Mandy Bailey
Mandy talks about working at IKEA Croydon:
“I did a lot of temping work
working in restaurants
that kind of thing.
And,
I couldn’t really decide what to do.
And then found out
that IKEA was building a store here.
Never heard of IKEA at all,
didn’t know anything about it.
But thought,
‘I am sure I should be able
to get a job there’,
and just went for a job
in the restaurant,
and yeah,
got a job,
started here two months
before we opened the store.”
“We were there before the store opened
so we were building furniture
for the restaurant,
or anything really.
Quite often had parties
in the staff restaurant
and that kind of thing.
It was quite a social thing,
I suppose,
because there were no customers.
And then we opened.
Probably one of the longest days,
I was in the store for about 18 hours
Was here at six in the morning
we did a VIP breakfast.“
“We clapped the last person out
because the last person
through the tills
got all their goods paid for them.
And then had a drink and then a party,
So, yeah, quite a long day.”
“It’s quite detailed
what we do.
We use a lot of information
from outside companies
to build up a picture
of the sort of people
that visit our store.”