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| Target Penrith: The Last Days |
Back in 2000, when I was 20, I found myself living in the kind of rental property reminiscent of The Young Ones and John Birmingham's He Died with a Felafel in His Hand. I needed a job, one that didn't need to wait for my university degree to be finished, and so I applied to Target in Penrith. I got that job and was promptly assigned to the section known as 'Brown Goods' (this is what they used to call television and radio appliances, due to the faux-wood finishes these products typically had in the late '70s).
I only worked there for two years but it was my first full time job so I remember it very clearly.
Yesterday, 22 years later, I popped down to the store as it prepared to shut its doors. Our local Target had no doubt been impacted by pandemic economics, Westfield's notoriously high rent, and Penrith's intense need to make room for a fourth Coles grocery shop.
It was surreal walking around in the half-cleared store. It had already undergone a significant refurbishment long after I'd stopped working there but parts of it had remained unchanged, so it was... I dunno, I don't want to say it was sad per se, it just felt like the last lingering gasp of my earlier life had finally disappeared, and this felt strange. It was like an unexpected coda to a song that I had heard a long long time ago.
I was so young when I worked there. My parents had divorced and I was prompted to find my own place, meaning I was living on my own for the first time and learning how to do things like:
- Making leftovers last for a whole week
- Complaining to the real estate when things in the house needed fixing
- Being friendly enough to the neighbour so that he wouldn't steal from us
- Undertaking a five-shift-a-week retail job
My shift was usually either from 6 am in the morning until midday, or from midday to 6 pm. I preferred the morning shift as the first three hours of the shift were customer-free and ending at midday meant that I had the rest of the day to do whatever I liked. The afternoon shift always dragged because there'd be less customers. I'd watch the wall of TVs every afternoon from my counter... I was very well-informed about Heartbeat and The Bill after several months.
Life Under Rod
It's all coming back to me. I had three section managers in my time at Target; the later two were fine to work with but the first of these was this really tall guy named Rod and he was a bit of a jerk. Rod would constantly be telling me to get out onto the floor or go to other sections to tidy things up because he didn't like seeing me just standing around in the customer-free Brown Goods section. He had a very nineties goatee, never tucked his shirt in properly, and was probably only 5 years older than me. After he'd berate me, I'd wander back and forth past the kitchen and manchester aisles, pretending to dust and half-heartedly asking customers if they wanted a hand with anything. I was never sure what exactly was expected of me in the quiet twilight times between the big sales.
If I was looking especially lazy, Rod would grab one of the wheeled-cages from the back dock and bring it out, telling me to unpack it onto the shelves. I didn't mind cage duty, it helped pass the time quicker. Sometimes the front registers would request assistance from floor staff but Rod made sure to prevent the registers manager from training me up for my first 8 months there, that way he could keep me on the floor where he wanted.
Rod was a dickhead. As mentioned before, I liked the other two managers I had after him but Rod, he had disturbing anger issues and was kind of dodgy. Once, when his sections were a couple of thousand dollars off making budget for the week, he went and personally laybuy-ed (laybought?) several outdoor heaters. Once the week clicked over, he refunded his laybuys so he could get his money back.
Another time he struggled to move one of the wheeled-cages around a corner. He was a big dude, well over 6 foot and quite large in frame, and as the cage hitched on something I watched him go from zero to a hundred in the space of a few seconds. His face bloomed into a vivid shade of purple and he noisily ripped down several nearby shelves in the wordless rage that followed. He stared at me, eyes and forehead vein popping, breathing heavily, his shirt untucked and tie askew, saying nothing but daring me to interact with him. It's a vivid memory.
He also frequently made fun of how quiet I was, calling me a nerd and goading me by making lewd comments about any women that walked past us. Stand-up guy, that Rod.
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| Strange to see it so empty now. |
Double Time and Other Tales
I was naive. Once I showed up for a shift at 6 am after working until midnight on stocktake. One of the big deputy managers realised that I didn't have a gap of 8 hours between my shifts, which meant I was on double-time. They told me to go home but I actually spoke up for once and told them I'd gotten up at 5 am to catch the bus in and that it wasn't fair for me to go to all that effort only to be sent home because they wanted to save money. They responded by cutting my shift in half so that I still only got the same pay as normal. I didn't push it but I should have.
I made sure to spend half an hour in the toilet that morning. Nothing like getting paid double-time for doing nothing.
