Did I ever tell you I managed the Woolworths store at Liverpool?
Posted By Ric Vatner on October 7, 2010
I was only a senior section manager at the time but I had trained under the famous RK at Kings Cross for whom catching shop lifters was not only a specialty it was a calling.
The famous Coca Cola Sign at the entrance to the infamous Kings Cross
Welcome to the Home of Thieves, Pimps and Pros
I will never forget my first day at Kings Cross as a juniour section manager (for those who don’t know Sydney, KX, as it was generally written, is the heart of the Red Light district). When the Americans made Sydney an R & R (Rest and Recreation) centre for their troops in Vietnam, Kings Cross went into melt down. Woollies was where you came to recover.
Call Girls One Day and Sales Girls the Next
I mean it, many of the girls who worked the streets of KX got jobs at our shop when they were worn out and needed a rest. The fact that they seemed to recuperate so well there meant that we always needed new staff but we never had a shortage of applicants. In fact it was regarded as the best R & R / job for girls on the job. You could keep in touch with your mates (and clients), take it easy and still make enough to pay the rent.
An hour after I started there, I was engrossed (absorbed, gripped, engaged and much more) while listening to a conversation between one such girl who was behind the counter and a male customer. He seemed to be in urgent need of something he called a “quickie” but she kept telling him she was on holiday and to go elsewhere. I thought she was working for us but as I didn’t understand anything they were saying I decided it must be code for something that they didn’t want me to know.
My First Brush with a Shop Lifter
Unfortunately, for me, while I was watching them, a customer standing not 3 feet away from me was literally hoovering up the counter and sticking the stuff into a gigantic pocket in his coat. RK was watching all of us. As soon as the customer left the store RK ran after him and made an arrest. As they passed by me on the way to the office I coped a clip to the back of the head and when I asked the girl why she suggested I work with my eyes open and keep my nose to myself.
RK’s office overlooked the shop floor and had one way glass installed so he could watch us but we could not tell if he was there or not. I later came to believe that he didn’t need the one way glass, he had a sixth sense for thieves. He would be giving you a bollicking in his office (He never talked to new section managers) and suddenly he would stop and say, someone’s stealing and off he would go. Mind you before he was posted there, you could say that at anytime the shop was open and you would have been right 90% of the time.
After six months at the Cross I learned how to manage women and smell a shop lifter almost before he entered the shop. I even started to like it there so I took a 12 month lease on a flat nearby in Elizabeth Bay. I moved into the flat on Saturday and on Monday morning I received my transfer to Liverpool which was a good 8o minutes drive away in the boondocks of Sydney’s outer western suburbs.
No One Welcomes You to Liverpool
Liverpool Woolworths was having huge problems with shop lifting or more particularly, the poor old distressed manager was.
I was sent up as RK’s star graduate to help him stamp it out.
I walked in and the manager promptly had a nervous breakdown. I‘m really not that hard to get on with, honestly. I think it was watching a gang of teenagers descend on the ladies hosiery counter and literally lift everything off it then walk out of the shop, right past him, while he pissed his pants, that did it).
So I got my big break. Head office asked me to look after the shop until they could find an experienced manager. The bit they didn’t tell me was “..and who would be stupid enough to go there”
When I got to know Liverpool it was everything I imagined the original penal colony was like. Rough, tough, uncared for, far from the city and a labour seat in a state where the liberals held power with a vice.
A couple of days later, just as we were closing I got a phone call from St Vincent’s hospital to say my sister had been admitted with a burst appendix. That’s Very serious stuff and they said I should come immediately. Can you imagine, that was the second manager in just under a week to piss on the shop floor. No wonder we had such a difficult job hiring a good cleaner.
How I Cured the Hitch Hiker
Any way, I was in a hurry to get out and rushed to my car. In those days we didn’t have radar so I set off at a cracking pace. Then for some reason, and I never did this ordinarily, I saw a chap stick up his thumb to hitch a lift and I stopped and picked him up.
He was grateful at first, but I was a man in a hurry and soon he turned to me and said “I said Sydney not Heaven” and he demanded I let him out. I think I cured him of hitch hiking, stupid thing to do anyway.
My Brush with Instant Death
Well my sister pulled through and the next day I went to work and as I put my hand on the door to use my key, the door slid open. At first I thought we had had burglars but I soon realised that in my haste to leave the night before, I had forgotten to lock the front door. If some one had touched it or if there was a strong puff of wind the door would have opened and Woolies would have had their biggest ever sale. The stock would literally have walked out of the shop.
The big front door to paradise that I left unlocked all night.
I shook all day but I think it was because every time I thought about it I got a bout of the giggles. That was my first near death experience. If my regional manager had found out, you would be praying to me not writing to me.
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