25 1971 – 1989: Back In Cape Town with Woolworths

25 <> 1971 – 1989: Back In Cape Town with Woolworths

The journey in the Beetle through the Transkei and down the Garden Route to Cape Town took two days . It was before the days of major unrest in South Africa so we had no concern about travelling through the Transkei. We had passed along the same route in the Beetle three times before this so we had a good idea of the obstacles in the form of potholes, and the pigs and goats we would encounter wandering loose on the road. At one necessary stop along the way, we discovered to our great dismay that one of our suitcases had fallen off the roof-rack somewhere in the Transkei! It would have been pointless retracing our steps to look for it — it would have been found and appropriated soon after it flew off the car. The case contained our overnight requirements including our pyjamas and toiletries. We spent that night at Peddie and then stopped in Grahamstown the next morning to buy me a new razor so that I could shave!

As we drew nearer to Cape Town the Beetle was using oil at an alarming rate. We pushed on, stopping frequently to top up, praying that we would get through without the engine seizing. When we could eventually take it to a garage after we had settled in, it turned out that the nuts on the bolts holding the crankcase together had come loose!

We spent the first week in the Overseas Missionary Fellowship Home in Kenilworth while waiting for our furniture to arrive, then took occupation of the apartment the friend of ours had found for us in Kenilworth where Kenilworth bordered on Harfield Village. Dormax Gardens was a newly built block and we were the first tenants of our three-bedroomed flat on the second floor. It was a great relief and sheer luxury to be living once more in our own rented apartment instead of in the church house where we had never felt at ease!

When I reported for duty at Woolworths, there was first the matter of me spending a month in a store to get familiar with store procedures and the merchandise once more. It was agreed that I would go to the Claremont store which was most convenient to where we would be living.

Changes had taken place at Head Office in the four years I was away. Merchandise Groups which previously had been under Merchandise Managers were now under Merchandise Executives. An Administration Division had been created with a director in charge. Under him were three Executive positions — Internal Administration, External Administration, and Merchandise Administration. I was to assume a position in the Merchandise Administration group under Simon Bernstein who had been appointed Executive of that department. I was to take over as Distribution Manager in the Women’s Underwear Group.

The staff in the distribution office were mainly people who had been in the group when I left to go into the ministry, so they accepted me well enough as their new manager. That made things a bit easier for me — I was still quite traumatised, and certainly humbled, by having to come back from the ministry. In general, my confidence in myself, which was never at a very high level, had taken a serious knock. Simon spent time with me in his office getting me thoroughly conversant with the workings of the new systems.

The Merchandise Administration Department had been tasked with introducing a new merchandise reporting and allocation system based on the Marks & Spencer practise in England. The Ladies Underwear Group (my old department) was where the first implementation of the system was taking place. When the conversion of all sections in that group was complete and the Distribution office was functioning smoothly, I was moved to the Menswear Group to set the system up there, and then later to the Knitwear Group to repeat the performance. At that stage, there were three Distribution Managers producing sales and stock information which needed to be consolidated so I then moved ‘upstairs’ near Simon’s office to function as Textile Administration Manger.

To better equip me for the job, I accompanied Simon on a trip to England to experience at first hand the Marks & Spencer systems we were replicating in South Africa, and to pick up any new procedures that we could implement. That trip took place just as the Angolan war of liberation was about to break. The flights from South Africa to England at that time had to go around the bulge of Africa because we were not allowed to fly over any African territories north of Angola. This required a stop for refueling at Luanda in Angola. We landed there and were delayed for several hours with no information or reason being given. We were ordered to disembark and wait in the Departure lounge, which we assumed was while the plane took on fuel. There were soldiers idling around with their rifles in their hands. After a long wait, we were told to board the plane — but the plane didn’t take off. Then we were ordered off the plane once again and back into the Departure Lounge. Still no information but many rumours and guesses flying around. I can’t remember, but it must have been about three or four hours after we landed in Luanda that we were finally ordered to go aboard once more — and the plane took off amid sighs of relief. The following day in London I heard the news that the next plane after ours had been fired upon as it came in to land. Ours was the last flight that made it through via Luanda.

