HOME POWER STORES - PART 1

After a brief couple of weeks out of work I applied for the first half suitable job as a sales assistant at an electrical goods store called Home power. It was the old East midlands electricity shop near morrisons. I thought it would be suitable due to the couple of weeks I spent on work experience at Burtons clothes shop, only this time they would be selling something I knew a lot more about namely computers.

First impression of the manageress Fiona were not good, right from the interview she seemed a nasty horrible woman. Unfortunately my first impressions were correct!!!!! Initially I expected it to be the same as Burtons which was just help the customers when required but I soon discovered that this shop was a lot different.

The profit margin on electrical goods was very small so it wasn’t just about selling the product. You had to sell the add ons like payment protection, extended warranties and get them to have it all on a high interest store card. You had to give customers the hard sell and were given sales targets that you were expected to meet.

I suppose in that kind of job you have to believe in what you are doing and I didn’t. I remember an old couple in the shop who just wanted a new vacuum cleaner, I couldn’t bring myself to pester them into buying a load of add ons that they didn’t need. The bottom line was that I was no salesman and I knew it, maybe I might get better as I go along was my attitude but it just didn’t happen.

Computers were the main product I was interested in selling because I thought that having an A-Level in computing would make me more knowledgeable. It was here that I confirmed what I had long suspected, A-Level computing was totally irrelevant to the use of computers in a normal everyday work environment.

In the back room was a league table with everyones sales figures on, mine started on the bottom and did no better than second bottom from start to finish. We did get paid a commission for everything we sold, the customers seemed to think that we made a fortune but the reality was it was only about 1% of the total sales cost. I remember once seeing the daily commission figures and the only thing I had sold that day were a pack of blank VHS tapes and had made 2 pence which I did find amusing.

The sales league table in the back room created a hostile “everyone against each other” mentality. A month after I started a lad called Dean Portsmouth started, unlike me he was an outstanding salesman selling several thousand pounds worth of computers in his first couple of days. I got on well with him but everyone else hated him because they considered him a threat. I didn’t care about that sort of stuff which is probably why I got on well with the other members of staff but not the management.

I started hating the job, losing interest in what I was doing and my sales figures were steadily getting worse (from an already low point). I prefered working in the warehouse and doing the jobs that needed doing out the back. We had to work at 10:AM new years day 1996 which I thought was stupid and pointless as hardly anyone came into the shop. By then I suspected that my days were numbered but then I heard from uncle David ( who still worked for east midlands electricity at the time) that Homepower was running into serious financial difficulties.

Looking back I should have started looking for a new job at the start of 1996 but I just pushed it to the back of my mind. That first month several stores around the country started closing down and a few high up executives/directors started losing their jobs. Homepower had gone into administration, unfortunately I didn’t know what this meant at the time.

Not leaving that place turned out to be a big mistake .......................................