The Primark Chronicles: Family Matters

One of the things I tried to do with my thinking time at Primark was work out what might be the things in life that I love doing or feel I might be good at doing or that fill me with joy, as I sought potential pointers regarding the ongoing issues of career and vocation. One of the things that I thought of was kids. On my very first day at Primark the supervisor training us shared her distaste for the little hands that rifle through her shoe displays or the little feet that run into people or the little mouths that make up for their size with screaming gusto. For me, I loved it when the Primark Kids crossed my path. (And the adults were just as bad at ruining the displays anyway. It appears to have become entirely socially acceptable for people to TRASH Primark. Not your size? Throw it to the other side of the shop. Knocked over a display of Christmas cards? Keep on walking. Broken something? Just leave it. Stacey’s perfect retort was, “Would you do that in Debenhams??”) Working in the Christmas section meant I got to enjoy the tiny gasps of excitement as kids ran their eyes over the glittering...ahem...tat which reminded them of the coming present-fest. I find kids' enthusiasm infectious and in Primark they rarely failed to put a smile on my face.

Often, Primark seemed to bring the worst out in the mothers of these kids. A girl sobbing in the queue after a fight with her brother was viciously shouted at by her frustrated mum and sent to stand elsewhere. Kids would be dragged and pushed and shouted at for crying. It would be easy for me to be overly judgemental but these were genuinely sad moments. Another time an exchange between two teenage brothers and their mother had me in stitches – the older boy leant forward as his mother waited for me to scan her day’s shopping and pretend-whispered in his brother’s ear, “I could kill you on the way out and no one would ever know. I would just say you were trampled to death by a stampede of Christmas shoppers.” When he cheekily replied to his mother’s dressing down she asked him, quick as a flash and with a deadpan delivery, “How about you get adopted?” It was a wonderfully Belfast moment and all good natured. When I commented that she had an impressive way with her children she said that as the mother of seven boys she had had to learn fast.

What took me somewhat by surprise was when I was wheeled in, dressed head to toe in authority figure black, by mothers in need of a last disciplining resort: “You’d better stop crying or that man will throw you out!” I was suddenly, unexpectedly, with my hands full of half folded towel or the latest batch of snowglobes, “The Man”. I was not a fan of being pointed at in an effort to strike fear in to kids but what you gonna do. One mother commented to me, “I really need to stop doing that. The poor girl is going to grow up with a terrible fear of men!” The “best” example came when a lady was trying to get her little girl to settle down in her pram. In what I deemed a gentle voice she knelt down and said, “Look, we’re going to go to the McGee’s in a minute”. I assumed she was telling the child that her shopping was almost over at which time they would both go to the McGee’s, a family friend perhaps, where the little girl could rid herself of the pram and run free and play with the McGee’s stash of exciting toys. She turned to me and said, again in what I took for gentle tones, “You know the McGee, don’t you?” I was taken by surprise at my sudden inclusion in the conversation and replied in what I thought was the sought after “Sure everyone knows the Fun McGees of Fun Street where every kid loves to go and will sit quietly in their pram until they get there because its worth the wait” jovial tone, “Of course I do!” Then I realised that I had slightly misheard. The child’s mother had in fact asked me, “You know the Witch McGee, don’t you?” I had in fact assured mother and child, with a smile no less, that I was well aware of the evil witch and what she did to naughty little children who don’t sit still in Primark...

I am a huge fan of kids and am bowled over by how amazing – in exciting and challenging and terrifying and heartbreaking and awe-inspiring ways – it must be to be a parent. I hope to be a good one (In the future future future). But doesn’t everyone? I saw two beautiful examples of family on my recent trip to America, one new and working it all out as they go and another older and going through the challenges and enjoyments of seeing the children become adults. When I was last in America my friend Kyle was recently married and the conversation at the dinner I shared with him and his wife revolved around my fascination with the wondrous concept of marriage. This time I was introduced to their baby boy and I had the privilege of seeing their small family “be”. As the time came for his young son to hit the hay, Kyle invited me to come and watch them put him to bed. It would feel wrong to share the details of this most moving of goodnights but I will unashamedly say that as I stood in the doorway, my head resting against the frame and being treated to a beautiful vision of what family means, I felt like weeping. The older family, that of the girl sometimes referred to as The American, I shared a Sunday afternoon with. I watched a father wrap up his now grown “little” girl next to him, embracing her with a heartbreaking gentleness and enjoying her conversation and moments of wit. An unspoken understanding existed between the two and a beauty hung about them. I wondered if people saw that in my family's interactions. I hope so. I know the weirdness of family too, the hardness, the strife. I don't mean to over romanticise it. But I am a firm believer in its wonder.

I don’t know if I’ll ever work with kids, if I’ll ever father any or if I’ll just occasionally kick it with them. But they amaze with their vision of what we once were, perhaps how we wish we could be.

Children of Primark I salute you and thank you for dancing in the aisles. Long may you continue.

