Got a Saturday job there when I was 14 yrs and 3 months (you could in the 70s) and worked there on Saturdays until I left school at 17 and went full time as a trainee Manager.  Had plenty of snogs in the stockroom and on one occassion a bit of nookie with a much older woman!!

Woolies in Durham used to be jammed at the start of October with a steady stream of students being escorted in to buy kettles, the (banned in halls of residence but we all had them anyway) toasters and I think every student house had a Woolies-issue set of pans.

Since I moved to Derby 4 years ago I think I've been into the store there once and it was such a depressing armpit of hell I walked straight back out.

At the Sparkhill (Birmingham) store the shop was joined onto the back of a house in the road behind.  The house was used as a stockroom.  For reasons I never fathomed the attic of the house was used to store all the lightbulbs and all the gardening stuff.  Thus the shop's most fragile stock had to be carried up 2 flights of stairs (no lift) and then up a ladder though a hatch into the loft.   Likewise the store's heaviest stock (bags of peat, lawnmowers etc) had the same journey and of course back again when the shop was re-stocked! The loft of the house at the front of the shop was used to store all the spare modular shelving (again weighing a ton)!  I started full time there when I left school. As the trainee Manager I had some unusual duties.  One week the Manager went on holiday and I was given his set of store keys to open up in the mornings.  One night in the week the store window was put through and the police got me out of bed to open up and check what had been nicked!   When the Manager returned he gave me a rollacking for being so honest about what was missing.  Next time we had a break in he 'instructed' his trainee on how to inflate the claim so that he could write off loads of stuff from the books!  The store closed down in 1974 and became a 'Shoppers' World' store which was a catalogue store along the lines of Argus today.  At the time it was revolutionary but for some reason Woolies couldn't make it pay.

I was transfered to Harborne which was also in the process of closing and becoming a Shoppers' World as well.  Shoppers World ceased trading after about 18 months and the stores were sold off.

 Next it was off to Acocks Green.

Woolies in Acocks Green (still open) had (still has) a lift that linked the shop floor with the goods inward door and the stockroom.  The lift must have been installed in the 1930s!  It frequently broke down and so as the biggest 'lad' on the staff it was my job to go to the lifthouse on the roof and wind the cage up and down by hand.  First I had to throw the switch to turn of the power.  Then I had to attach a winding handle to the flywheel of the motor.  With one hand I had to press down on the large electrmagnet to disengage the brake then wind with the other hand.  The gearing was so low that it could take 10 minutes to get from the ground to the first floor!  The blisters I got on my hands were huge!  At weekends I was told to wear my suit and became a floorwalker! 

Again the shop was linked to the house next door which was used as a stockroom annex.  using the same logic as the other store the big boxes of soap powder were stored in here. This entailed wheeling the heavy boxes the full length of the stockroom, down steps, across a bridge, up steps and into what had been a bedroom of the house!

Then there was the lorry driver's fiddles.  Delivery drivers would ask to see the manager.  He would come down and there would be a whispered conversation.  Pound notes would change hands and a few extra boxes of stuff (usually tinned foods) would be added to the delivery.  I am pretty sure that when this stuff went through the till the money somehow went into the Manager's pocket (no computerise tills in those days, just a cashing up at the end of the day).

For some unexplained reason Woolworths had some sort of business link with Burtons the tailors and as 'executive staff' I was entitled to a generous discount of clothes from there.

Once at Sparkhill on the Saturday before Christmas, myself and another Saturday lad were summonsed to the Manager's Office. We were the biggest males on the staff (6') and the Manager was about to bank the takings for the busiest day of the year.  He was only a little bloke (about 5'6") and as he carried the leather cash bag we walked on each side of him down the road to the post office where he banked the takings.  IIRC it was about £600!  I recall that we joked about running off with the money and he said that if we were going to do it then make it worth while.  I later learned he got the sack for fiddling the cash.

At Acocks Green I was entrusted to take the money across the road to the Post office.  There was always a long queue and I had to stand for ages with what was obviously the takings.  So I got an understanding with one of the girls on the counter.  As I left the store I would grab a handfull of pick n mix. When they saw me walk in they would open a window especially for me and I handed over the cash and sweets!  When the Manager went over they always made him wait!

Average_Joe:

 Do you remeber those record that Woolies sold Top Six. Cover recordings of six top selling singles by no-name groups of session musicians. A new one each month. They were pretty embarassing. My Mum used to buy them thinking she was doing us a favour. She didn't notice the initial dissapointment and then we had to play along. I feel guilty about it now.  

They also sold records on the Embassy label. 

Have you still got the records?  Probably worth a bit now.

I recall when stereo records came in we had to sell off all the old mono LPs as no-one wanted them.  I still have my mono copy of 'The Best of David Bowie' with all his 60s stuff on it that cost me 25p!  The stereo version was 75p!  I think proper albums such as Black Sabbath 4 cost £1.25p