Are You Being Served?

I used to enjoy mooching around the shops. Record shops and book shops were where I did most of my browsing; clothes shops less often, they were visited more usually out of necessity. Over the years my enjoyment of idly wandering the aisles of stores like HMV and Waterstones has waned. Online shopping has been one reason for that, HMV’s virtual monopoly in CD sales on the High Street, combined with the fact that they do not stock a lot of the artists I enjoy, is another. I do go to Waterstones now and then, more usually for inspiration than to buy anything as most of my reading is done on my Kindle.

 

Lakeside on a quiet day. Every day may look like this soon.

On the occasions that I venture to such shopping Meccas as Lakeside, Bluewater, or less frequently, Westfield (I really am not keen on Westfield, and go there only when absolutely necessary), I try to make it for a particular purpose. Most of the time (at least 99% of it anyway), I go to these shopping centres with family, and it is generally they who browse around the shops while I stand outside, or wander off to find somewhere to sit. By my reckoning, for every hour spent at Lakeside, I only spend about five minutes actually in shops, so it has not been much of a hardship for me to be unable to go anywhere but supermarkets and a couple of other stores since lockdown started.

 

A comprehensive list of the shops that I have visited during lockdown is Tesco, Sainsbury’s, the Co-op, The Range, and Homebase, and of those I have been to Homebase and The Range just once each. I confess to breathing a sigh of relief after every trip to Tesco, not due to any fears of having become infected, but rather because in recent years I have become used to doing frequent, small shops; I’m finding the need to do a whole week’s shopping to avoid having to top up is becoming a little more tiresome. That’s not to say that my weekly supermarket shop is a terrible experience. At my local Tesco the staff are all helpful, cheerful and have the queues to get into the store and to the check-outs very well managed. Even queuing outside is not that bad, although the recent weather has something to do with that; how wonderful it will be if we still have to do it come November remains to be seen.

 

At present, the Government plans to allow all other shops to re-open from 15^th June, although outdoor markets, like the one in Romford, pictured left, and car showrooms will re-open from the first of the month. When they do re-open, shops and shoppers will be subject to a wide range of measures that will be in place to try and reduce the incidence of infection. As well as limiting the number of people in their stores – which will inevitably mean customers queuing outside – retailers will probably have to introduce one-way systems, separate entrances and exits (where possible), and move racks and displays to create more space so that shoppers can socially-distance. Anyone who has been in a supermarket recently will be familiar with these restrictions, but where customers and staff will have to make greater adjustments will be particularly obvious in clothing and footwear shops.

 

Fitting rooms will be closed, which will take me back to the days when some shops – most notably Marks & Spencer – did not even have them. I remember one of my first experiences of buying a suit for work and trying on the jacket in Marks & Spencer but having to take pot luck with the trousers, which sadly did not fit when I got them home and had to be returned. That was in the days when most menswear shops sold suits as a single item, no mix and matching of trousers and jackets, which in my experience made buying them a somewhat onerous experience. This may lead to more items being returned after purchase, items which will have to be quarantined before they can be offered for resale.

 

When we try clothes on in a shop, we rarely think about how many other people may have already done so. It has only really crossed my mind once, which was when I tried on some trousers in M&S and found a neatly folded handkerchief in one of the pockets; it was slightly off-putting then, it would be very disconcerting now!

 

There are a lot of clothes items that I’m happy to buy without trying them on, but shoes are a different matter. Finding comfortable shoes is an issue for me, and while sometimes this only becomes apparent after a few times I’ve worn a pair, often it is obvious from the moment I try them on. I hear that shoe shops will offer customers disposable socks when trying on shoes, and will quarantine the shoes afterwards; how rigorously it will be possible for shops to accomplish this remains to be seen. I’m also curious as to how Waterstones, who say they will quarantine books that customers pick up and inspect but do not buy, will achieve this. Will they have staff chaperoning customers round the store?

We've become used to queues at Apple Stores when a new iPhone is launched, be prepared to queue everywhere else soon, just a little further apart than these people.

 

Along with a return to the days of yore when fitting rooms were not to be found everywhere, shops may also seek to limit the amount of self-service, so rather than browsing around and picking up items, and then selecting what to buy, will shoppers have to go through an assistant to view items instead? I’m not alone in being put off when entering a shop and immediately being approached by an assistant wanting to know if they can help; we may have to get used to being asked, “Are you being served?” quite frequently. Whatever happens, the shopping experience is going to be different for a while.

 

At least we have online shopping (this lockdown in pre-internet days would have been a very different experience), and we will probably see an increase in click-and-collect sales if shoppers become less inclined to just wander around the shops, or are prohibited from doing so.

 

At some point in recent years, shopping became a leisure activity. A visit to your local shopping mall became an end in itself, browsing the shops with little intent to buy became a way of passing the time. That is going to be actively discouraged; going into a shop without a specific purchase in mind is probably going to be uncomfortable and discouraged.

 

No doubt, once the restrictions are lifted, shoppers will be flocking back to the malls and High Streets after being starved of their shopping experience since late March. I’ve rather enjoyed not following family members around the shops in recent weeks, and I’m quite happy not to reintroduce that into my routine any time soon. Sometime in 2021 sounds good.