In the next step in the Company, the Administration Director retired and the Internal Administration Executive was appointed to his place on the Board — and Simon was moved to the Foods Division with executive responsibility for the Fruit and Vegetable section where he would also introduce the new systems. I was appointed Merchandise Administration Executive in his place. I enjoyed this period of my time with Woolworths, mainly, I suppose, because it gave me the opportunity to analyse and develop systems and write up procedural notes. I have that sort of agonisingly analytical mind which thrives on such things.

I made two more visits to Marks & Spencer while I was in the Merchandise Administration Department. On one of these, during the two weekends that I was in England, I met members of  DorothyAnne’s family for the first time. In the first weekend I visited  DorothyAnne’s sister Mary and her husband Ted, and met her Aunt  DorothyAnne, and her cousin Phil and his wife Susan. In the following weekend, I travelled down to Ipswich to spend the weekend with Jean and her two sons, Ian and Karl.  DorothyAnne’s brother Roger joined us on the Sunday and gave me a lift back to London on Monday morning.

Things went well for a few years and then I entered into the worst phase of my career when Woolworths merged with another company. Our Administration Director moved to the other retail chain in the merged group and the new head of the Administration Group was someone from Marks & Spencer who came in as Senior Administration Executive, a new position created in the ‘change’ process. I was transferred to the position of Internal Administration Executive. I say ‘the worst time of my career’ because, although the new Senior Executive was a nice enough man, I simply could not relate to his management style. But I had enough to keep me busy with responsibility for (eventually) ten departments with fourteen managers and a total of about 130 staff members.

As a consequence of the merger, a ‘change guru’ came across to our side from the other retail chain and started doing what he did — making changes. The theory of the change was that periodically an organisation should rank all employees, through a peer assessment process, at each level from management and above, then promote the ones at the top and demote (or fire) the ones at the bottom. I was asked my opinion of the process and I branded it as ‘ungodly’, and I still believe it was. (I recently saw on a documentary about the Enron collapse that the idea had been used there and contributed in some way to the collapse and was subsequently discredited as a ‘change’ method). I was among the Senior Managers, Executives, Senior Executives and Directors slated for demotion — or, since some of us were 55, we were offered early retirement. Most of us took the early retirement option and, ironically, in my position I had to process the retirement packages for the Senior Managers, Executives and Senior Executives, including my own!

The march of history during my time at Woolworths saw the beginning of the computer age. When I arrived back in 1971, the company had moved from processing stock-take information by means of a Hollerith punched-card reader to executing programs on a mainframe computer. The computer consisted of several fridge-size cabinets housed in a large air-conditioned room, processing large tape reels of data. There were as yet no powerful desktop machines. The age of the small computer started with tiny models with capacities of around 8 and 16k’s. Our family was quick off the mark with a 16k ZX Spectrum which plugged into our black and white TV. It used the BASIC programming language contained on a cassette tape. Then came the first desk-top models such as Radio Shack and Amstrad, and the suitcase-sized Osborne portable machine whose advertising gimmick was a ghostly cadaver holding one standing beside a coffin, and with the caption “You can take it anywhere”. When the IBM PC, with an amazing 256k of memory, using the Microsoft DOS operating system, hit the market, the race was truly on, not only for hardware but also between the MSDOS operating system and UNIX favoured at that time in Europe. At Woolworths the competition was initially between IBM and ICL and IBM won the day. Jenny, Suzanne and Tim quickly mastered BASIC on the ZX Spectrum which more-or-less set the path for their future careers. I personally never got the hang of the Spectrum and Basic programming, but, for use at work as well as at home, I later bought a Columbia portable (so-called portable but really a luggable), then changed to an ICL desktop to use with a programme called the LOTUS 123 for working with spreadsheets. From there I graduated to what was really the first laptop machine available in this country, a Toshiba. In another connection with computer developments, I was fortunate to be at one time the Company’s representative on the South African Numbering Association, an association of the main retail chains and other businesses, that was working on the introduction of barcoding into the country.

