How to ask questions constructively
Phil had always seemed to me to be one of the most laid back and mild mannered shop managers I’d ever met – something not necessarily typical of the breed. So it appeared out of character when I found him early one November morning in the large high street ASDA store, where he had worked for 20 years, fulminating by the check outs. “Just look at the rubbish we have to sell nowadays,” he spluttered.
The offending article appeared to be Advent calendars he was stacking in the prime spot next to the tills – the sort of place anyone waiting in the queue couldn’t avoid, especially if they had a bored youngster in tow. On closer examination the small windows when opened revealed, not a traditional scene from the nativity story, but a chocolate representation of an overpaid premiership footballer. I saw his point.
That brief encounter in the course of my weekly chaplaincy visit as the store chaplain encapsulates a lot about retail chaplaincy and also what it is like to work in a modern supermarket. As chaplain to the 550 people who work there my three hours per week aims to provide one to one support to people at work, the vast majority of whom would never think to go near a church. Through conversations snatched at odd
moments in the store, warehouse or offices or over a cuppa in the canteen, I try to get to know people and listen and encourage them as they struggle with the stresses, and the contradictions of their work.
At another level chaplaincy provides me with insights both into the way people are expected to work, and how the market system operates. Like Phil I have questions about how we come to market chocolate through such tawdry tat as football themed Advent Calendars.
Such questions present themselves at every aspect of the supermarket business. From how consumers’ demand for cheap food depresses wages – and all that that means for people trying to ‘earn a living’ at minimum wage rates; to issues of global sourcing of products; the place of limited ranges of fairly traded goods, and what that says about all the others; food miles; organic produce; the detrimental effects of supermarkets on local businesses; the questions keep coming.
As a chaplain at a local store – albeit with a large workforce – there are limits to what can be done to address such questions. Certainly the caring role of helping shop workers, who find themselves asking moral questions about the system they are part of, makes for some
interesting conversations. But, unless we can find ways of asking such questions further up the management structures of companies, there is unlikely to be much movement in how they operate.
Farmers markets, and other forms of direct selling, are ultimately the only way producer and consumer will come closer together. Supermarkets, by the very nature of their competitive business, simply can’t achieve this and yet remain, inevitably, the place most people do their shopping.
Supermarket chaplaincy provides a way of caring for those at the sharp end – but also helps us see the questions we need to be asking.
Rev Dick Johnson
Dick is Industrial Missioner with Faith at Work: Worcestershire Industrial Mission Ecumenical Partnership. For nearly 10 years he was Town Centre Chaplain in Bexleyheath, SE London, visiting retail workers regularly. The pioneering ministry at the local ASDA store has now grown into a national scheme with the company, covering 125 stores and more than 160 chaplains. Amongst other things Dick serves as National Link chaplain for ASDA and convenes the National Retail Chaplains Network.
www.arthurrankcentre.org.uk
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church and economy
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