The best stories I have from Target are related to the customers. Target is basically only a small step above a discount store like Go-Lo, so you tended to get the lowest common denominator among the clientele. Most customers were just regular people but you would also get some real doosies in there too. Here are some of my favourites:
Angry Easter Bunny Woman: Easter was especially stressful - the chocolate section would get literally smashed. Every second chocolate bunny would get caved-in and busted apart by crazed customers. I remember once a woman came storming into the chocolate section while I tried to tidy it up and began to berate me. She yelled at me, "The front registers charged me 50 cents too much and it just isn't good enough!" She pointed to the ticket on the shelf to highlight to me what she should have paid. I shrugged, said I had no idea what had happened at the registers, and I told her she should go talk to them. But of course, the registers were incredibly busy and she didn't want to line up for all that time to get such a small refund. I told her I didn't know how to help her if she didn't want to line up for her refund and she went NUTS. "You can't rip me off! Who do you think you are!" etc, etc. I just wanted her to go away so I ended up pulling fifty cents out of my pocket and gave it to her.
Customer Complaint: Another time, the Deputy Manager (a little guy in an oversized suit who looked and acted like Michael Scott from the U.S. Office) was called up to the front to deal with an angry couple who wanted a refund. He refused to give them their refund (Target was very tight-fisted about this kind of thing, even if the customer had a valid reason for refunding) and the couple kept arguing and arguing, hoping to wear him down. Michael Scott wouldn't budge though and the singlet-wearing, mulletted husband pivoted to a completely different tactic... "Are you staring at my wife's tits?" It was an incredibly awkward and sudden shift in dyanmics and Michael Scott had them out of there with their refund quicker than you could say "sexual harassment accusation".
Self Serve Lollies: One of my jobs was to patrol the self-serve confectionary section. This was like what you see in a lolly shop; a few rows of big plastic tubs full of different lolly varieties and you could fill up a certain sized bag for x amount of dollars. People would come and fill up before they went to the cinema, and every now and again I'd catch one of the managers out the back eating them in their section of the storeroom. She'd look sheepish whenever she was sprung and would make out like she was doing something else but her mouth would be jam-packed with caramel jerseys so it was always kind of obvious.
Anyway, Target eventually phased this section out because it was an absolute shit-show in terms of teenagers and toddlers stealing from it but I'll never forget walking by and seeing a 4 year old push his whole head into one of the tubs. I called his mum's attention to what he was doing as he pulled out a handful of lollies and stuffed them into his mouth. The mother screamed sharply at him "No, put them back!" and quickly grabbed his wrist. The boy was promptly made to actually spit his lollies back into the tub by his own mother. Thanks lady.
You might be wondering what I did next. The answer is nothing. I didn't ever eat them so I didn't care.
'Prank': It was around 4 pm in the afternoon and I noticed this 9-year-old boy was running around the outdoor furniture section making noisy gun sounds and kicking things over. I couldn't catch him but had to keep an eye on him in case he tried to steal anything. Anyway, I chased after this kid for about ten minutes with two other staff members before he ran out of the store laughing. It turned out he was running interference while his friend was doing something much worse on the other side of the store.
His mate was the same age. While we were chasing the shooting-noise kid around, old mate was squatting on the other side of the store and depositing a big ol' pile of turds. He got caught by the section manager just as he pulled his pants up and we all watched as security marched him out.
The clearest image in my mind from this day was of this kid looking really triumphant. His hands were held firmly behind his back by the security guard but the grin on his face could not be restrained. This kid would be about 29 now and I sometimes think about him and wonder if this prank in Target was the moment where his life peaked.
Contrary to what most customers thought, Target didn't employ regular cleaning staff at this time. Most of the 'tidying' was left to sales staff like myself. Management assumed they could ask one of us to clean it up but they assumed wrong. Tai, an older Kiwi lady from the manchester section who was also our union rep, got up in management's business pretty quickly. She advocated for all the younger staff like myself because, you see, when you get paid minimum wage you tend to have a very clear view of what's in your job description. There wasn't anyone working that day who believed they should have to pick up human shit. The stand-off was intense but, in the end, the section manager wasn't prepared to take Tai on. She barked at us all to "Get back to work!" and then wandered off to clean up the mess herself.
So yeah, join your union.
