever read on this site (in terms of prose, rather than the grim prognosis it imparts).

God help any economy in which a person capable of producing the above struggles for work.

Have a good new year and fingers crossed for a fruitful 2012.

50 and redundant at the fag end of 2011, I have had similar experience since then, in dead end end work despite oodles of 'proper' experience.

For those of you in decent jobs - hang on to them whatever you do. We are going to Hell in a handcart.

And yes all of us who've worked all our lives and wonder what skills we actually have are all pretty worried that we will find ourselves in your exact same situation..Doesn't seem like any industry is immune.Don't lose your great attitude. Ever consider a small one man business? You could get a 3000 or less psi pressure washer an old van with a nice logo and clean construction equipment or driveways or underground parking garages...stone structures..signs.Your skills will improve with experience but anyone can do it.Selling yourself to potential customers should be easy for a guy of your character. Anyway I wish you and everyone all the best...I think we may sort some things out in 2012 and things may straighten themselves out...we can only hope.

Good luck and thank you for sharing that. It is a privilege to read such well written and well reasoned words here.

Yes, what an excellent post. Struck a chord with me, as back in the mid-eighties I once worked for a few months for a now defunct chain (let us call them "Zimmerman's") in a university town (let us call it "Cambridge") and a grimmer time I can't recall. Underpaid, undervalued, bored witless most of the time. And the tills were a mystery I never fully cracked. Though I had some great colleagues, and an unexpected perk was being able to borrow the stock. Left me with an abiding dislike of Oxbridge undergraduates - hate to generalise, he said, generalising, but for the most part they seemed to be made up of one part ignorance to two parts arrogance, character traits that really come through when one is observing them from the vantage point of an "inferior" position.

Would that have been called something like 'sea ending'? Just idly curious. Great piece of writing, as others have said - have you considered expanding it a bit for paid publication in eg one of the Guardian's weekend bits?

One particular point set off a train of thought. It makes perfect sense that a pleasant working environment should come with a lower wage. In a saner world, unpleasant jobs - cleaning, arse-wiping etc - would be the highly paid ones. Instead they're just in a slightly different position on the low wage spectrum.

As others have already stated an excellent post, good luck to you and all of you out there.

I wish I had some answers for you. It seems that a freelancer in any field must be prepared to be as flexible as possible these days. In my own field, it is either all rounders who have kept busy or people who are exceptionally good at their chosen discipline. The people who only do one thing but aren't first or second on the list to call have found it really tough.
Wishing you a better 2012

post and certainly struck a chord with me. I wish you all the best for 2012.

... also currently slogging away in a book shop for Christmas, my last day was on the 31st. Your experience pretty much tallies with mine, with one difference.

Unlike yourself my shop flogged quite a lot of ironic porn. The Big Book Of Pussies/Penises/Breasts were all pretty popular. On my last day a very polite American chap approached me.

"Excuse me, I'd like to buy the big book of pussies. But I'm really not comfortable with it. Would you mind getting it for me and discretely bagging it?"

"Of course sir, no problem." So off I went to fetch The Big Book Of Pussies, leaving my till to get it. On my return a rather attractive young lady was waiting to be served also clutching a copy of The Big Book Of Pussies. She was not only attractive, but extremely smily and chatty. She clocked the book that I was holding.

"WOW!" she exclaimed to my poor, hapless, nervous male customer, "The Big Book Of Pussies! I'm buying that too! Isn't it brilliant?" Off she enthused about just what a brilliant present The Big Book Of Pussys would be, as my poor, shy other customer visibly quailed under her friendly onslaught.

I was far too professional to piss myself laughing. At first. As soon as this mortified man shuffled off swiftly though, I just couldn't help myself...

I've had a look at a couple of the Taschen rudie books. Purely as a matter of academic interest, you understand. I wouldn't call them ironic porn. They're just porn. Pure and simple.

Hope to see you at proposed mingle on 5th Feb.

many thanks to all for the comments ... just want to stress that it was a fairly benign environment, that working in bookshops has never been well-paid, that staying on my feet and being active for six hours a night was actually good for me (better than sitting at a desk drinking coffee and fretting) and that at least i was working & engaging with people which makes me a lot luckier than folk who can't find work at all at the moment ... i also hope that there were wider issues to draw out of the post than 'woe is me', not least economic & generational ...
all the same, working on a till, dealing with Christmas shopper queues and fitting into a workplace where everyone else at my level was significantly younger than me did make me feel reasonably adaptable still, which was the major benefit in personal terms ... that said, £6.11 an hour for 30 hours a week was never going to be a long-term solution for someone with a mortgage and back tax to pay
meantime, passing FOPP the other day, i became '£9 man' but that got me The Harrow & The Harvest by Gillian Welch (£4) and The Deep Field by Joan As Police Woman (£5) - both highly recommended ... here's The Human Condition from the latter (audio only)

Also one of the best things I have read here. Or anywhere else for that matter.

When I am surrounded by doom and gloom from colleagues on their first day back at work, some of whom are facing redundancy, and some complaining about their commute and the bad weather, this reminds me to be grateful for what I have.

I find your story fascinating and moving on several levels, but what really shines through is your positive attitude to whatever the world can throw at you, and this is exactly what keeps you (and me!) sane and fresh and willing.

Well done indeed.

You mentioned the lemma of temping at the bookshop vs some soul-to-the-devil job a while before Christmas and I'd been wondering how you'd got on. I wish you a happy new year and years to come.