But to go back through this period of our lives, there were some other developments worth mentioning. When I left for the ministry, the Company had just purchased properties in Adderley Street on which to build a new, big store. When I returned the building was nearing completion and opened not long afterwards. The old railway station with the famous clock which provided a favourite rendezvous spot — “Meet me under the clock at five-thirty” — had been replaced by a new and larger station across Strand Street. The old one still stood for a while until demolished for the building of the Golden Acre complex. The ground floor of the Woolworths Head Office was occupied by the first and original Woolworths Store, known as the Plein Street branch, but with the opening of the new store, and the slowing down of business due to the displacement of the people of District Six, the Plein Street branch was closed and the space taken over for much-needed office accommodation. With the growth of the business requiring yet more office space, the present Head Office in Long Street was built.

Just across the road from the Plein Street branch and Head Office was the Ackermans Head Office as well. I can’t remember how we met up, but In the Personnel Department at Ackermans was an old school-mate of mine, Edwin Brownin. Ackermans was busy at the time developing the Checkers Stores concept.  DorothyAnne and I then met Edwin’s wife, Stella. Edwin later resigned his position and went back to Natal to join his brother in running two or three Trading Stores in rural areas.

We as a family had also been on the move! We moved house several times. It became a standing joke that we always kept one step ahead of the Posts and Telegraph Department (there was no separate Telkom in those days) because we applied for a phone at each address and then, after one year, moved just when we were about to receive one! From Kenilworth we moved to a rented house in Princess Road in lower Bergvliet, which also necessitated Andrew, Jenny and Suzanne changing schools from Wynberg to Sweet Valley Primary School. Tim started his school career at Sweet Valley. From Sweet Valley, each one in turn went to Bergvliet High School. But, in the meantime, after a year at Princess Road, we had moved to a townhouse in Meadowridge, and then, with a lot of help from “The Citizens Housing League”, we bought our very first house, in the new development in Kirstenhof. We named that house “Seven Oaks” after the village in which much of my childhood was spent. I carved the nameplate for it on a block of wood while recuperating from an operation to mend the stirrup bone in my right ear to restore hearing to it (unsuccessful!). After eight years there — the longest we had ever stayed in one house — in 1984 we moved to a house on the water at Marina Da Gama, which we named “Doonside” after the place on the Natal South Coast where we lived when we first got married. From “Doonside” we moved to a lovely cottage in the old part of Wynberg in 1987, which we named “Rose Cottage”, and which is where we were when I retired. By that time all four children had finished school, Tim was doing his two-years compulsory National Service and Andrew, Jenny and Suzanne were working.

On the 26th June, 1978, my mother died in Durban. I received the news, I do not remember from whom, that she had been taken to Addington Hospital. At the time she had finally stopped working as a housekeeper at The Ocean Beach Hotel and was living in a one-roomed flatlet, No. 6a Avon Court, 15 Smith Street, Durban. She was alone but had a friend, Jack Kerr, as her constant companion. I think it was he who got the message through to me at Woolworths. I went to Durban and spent a week at a beach-front hotel near the hospital. As in the case with my dad, I had to leave her in hospital and return to the job in Cape Town, and then she died not long afterward. Joe Bell, a Congregational Minister, who was at the time Chaplain to the Missions To Seaman in Durban, kindly arranged for her cremation and for the placing of Mum’s ashes in the Wall of Remembrance at the crematorium.

I went on early retirement at the end of March 1989 after I had turned 55 in the November of 1988. I had been a contributing member of the pension fund for only 17 years which gave us a very limited pension, but my spreadsheet calculations persuaded me that, with careful investment of the lump-sum benefits accruing to me, we would manage more than admirably. The market was pretty buoyant at the time and interest rates were high, but things didn’t quite work out as expected — but that is another story.

During this time in Cape Town, apart from my work at Woolworths, I was very involved with Christian work with the Assemblies Of God, in the evenings and at the weekends.