“Oh that was your job for the day”. So I
spent the rest of the day hanging around
doing nothing and I suppose that’s how
they wanted to maintain some sort of
unionised way of the number of people
working, but I wanted to do something, I
didn’t know what it was, but the idea of
standing all day doing nothing was mad.
I resented that.
The first proper job, I think, was after
I came out of university, I didn’t know
what to do. I got a degree in German,
not because I wanted to do anything
with my degree but because I was
good at German and I wanted to get
a degree - in those days a degree was
10
seen as an entry to a job - that was in
1978. I ended up working for Our Price,
I started as a sales assistant in Leicester
Square and within about – I don’t know,
six months – I was assistant manager at
Kensington High Street, then I managed
at Tottenham Court Road and then
managed at Leicester Square where I
started as an assistant, which was a very
big shop - three floors - and I worked
ten in the morning ‘til about midnight,
and then I became a regional director for
the company running 26 shops. There
was about £9m turnover at the time, a
hundred-and-something staff. I did all
that then I really got fed up with the, with
the ethos of the company because the
people running it didn’t really like music,
it seemed to me, and they were really
mean to the staff, they wouldn’t replace
chairs that had broken in shops and stuff
like that, they wouldn’t communicate this
that they weren’t going to replace the
chairs, and I didn’t have enough control
of the budget. Also, I hesitate to say this,
but they were both Jewish and there
was a certain invisible glass ceiling you
couldn’t get through if you weren’t, if you
weren’t Jewish. You feel you can only get
so far in the company and they wouldn’t
take anyone else on beyond that point.
So, I just ended up walking out one day
rather spectacularly from100 Kensington
High Street, they said “have a chat with