That sinking feeling

It's 1988. We moved back from Somerset the year before and we've just moved house again. Sue had bought a house in Kettering so that we had somewhere to live while we sorted ourselves out. It was a nice mid terraced house overlooking a park and we paid £34,000 for it, having sold our house in Shepton Mallet for £37,000. House prices were rising fast and we decided to move while we could, so, one year after we bought our home, we sold it for £46,000 and bought another one on the outskirts of the town. It was slighly larger and had a garage. We paid £48,000 for it.
It's worth noting that our house earned more in that year than I did. I was on about £11,000 as I recall.
As well as moving house, I was in line for the new store in Corby that was due to open later that year. The company still had plans to continue expanding and had a brand new state of the art distribution centre in Southampton. It was then that we began to hear rumours that the company was up for sale. The rumours were confirmed. Everything went on hold and I had to continue commuting to St Ives.
Then the news came through that the company had been bought by Superdrug.


Oh joy.

There were a few ex-Superdrug managers working for Share and none of us felt secure. We were called to a meeting to meet the new owners and I came face to face with my nemesis who by now had been promoted from Area Manager to Regional Director. I recognised a few of the Area Managers as well. Superdrug only appointed from within so they'd been managers when I was kicking my heels as an assistant manager.


After that meeting which seemed to go OK (there were no promises made that we would automatically keep our jobs) I recived a letter stating what I could expect if I decided to accept redundancy. It wasn't a lot and I'd just moved into a new more expensive house. I agonised over this for a week or two and finally and reluctantly accepted the new contract from Superdrug.
Share had already appointed a new manager for St Ives, so I was once again a spare manager. I went around the various local stores to re-acquaint myself with the systems, which hadn't changed much, only evolved and then I heard that Superdrug had taken over the lease that Share had signed on the new store at Corby, so I applied for the position and was given the OK.


Once again I was recruiting, and training staff, fitting out and stocking the store. The store opened and we started trading. I can only remember a few things about it.
One was the silly lift from the warehouse to the shop floor. It was only about 3 feet high and just big enough for one stock trolley.
Then there was the steady stream of toerags who had nothing better to do than to stand outside taunting me. They were all barred from entering, but that didn't seem to stop them. They thought it was a game. They'd intimidate the younger staff and openly shoplift unless I stood in front of them. I wish I'd had a cattle prod.
The next was the staff's accents. Although Corby is less than ten miles from Kettering, the people speak with an entirely different accent, a strange almost scottish accent. This derives from the huge influx of Scottish and Irish families to work at the steelworks in the 1930s, when the population increased from 1500 to 15,000 in a little over eighteen months.
Finally there was my chief cashier. She lived on one of the more notorious estates. She knew everyone who came into the store. OK so far, but then she didn't turn up for work one Saturday and rang in sick. This meant that I had to cash up the tills on my own and at that time we used to take the banking to the local bank and deposit it in the night safe. We closed on time and I asked a couple of Saturday staff to wait and walk with me to the bank. As we rounded the corner I was jumped from behind by a young man who tried to grab my briefcase which looked like a security case. I fell to the floor and we had a tug of war for a second or two. I managed to kick him hard in the balls but in doing so broke my hold on the case. He ran away with my case which contained my wallet, some papers and the remains of my lunch. The night safe wallet was inside my jacket, tucked under my armpit. My glasses were broken and I was bleeding from a cut above my eye. I placed the wallet in the night safe and went to a call box, rang home and then called for an ambulance. The cheque cards were cancelled before the lad had stopped running. The police later found my briefcase in the local river and no, I didn't get it back.
I rang the area manager and he arranged to meet me early on Monday morning. When I arrived at work I looked a sight. I had a huge black eye and swollen face. We sat at the checkout to greet the staff as they came in. I kept my back to each one and turned to face them in order to gauge their reaction.
Only one person didn't register shock.
Guess who?
My chief cashier.
We suspected that she'd tipped off her boyfriend and he'd mugged me. Only there was no proof.
She put in her notice a few weeks later.
Funny that.


About nine months after the store opened I was on the move again. I was asked to take over an existing Share store in Northampton.
And I went on a training course. My first proper training course since I'd left school over twenty years before. Ah, well, it's never too late to learn.