We work on Oxford Street – it used to be glam, now it’s hell… robbers plague our stores & people carry machetes
WITH crime rates on the rise and looters plaguing its shops, London’s Oxford Street has lost its grandeur.
But how are retail workers coping? Sarah Robertson reports.
With its flagship fashion stores, Oxford Street was once one of the premier shopping destinations in the world.
House of Fraser, Debenhams and Topshop were some of the major names that drew thousands of customers daily to the central London road.
But in the last few years the street has lost its prestige.
Topshop — a store so fashionable it hosted supermodel Kate Moss’s clothing collection launch in 2007 — closed its doors for the last time in 2021, as did Debenhams when Philip Green’s Arcadia Group went bust.
A few months later House of Fraser followed suit, shutting up shop in January 2022.
Shocking statistics show that one in five shops are now empty there, due to sky-high rent rates while on average 40 people are sleeping rough on the street every night.
Walking along Oxford Street is like wading through a sea of rubbish, with discarded litter and takeaway boxes.
Many clothing stores have been replaced by tacky sweet shops and cheap kiosks selling mobile phone gadgets.
The retailers that remain have staff who are working in increasingly dangerous conditions.
Incidents of anti-social behaviour have risen in the area. In total, 36,845 crimes occurred within one mile of Oxford Street between February 2020 and January 2021.
‘I feel much safer working when I see police outside’
So what is it really like working on the front line of the Wild West End?
Last week, nine people were arrested and 34 dispersal orders issued after retailers were forced to close shops following clashes between police and gangs of youths who were encouraged by a TikTok campaign to “loot” stores such as JD Sports on the road.
Part-time retail worker Kathleen Simpson, 22, from Whitechapel, East London, worked through the incident at shop Under Armour.
She says: “What was scary was not the kids themselves, but the amount of people there were.
“I was worried about people being crushed. There were people falling over by the windows outside the store.
“They had police forces here and people started throwing things at the horses. People were backed up against our glass windows and then a mum fell over with her pram.
“We had to make sure the customers we had inside were safe.”
Her boss, Ella Dawber, 22, from Kent, said the police had been proactive in their approach.
She adds: “The police kept coming in every day, from Monday to the morning it happened, saying be careful.
“That Wednesday’s incident was the most dangerous thing I’ve witnessed. At first it was fine and then throughout the evening it became a bit intimidating. There were so many people it was insane.”
Last Friday a police presence was notable on Oxford Street amid worries there could be further disquiet.
Consumer retail expert Kate Hardcastle says: “The shop floor experience is the experience of the customer and the staff should feel empowered to be able to deliver that successfully and, vitally, safely.
“Front line workers are the priority here for brands and the same priority should be given to resources, training and encouraging better behaviour from consumers that ensures an appropriately safe and caring experience for everyone.”
But the recent spate of lootings are sadly not a one-off.
One security guard at a sportswear store, who asked not be named, said they recently had a customer walk in with a machete in their bag.
He said: “We detained him and the police came. He was very young.
“I should invest in a security T-shirt to block a knife going in.”
A sales assistant at a major high street chain said they are paid less than £10 an hour — legal for those aged 20 and under — which they believe is not enough for the dangers their job presents.
They say: “We don’t get paid enough for any of this. It’s weird to fathom the stuff I have to deal with
“One girl who was caught shoplifting got really close to my face and she was like: ‘Watch, I know where you work.’
“Basically threatening that she’s going to do something and made me feel very uncomfortable.
“Our job is to take care of the customers. My mum says it’s not enough to risk my life for.
“We’re not trained first aiders either. So if somebody gets hurt in the conflict, we can’t assess them. We’re just meant to stand back and let them do it.”
River Island assistant Amani Daoud, 24, from Norwood, South London, says she faces abuse from customers while working on the shop floor.
She explains: “Some customers swear at me on occasion. I feel upset when that happens. I radio a manager saying I need to get off the shop floor for a minute. The customers never apologise.
“I feel much safer working when seeing the police outside.”
Caterina Marchetti, 23, works in an Oxford Street clothing store.
She says: “I get people all the time shouting at me because they are not happy they can’t bring in more than six items into the changing rooms. And they throw clothes at me.
“They will try to steal, every day. Today someone was caught putting something in their bag. Yesterday someone was burning the tags off clothes.
“There are expensive shops here and I think it would help having more police around. Working in retail can be dangerous.”
Intimissimi store manager Sarala, 27, from Colliers Wood, South West London, admits that keeping tabs on shoplifters can be impossible.
She says: “People are stealing stock but we can’t stop this because it’s a very busy store.
“We have a lot of entrances here so we cannot check everything. We have security tags but I don’t know how they are doing it because never has the alarm gone off.
“We only realise when we close and find items gone.”
Dr Amna Khan, senior lecturer in consumer behaviour and retail at Manchester Metropolitan University, believes that high crime rates have seen retailers abandon Oxford Street in their droves.
She says: “Many of the key players have moved out of the area, which has introduced a lot of different type of occupants to the retail space, which has in turn resulted in a different audience coming to the stores.
“People don’t want to invest in that space if they know that there are high crime rates, footfalls dropping off and vacancy rates going up. It’s not appealing. It has a knock-on effect.
“Oxford Street has to have its own identity. And that’s what it’s lost. It’s lost that purpose and that buzz that it used to have.”
But it is not just shoplifters and gangs of youths who are causing problems there.
Skechers worker Mohammed Khuzaima, 32, reveals one entirely different incident recently left his colleagues shocked.
He says: “Some months ago a customer stabbed herself. I don’t know what she was thinking. I didn’t see it happening, but I heard from a colleague it was very hard to see.”
Jonness Conteh, 27, from South East London, who works at a major Oxford Street retailer and has a six-year-old son, believes social media has a lot to answer for.
She says: “I hope for my son’s generation things will get better. Social media, such as TikTok, is a bad influence.
“Until they are at the age where they know who they are, they are getting influenced by social media. No one has a mind of their own, they just follow everyone else. It is so sad.”
She also calls for a bigger police presence on Oxford Street to help workers and shoppers feel safer.
She says: “It would be good to have more police because at least that would prevent things happening.
“It would be traumatising to witness something going horribly wrong at work, where someone gets seriously hurt.”
Dr Khan believes that to turn things around, “you have to change who’s coming to that area”.
She says: “To do that, you need to create interest from those retailers who want to invest back into that area. But it needs to be a collective process.
“Oxford Street was a place that was really invested in, with a community spirit.
“We need to think about what sort of shops we’ve got there. Have we got book stores, have we got community-related spaces?
“The space needs to be reconsidered.
“It can’t continue to go on as it is where it’s a space only occupied by certain shops, which attracts certain demographics.
“This leads to recurring crime and it being used as a place which is an easy target.