The Woolworths Archipelago
The Siren
The Morning shows the day
The Origin of the Playboy
There are a number of clever advertising campaigns run by Woolworths in Australia to invite us to believe that they are really a wonderful company who cares about their customers and provide a zany, happy place to work for their staff. One of their adverts features a woman who is walking with her son into a store and lecturing her son about how to conduct himself during a job interview and the importance of a career and so on. The twist in the advert is that it is the woman who is actually being interviewed for a job at Woolworths, not her son. Similarly, the grander twist in Woolworths advertising is that it is all fundamentally fake.
I was employed at Woolworths for almost a year before my resignation earlier this year. The work was fine and I enjoyed the physical exercise my work afforded me. I enjoyed supporting customers in their search for those things they wanted to purchase. I even enjoyed learning more about the ways consumer systems worked. In the end, though, the store I worked in underwent a change in management, I was effectively punished for not signing a contract with the company and I decided to part ways with them. I was very good at my specific job but new management came in and with an autocratic sweep of the hand of a manager in dire need of anger manager support, my job was destroyed. I was told to accept almost half the hours I was originally offered in a permanent contract and when I declined my hours were effectively to be cut to almost zero and in an area of the store away from what I was good at. I felt that it was well past time to leave.
It is a massive company. Unfortunately, what may appear as a boon for those seeking secure employment is also what causes it to be such an unpleasant place to work. There is serial harassment of staff and when this comes from senior administration, there is no recourse to complaint without suffering further difficulties. Such a large company is thoroughly impersonal and for all of their professed concern for the customer - the truth is that once you pass out of those shop front doors with your groceries, it is unlikely that Woolworths would even let their staff urinate on you if you were on fire to quench the flames. Senior staff often belittle and ridicule more junior staff and there is a gossip system of ominous proportions - I found out so many (untrue) things about myself I was horrified at the pettiness of it all. There were so many incidents in store which made the whole place just seem like it was composed of high school cliques and small-minded jealousies.
Some of the silliest things that happen in Woolworths involve when the senior managers (Regional and Area Managers) come to inspect the stores. Staff spend days furiously tidying up the store and not getting their official work done and all so that some pompous git from upper management can feel that the store always looks this tidy. The upper management were treated like lords when they came to visit - a little like a scene from Monty Python and The Holy Grail where the peasant spots the King because he "is the only one not covered in shit".
Being such a vast corporation, there is no real recourse for complaints about the ways managers may treat you as they are just swallowed up in the system. Indeed, when asking the store's union representative what I should do about the contract I was instructed to sign he said: "you don't want to cause any trouble," as though I had no rights and even the union representative was afraid. That's really it - in the end a company this vast works through the fear and intimidation of it's staff and those who shimmy their way up the greasy pole of corporate success tend to be (or become) quite bitter and indifferent. There is a lot of bad feeling between the staff and many disputes over limited resources and staff hours.
It is not a nice place to work and it is run a little along the lines of Nazi Germany when you get a bad store management team. There are some good people working there but unless you really have to, you could find a better place to work. Workers need to feel both that that they belong and that they have a say in their working life - you will receive neither of these from Woolworths.
