Scott McFly

Hi all, I don't post here but I do check most days for the midweek sales and any general chat that's going on. And yes... I work at Woolies on the entertainment counter. To answer a few questions: CD Singles - we only get the odd few in that are deemed to be "big" releases, eg. Anything X Factor related pretty much at the moment, and are now in the CD Cheap Chart since there's no singles chart. The CD display cases - the reason they're used is to ensure that there's always something on the shelf even if we're sold out of it in-store (generally lots of titles this time of year, so the shelves would be half empty) as we're able to order CD's through the tills in much the same way you'd order off the website. These are generally marked with a purple "sold out, order me" tag. It's also to avoid putting real cases out there, where they'll get damaged, stolen and we'd have to masterbag (take out the CD itself and file it in a slipcase) 1 of each chart title which risks damage to the CD and would take forever. The reason some CD's behind the counter are damaged is they'll either get damaged in transit or (in our store certainly) the drawers are god-awful and are prone to damaging them. We do have replacement cases we can use or we can swap the case with another one, which I always do if I noticed it's damaged. Back catalogue CD's are always masterbagged and because customers tend to treat the cases like c**p on the shelves, they'll inevitably end up damaged too. As for the stock lying everywhere and uncleaned cases... the simple reason is that we're just horribly understaffed due to lack of wage budget. There's no spare time to clean the cases, and they can't afford to have more than a couple of people on outside opening hours to stock the shelves so it has to be done when we're open. Especially at this time of year, the shop takes a right battering throughout the day with customers picking things up and then leaving them on another shelf 2 aisles away, kids picking up and trying out any old toy, and us doing our best to help customers out and keeping things aside for them for when they're able to get in. Again, we try to tidy at the end of the day, but there's generally nobody to do that along with everything else that needs to be done. I'm working this afternoon so we'll hopefully get more information then, but as of yesterday we're still accepting gift vouchers, but are not selling any so you'll get change in cash. Obviously I'd still advise you to use them if you have any. And we've also been warned not to discuss the ongoing situation with customers or anyone else, so that's really all I can say at the moment. But all stores will be open until Christmas we have been told.