How many high-street businesses will follow Woolworths into extinction in 2009?
Tavistock, Saturday December 27th 2008. Woolworths. Just about everything has been sold off – including paint-splattered plastic chairs, shelf units, brackets, pinboards, crap used tools, boxes of random screws – even the store’s christmas decorations.
We visited out of curiosity. It’s not often you experience the end of something like Woolworths. It has an air about it that’s hard to describe. It’s not just that the place is being stripped bare. The people are too. You notice how they look and ask how they’re feeling – and they tell you. To hell with the company and the boundaries of ‘professional behaviour’ and ‘customer service’, they’re all gone. What’s left is people.
And you can’t help notice the things that stubbornly refuse to sell – even now, right at the end; even marked down by 80% – the plastic fake security cameras and the naff wrestling action-figures.
Who will go next in the new year? What will happen to the people who were part of these businesses? And what will fill the gaps they leave behind?
Recent Comments