The Primark Chronicles: How do you solve a problem like Primark? Part 2

As I ate my Sub of the Day (I won’t eat at Subway again for a long long time...and ethics have nothing to do with it...) and thumbed through my Independent (The only non-tabloid paper I ever saw in the Primark canteen was under my arm. My friend Mark once commented, “Who’s reading THIS?” with something close to shocked disgust in his voice. His face was classic when I told him it was mine.) I came across an article by a woman who had forced herself to go a year without buying clothes. I felt suitably self-righteous reading the piece as buying clothes is a rare event in my life – the vast vast majority of my wardrobe has been given to me by ex-girlfriends and family members, attained for free or been in my regular rotation since I was at school (I am often amused by the thought of bumping in to some old school friend while wearing my green fila fleece at which point they may well comment – “Mark, you bought that damn thing on our school tour to Germany...in 1999!” We won’t mention my favourite t-shirt. Which I got for free. Age 8). What was interesting about the article is that it suggested that people regularly buy clothes and only wear them once. Not because they don’t like them or because they are particularly out of date but because...well...they’ve already been seen in them. And because shops like Primark can sell you another outfit so cheaply. This is the other side of the “Low prices are good for the poor types” coin. A woman I talked to over some Christmas shopping told me that her sister never washed her kids’ socks. She just bought new ones!!

I don’t have anything particularly new to offer on the subject of changing places like Primark. If we understand Primark as the product of capitalism and capitalism as being driven by supply and demand the answer is simple really – change the demand. Demand something else. Jim Wallis comments on how it appears impossible to change politicians who, driven by a need to get elected and re-elected, lick their finger and stick it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing and then promptly head in that direction. For Wallis then we need to change the direction of the wind. The same is true in retail and business generally. The reason Primark now stocks organic cotton and raises a couple of pennies for UNICEF and has signed up to the ETI is because the ethical consumption movement of the last few years has shown that there is a market for improved ethics. We need therefore to encourage them in this. By campaigning sure. By writing to CEOs sure. By buying stuff in their shop which has been ethically produced??? I think so, yes. This is perhaps the real strength behind Bono’s Red idea – companies like GAP and Apple and so on can perhaps see first hand that they don’t have to forget entirely about making money if they take a step in an ethical direction?

But can the western poor afford an ethical and so pricier Primark? First of all, the guy who heads up the ETI argues that in fact Primark could afford to ensure fair treatment for their producers and still sell their products at their current low prices IF they took less of a mark-up (Although this wouldn’t be very capitalist of them). This reminds me of the awesome bit in the Flight of the Conchords song, Think About It:

They’re turning kids into slaves just to make cheaper sneakers.

But what’s the real cost?

‘Cause the sneakers don’t seem that much cheaper.

Why are we still paying so much for sneakers

When you get them made by little slave kids?

What are your overheads?

Secondly, and this leads me back to my Clements accuser, Shane Claiborne, what exactly do we NEED? I said before that the western (for want of a better word...and I wish one would quickly come to mind as I am growing more and more to dislike the W word) poor had little choice but to shop at cheap places like Primark. But by what standards? I just want to ask the question rather than suggest an answer. Certainly the example of Claiborne and The Simple Way has something to say about things like making your own clothes and about stupid standards which suggest you need two of this or five of that when perhaps one would suffice. I know too little about real poverty to write too much on the subject but I do know that the “poor” can be just as caught up in the world’s consumption culture as their richer neighbours – everyone wants nice things. That’s why people in South African townships live in shacks with a bigger tv and a better sound system than I have. Shacks with satellite dishes. People on the Shankill getting themselves in debt with paramilitary loansharks to buy their kid a new Chelsea top and a Nintindo Wii for Christmas.

I’m glad I worked at Primark. I didn’t change it from the inside. I had minimal conversations with people about the ETI while working there (I did have plenty with friends outside as I told what my brother called, with a roll of the eyes, “Another Primark story”.) We were, in fact, given additional training on the ETI while I worked at the shop because it had become clear to management that their employees hadn’t a clue what to say to customers if anyone asked. The training, as was always the case at Primark whether you’re talking ETI or how to lift a box correctly, amounted to a piece of A4 read at you somewhat hurriedly by a supervisor. My friend Stacey still called it the “Ethnic thingy”. No customers ever asked anyway. But I think I learned a great deal. About a lot of things.

If we’re honest with ourselves we’re all a bunch of sell outs anyway. In need of a little grace.

The Primark Chronicles: How do you solve a problem like Primark? Part 1.

