Christmas is supposedly a time for family, love and good cheer. The one time of the year you can have an excuse for being a little bit portly, having a good time and having your wallet as empty as Kerry Katona’s head (I do hate Iceland adverts.) As the rest of the country was counting down to Christmas, Woolworth’s are currently counting the days till closure with all stores said to be closed by January 5th.

Oddly enough I’ve found a strange yet, comforting feeling at the downfall of one of Britain’s so called ‘giants’. Many of the prices were inflated, some of the staff unfriendly (but not all) and a management so driven by profit you’d think they quite literally saw people as walking, talking money bags, ready to explode due to a nagging child wanting a toy truck costing £50. Looking even further than local stores, the main management has been living on a wire for quite a few years. How can a business survive if the heads of the company are playing roulette with financing and gambling on the economy being strong? If Woolies were in trouble before the credit crunch, what chance did they really stand? The collapse was inevitable and the cracks were obvious for all to see.

How would I know all this? Well yours truly was until fairly recently a part-timer at the St. Albans branch. With much lower pay compared to other people my age, and with a change in management so strict the rest of the staff had an aura you usually associate with a group of people whose parents have all just died. The strange yet comforting feeling I was referring to earlier is because I quit in late September. So yes, I did miss out on having to work with countless angry customers yelling a tune of “why isn’t everything 50% off?” And yes I am proud I escaped the final Woolworth’s slide into oblivion. If you ever did catch a glimpse of me in the St. Albans branch, I probably wasn’t smiling. I was surrounded by corporate greed, failing careers and I didn’t like being reminded that I could be there for much longer if I failed to follow my aspirations. However, I can take some delight in watching the Woolworth’s decline. Corporate greed has finally been punished. I suppose there is some degree of Karma in the World after all.

Oh and merry Christmas to everyone!