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| I never had much to do with the shoe section. |
Alarm Bandit: There was this old drunk bloke who would wander into Target about once a fortnight. He was skinny and unshaven and his eyes had this rheumy, dazed look about them. It was impossible to have a conversation with him as he'd just look right through you. We had to be on alert because he would come ambling in from the Red Cow pub and then stumble around for an hour before exiting through the fire door, causing chaos as the alarm would then go off. Once I watched him make his way out to the back dock only to reappear shortly afterwards, the back dock guy sort of gently pushing him back out onto the shop floor like a wayward sheep that had ended up in the wrong pasture.
Footchase: My best story is about a shoplifter and I promise you there is no embellishment here whatsoever.
Theft was an everyday occurrence at Target. We would get shoplifters all the time and usually they would target the Brown Goods section because they wanted to steal DVD players. They'd ripped these out of the boxes and would then sequester them in the bottom of their prams. A popular method for stealing would be to load up a trolley with a big TV and then simply make a run for it through the fire exit. The alarm would go off but once the thief was outside there was no real way of stopping them because store policy was to not chase them. We had a plain clothes security guard but there was only one of her and the store was massive; she just couldn't be everywhere at once. She was a nice enough lady and was very good at spotting thieves. You would never think she was a security guard to look at her.
One day the plain clothes security guard spotted this massive, six-foot wall of human flesh in snap-trackies. He and his partner had loaded up the pram with clothes and a DVD player and some other things. The security guard stopped them at the front of the store and the guy's partner couldn't go anywhere because she had her pram (there was a baby in there as well). The wall of flesh didn't stick around though and he legged it straight away, leaving the Mrs and their baby behind. Penrith can be classy like that sometimes.
The security guard saw myself and a co-worker, Jordan, near the registers and shouted at us, "Stop him! Stop him!" I knew we weren't meant to give chase but I was 21 and working a boring job. If someone told me to do something I just did it. So Jordan and I ran after Flesh Wall (that's what I'm calling him now).
Flesh Wall slid across the polished floor outside of Target and made straight for the fire exit. He punched through the doors with a loud bang and we barrelled after him before the doors could even shut again. The corridor would have only been about twenty or thirty metres long but it seemed a lot longer at the time. Flesh Wall peered over his shoulder and saw us coming after him, so he kept on running.
Jordan and myself pushed through the other end of the corridor into the back dock and saw Flesh Wall disappear into the fire stairwell that led up to the next level of Westfield's carpark. We followed him up the stairs, our rapid footfall echoing on the concrete. We didn't even shout anything after him, we just ran and ran.
When we came out of the stairwell on the second level of the carpark we instinctively spread out. I went to the right and Jordan went to the left and Flesh Wall got caught between us. He ran around a parked car and stopped between its bonnet and the balustrade that lined the edge of the level.
I just sort of... stopped. What was I doing here? I had my arms spread out like I was trying to calm a wild animal and Jordan was doing the same thing. This guy looked really really scary, he was wide and tall and had tattoos all his face and neck... and this was 2001 before tattoos became mainstream
It was at this point that I finally questioned what we were trying to do.
I looked at Jordan and he looked back at me with the same mental shrug. Neither of us were equipped to do anything. This guy would destroy us. I guess when we started chasing him I mistakenly figured I was entering into an unspoken contract that he would outrun us.
Flesh Wall looked angry. Or scared. Maybe both.
We got lucky. Rather than attack us he climbed up over the balustrade and leapt off the upper level. He sailed down through the air and hit the concrete below in a crouch, CD cases noisily clattering out of the cargo pockets of his shorts (did I mention this was the year 2001?)
I was incredulous. I couldn't believe what I'd just seen. I leaned over the balustrade and watched as he scrambled back up onto his feet. He was okay! He almost slipped on one of the CD cases that had fanned out around him. Flesh Wall looked back up at us blankly and then ran off. And honestly, it was a relief that it ended that way.
When Jordan and I got back to Target we got into a lot of trouble from Michael Scott, "The store's insurance doesn't cover us if you get hurt, don't chase after anyone, don't listen to the security guard", etc, etc. I watched as the plain clothes security guard got dressed down as well for telling us to chase the thief. At least she had caught the girlfriend, I gave her a nod - I recognised her from high school.
Ironically, about two months later, Michael Scott and I chased after another thief (I guess he got caught up in the moment and forgot his lecture about Target's insurance). We followed this shoplifter all the way across three streets to the Penrith tax office but we lost him eventually.
The End
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