“You’ve been thinking quite a lot haven’t you”, Dylan commented as we sat with Jonny and Chessers over cards and poker chips. We kept losing our place in the game as our conversation grabbed all the attention, as it always should amongst friends as good as these, and I had already noticed that many of my contributions began with “I was thinking about this the other day...”. Primark. A great place to think? It was my first time in quite a while doing a job that frequently saw you undertaking tasks which required little thought...taking little santas out of their (over)packaging and displaying them in the Primark Christmas Shop’s there’s-always-room-for-a-box-more style. The blog entries that follow are some of things that crossed my mind during these glitter filled moments. I should also comment that it wasn’t a bad job really and I’m a big fan of many of the people I worked with during those two months and was sorry that I didn’t have time to get to know a number of them better. Although that shouldn’t lead anyone to think that I would like to be working there still!

Many of my “activist” friends were surprised by my working for the devil in this way. My friend Ryan threatened me with violence and Aaron shared his disapproval in no uncertain (but humorous) terms (Though I later had the distinct pleasure of spotting him in menswear buying socks. He defended himself saying he was merely doing an experiment to see if clothes made in sweatshops actually smelled of sweat...). I met another friend, Ruth, for lunch on my first day. We sat in a small Belfast coffee shop and hilariously, as I talked to her about my decision to become a Primark sales bitch, Shane Claiborne, dressed as always in his homemade ensemble, floated past the window. I immediately stopped speaking and drank in the irony. Was God sending me a message in Simple Way form?? (Shane was in town to give a talk that night and yes I went to it, with Ruth and some other friends, in my Primark uniform, having just finished work. His book The Irresistible Revolution is fantastic and a must read.)

For those who asked about what I was doing, what follows is probably close to what I would answer with. Is Primark unethical? It’s pretty much the worst on the high street. So it was labelled by Ethical Consumer Magazine a few years ago at least. But it is getting better. They have now signed up to the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) which, although some would suggest is just a means of paying lip service to positive progress regarding their producers, has at least seen them make commitments to improve conditions in the far flung (India, Bangladesh, China – all the Christmas stuff came from China) parts of the world their products are manufactured and shipped from. Primark has set out a plan of action with annual goals and independent auditors checking on their progress. A line of organic cotton products – towels and sheets and underwear etc – can now be found and at Christmas a line of cards were sold with 30p from each sale going to UNICEF (Amusingly, these cards, which would have usually fitted in the £1 price bracket, were sold for...yup, £1.30). It should also be noted that Ethical Consumer Magazine states that in fact none of the main high street stores can be shopped in with a clear conscience...for that we need specialist shops (Fairtrade In-Spires!) or internet sources (Vegetarian Shoes! There’s NOTHING you can’t do with hemp!). A War on Want report about Primark in Bangladesh urges caution when we talk about ethics, progress and Primark but I saw enough to make me feel like I could cross the threshold and don the shiny golden name badge...

That I even had this debate with myself before taking the job has amused some. I remember my friend Rob’s amusement when I put Starbucks through similar paces as I pondered taking a job with them about a year and a half ago. (He has since worked for them, confident that he can do so with a clear conscience having seen the fruits of my on-line labour!) A lot of it comes down to choice. We had an interesting exchange during my time with CARE when an intern challenged us all to buy only fair-trade and boycott Tescos and shops of its ilk. Another (exceptional) intern politely stated that she would be doing nothing of the sort because, while it all sounded lovely in theory, she simply couldn’t afford to do so. My friend Travis (See previous blog entry to fully understand my only slightly homoerotic love for Trav), added that it is in fact impossible to live an entirely “ethical” life and live where we lived, work where we worked. “How is our electricity being created? By “ethical” means? Do we have a say in that?” he asked. His point is important – we may feel good about ourselves for taking the bus but what might the “ethics” be of the petrol it is running on (From stolen Nigerian crude?) The rubber? The metal? And so on. Travis’s comment was not a defeatist one but one that asked for grace. We must not be too hard on ourselves when we fail the ethics test, or on others. Claiborne’s Simple Way is HARD! (Christian types should get this...those who believe that they are literally sin-full but are called to live a holy life...)

This point of choice became more crucial for me as I worked at Primark. I had had the choice of working for the Department of Education for a month and a half marking exams, or for Primark for just over two, where I would also earn considerably more money each week. With a year in Africa to pay for ahead of me and a desire to get working as soon as possible after a month or two of fruitless job hunting, I chose Primark. Others I worked with may not have had even that limited choice. A fellow Christmas temp, Richard, was the same age as me but had a house to pay for, a son to support and a partner to help through college. The ethics of Primark are the last of his worries when taking a job...getting a job is the chief concern. And as I worked there and noted the proportion of the customers which were made up of Belfast’s working class, immigrant and homeless populations I better understood another truth about ethical consumption. It is financially out of reach for many. Just as my CARE intern friend had noted – enjoying a clear conscience can be an expensive business. Perhaps fair trade is destined to be merely a phenomenon of the middle class? So Primark’s low prices, which many would argue are achieved by standing on the poor, are the saving grace of single mothers and Romanian big issue sellers? The poor stealing from the poor ? The rich stealing from the poor to give to the poor (after taking a finder’s fee)? DO they have a choice? How do you solve a problem like Primark?

(See Part 2 for more ramblings...)