During an average shift on the shop floor at Next, Helen Scarsbrook has to remain polite and keep smiling while she makes split-second judgments about which customers need help and which need to be tactfully discouraged from shoplifting and ushered out of the store.
She and her mostly female colleagues are on their feet for long stretches and regularly do heavy lifting as new stock arrives at the back of the shop. She is confident that her work in one of Next’s 466 UK stores is just as challenging, or more so, as the jobs performed by Next’s mostly male warehouse workers, who have always received higher rates of pay.
