The ups & downs with Glasgow's fashion elite.....& fish.

When I left school in 1990 I became an apprentice dental technician but after a year the big companies killed the wee guys in the industry & I was made redundant at 17. Truth was I wasn’t sad turns out I was a great technician but it bored me. I was a people person I wanted to be in amongst the Glasgow buzz not sitting at some desk all day.

So with the crowbar at my bed my mum & brother in law Jim Podmore who was managing ‘The Warehouse’ the biggest and most prestigious retail outlet in Scotland for designer wear got me employment………as a lift boy.

The Warehouse on Glassford Street had six floors. Basement was menswear, ground floor was the Sandwich bar & entrance, first floor was new generation where I so so so wanted to work. This department stocked the new diffusion ranges from designers for the younger generation. Second floor was ladies wear, third was the café & fourth was the office.

My Job was to greet customers at the entrance & if need be take them to the café or if I was lucky take some goddess to the ladies department. Between doing this I also had to courier supplies to & from the café & sandwich bar, not forgetting taking lazy staff members to the café.

Now you’re wondering why have someone operate the lift? Well it was an old manual operated lift kina like in the movies in America. It had a main shutter door & an internal cage door you had to close by hand then to go up you pulled a brass level back to go up, forward to go down & middle or release to stop (release was never a good option that’ll come later). The only difference to the American movie lifts & mine was like all American things my lift was a lot smaller about 3ft by 4ft, snug.

Now I could tell lots of stories & drop tons of names of stars I had in my lift as The Warehouse was the hub of Glasgow’s sophisticated & beautiful people but things never really ran as clockwork on that old lift.

The worst thing was……..FISH!!! On certain days the fish delivery would come & I would take the fish delivery man & his pungent box of gilled friends up to the café. Now I swear you could set you watch by it. The next customer to come into your lift would be some totally gorgeous woman wanting to go to the ladies department & the lift is stinkin of fish. So there’s me making embarresed excuses for the stench. Lookin good Marty, lookin good.

Now the operating handle could be taken off & I never seen the point of this, well that was until one day when the lovely Tracy Lee on the sandwich bar needed a crate of coke from the store room so me being the gentlemen I am I go get the coke & even offer to carry it round to the back of the sandwich bar for her. I return to my post to find my lift closed & gone. I could here it in motion & I spent at least 15 minutes running between floors I could hear voices inside saying “it won’t stop properly” & “give it to me, I can do it”. It was murder, some bloody customers went on the lift & were operating it. It’s not easy to do. You have to stop it right at the floor or the door won’t open & this took me at least two shifts to perfect. Eventually, sweating, panting & franticly running between floors I get up to the office & find the lift open. One of the office girls shout me & ask if I’m ok & told me two auld buddies wandered aimlessly into the office asking were the wee café was. I never left that lift without taking the handle with me.

The only problem with the removable handle was if you released it to stop, it would sometimes spring off and fall down the lift shaft & you were stuck. This is not good when you have four folk in the tiny lift & one is claustrophobic throwing their hands about shouting “HELP, HELP I CAN’T BREATH “.

I always remember the store manager my brother in law Jim getting stuck between floors with Laura from the ladies department who was covering the lift duty. We got the doors open & had to wait for an engineer. While they waited the café staff passed coffees and newspapers down to the lifts prisoners. I’ll never forget Scott who worked in the café on his hands & knees passing these provisions through the wee space saying “ is there anything else I can get for sir or madam”

After about six months I got promoted to sales assistant in The Warehouse Sale shop in the Italian Centre. I only ever got to operated my wee lift for lunch cover when I made my move or should I say my big break to the new generation floor with the fashion elite & there’s plenty of stories there.

I always mean to go into the old building which is now Peckams on Glassford street to see if my wee lift is still there.