Credit crunch

Article — 17 January 2009 — 955 words

Woolworths: Final thoughts and wrapping up

First of all, apologies to anyone who became sick of Woolworths when I published eight posts in a row about it. Anyway, it was good to get it all off my chest, and is at least cheaper than seeing a therapist. When I started writing this series, I thought I was going to end up […]

Article — 15 January 2009 — 1,319 words

Spare part

Business — Current affairs — Personal — Technology

I see that the BBC’s iPM blog is asking for the human stories behind the current unemployment figures. Well, I am a human face of two recent news stories. As readers are no doubt sick of reading by now, one of those stories was the loss of around 27,000 jobs at Woolworths. The other is […]

Article — 11 January 2009 — 1,157 words

The blunder of Woolworths

Business — Personal — Society

Work: Woolworths

By the time I started working for Woolworths, the company was pushing its in-store ordering system big time. In Summer 2006, the Big Red Book was launched to encourage customers to make use of the ordering facility. As sales assistants, we were always encouraged to offer to order any items that weren’t in stock. Unfortunately, […]

Article — 10 January 2009 — 1,194 words

It wasn’t just the credit crunch

Business — Personal — Society

Work: Woolworths

One question that many of my friends have asked me over the past couple of months is, did I see it coming? For many, it was a shock that an institution like Woolworths could even be in mild difficulty, never mind on the brink of going out of business. But the honest answer to their […]