Of Wooden Tops and Mice

By Steve Beattie

Ever dreamed of a newly fitted kitchen or bathroom, then bought one, only for it to turn into a nightmare?

This book tells the real story of what its like to work behind the scenes of a home-improvement company. The mismanagement and incompetence, the failings, and the politics, as well as the customers that the consumer programs chose to ignore, recited as a human story by a man who, for nearly thirty years, was left to sort it all out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Oct 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477226544

Steve Beattie

Steve Beattie was born in Watford, England, in 1964. He is an only child. His mother was an administrator and his father a draughtsman. He was trained as a junior kitchen planner then progressed through the ranks, holding key positions at a number of blue-chip home-improvement companies to become a well-respected industry professional.

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© 2012 by Steve Beattie. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/19/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-2650-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-2654-4 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1   In the Beginning

Chapter 2   Retail to Rogue Trader

Chapter 3   Wooden Tops and Mice

Chapter 4   Manchester Mafia

Chapter 5   Into the Unknown

Chapter 6   A Question of Survival

Chapter 7   Sitting in a Shed

Chapter 8   Way out West

Chapter 9   Into the Wilderness

Chapter 10   The Promised Land

Chapter 11   Rescue and Independence Day

Chapter 12   Renaissance

Chapter 13   A Living Hell

Chapter 14   The End

Conclusion

About the Author

Preface

Standing on Birmingham New Street Station on the evening of 15 January 1993, awaiting my connection, smartly dressed, and holding two briefcases, I looked just like any other business traveller in the rush hour. Like many, I had been to a meeting. Like some, I was taking the train home instead of the car. Perhaps like one or two, I was thinking about a change of career. But there was one difference unlike all of them: I was unemployed.

Eight years of continuous employment had ended only an hour and a half earlier in said meeting I had driven to in a fully expensed company car. I had no warning or idea prior to this meeting of what had been carefully planned for several weeks. In spite of surviving several similar attempts to oust me over the past four years, I had survived each time, and on a couple of occasions the perpetrators had themselves eventually lost their portfolio. I had also just bought my first home that previous September, but now I had finally lost the war.

I sat there watching the trains roll in and out, wondering, fearing; and hoping. My emotions were swinging between the optimism of a new start and the dread of financial ruin. For one moment, as my train approached, I thought of ending it all under the wheels, but then I convinced myself that was what they wanted; I wasn’t going to let them win, not after all I had fought for.

On that day, it seemed like the final whistle had blown on my professional life in the home-improvement industry. In fact, it wasn’t even half-time.

Introduction

A brand-new kitchen or bathroom is the dream of many homeowners. Although these days it’s no longer considered a luxury item, it’s still a major investment in both time and money. It can also be quite a traumatic experience, especially when things go wrong. As when booking a holiday, no one expects the tour operator to go bust or to spend hours in the airport after yet another air traffic controllers strike. We know it happens because we’ve seen it on the news, but we never think it will happen to us. We are blinded by the dream of warm beaches and exotic destinations that they show in the brochures and adverts, all made affordable by the huge savings and special deals on offer.

Similarly, when we buy a kitchen, we know of problems caused by poor workmanship and the warning of sharp selling practices because we’ve seen it on numerous consumer programs. But again, we are blinded by brochures full of beautiful kitchens: those exceptional once-in-a-lifetime 50 percent off sales and promises from well-groomed design personnel. Again, we are buying a dream, and we don’t want to see or hear of anything to the contrary.

When things do go wrong, the first thing we want to know is who is to blame. We want someone to shout at, usually a customer-facing representative, and who cares if it isn’t his or her fault personally? We don’t care if in reality there is quite literally nothing they can do about the situation. When we eat out, if the service is slow and the food isn’t to our liking, we complain to the waiter, and if we get a reply we don’t like to hear, we complain about the waiter. We forget it was the chef who actually cooked it or the owners who cut back on staff to save their own wages.

And using the restaurant analogy, it has long been accepted that if we the public ever saw what went on behind the scenes in a number of high-quality establishments, we would never eat there again. But we would rather not know; provided we enjoy our food, we don’t care. And in all honesty, that’s why we don’t care because we enjoyed the end product. We got what we wanted. Who cares how it got there or what dramas were encountered along its supply chain. That is the same in any industry.

Sadly, the home-improvement industry is a very different story. All too often, the end result is one of disappointment and inconvenience: of endless delay and ambiguity, of frustration and constant let-down, of broken promises and, worst of all, a dream in tatters. Unlike the travel industry, ATOL or ABTA will not get us home and Environmental Health will not close down a consistently poor-performing kitchen company. Your fate is in the hands of the underpaid, overworked, poorly trained, and mismanaged staff of the very company who created the problem in the first place.

Even if there was a governing body who could shut down or fine a company, the problem still has to be corrected. The leak must be fixed, the poor workmanship put right, the promises kept, and the missing goods supplied. Someone has to take ownership of the problem and work it through to completion. Often in practice, it comes down to one individual. A person that often not only becomes a very unlikely hero, but also sadly a scapegoat behind whom the incompetent can hide.

To fully understand why the problems continue to occur at such an unabated rate in the main sectors of the industry, one has to look behind the scenes. The best way to do this is through the eyes of someone who spent his life in the industry trying not only to sort out the problems but also stop them from happening in the first place. The problems lie not with government legislation or lack of it with regards to buyer protection; nor does it lie with the consumer programs that are very good at publicizing the problems but are not so forthcoming in finding the solution. The problem lies with the whole culture and mentality of the very people who work within the industry at all levels, and specifically in the boardroom. It is here where the buck stops, but sadly so often the causes are ignored, lessons are not learnt, and the blame is passed back down the line to the very people who are trying to solve the issues.

This book includes a personal history of the industry from the early ‘80s to the present day: its evolution to the differing cultures of seemingly similar companies and its organization. This is the untold story of what really goes on behind the scenes. Through a story of personal experience, it explains how an order progresses through the supply chain and who is actually responsible for what. It exposes sharp practice at often very high levels and near criminal negligence. There are also examples of both theft and fraud not only from company personnel but far more frequently customers themselves.

Customers, the very people who the industry is trying to serve. It is amazing how many abuse a system designed to protect them for their own ends, and how many of them cause their own problems through nothing more than sheer petulance.

For legal reasons that will become clear in the book, most company names have not been mentioned. The majority have gone bust, and many have changed ownership and in most cases cleaned up their act substantially. Incidents detailed twenty years ago are not necessarily par for the course today. Many of those people committing some of the most fraudulent acts were sacked as a result of their actions, so it is not to be believed this was official practice by the company at the time. Also, names have not been mentioned as some are personal friends and many still work in the industry. I have referred to them by a letter of the alphabet in order of appearance. Customers are also referred to by common names. For example, Mrs Brown, who made a complaint, via her mobile phone, to the head office of a DIY company from the car park forty minutes before actually shopping in the store (and thus received a fifty-pound voucher as compensation), was not called Mrs Brown at all. Again for legalities, the woman in question cannot be named.

But above all, the book will demonstrate how the majority of problems are caused by straightforward incompetence, and the reason behind that is the people the industry employs.

What other industry would initially employ a designer to plan and prepare quotations of expensive fitted kitchens as well as offer advice on products and services, who at eighteen was employed solely on a hand-drawn picture of a model train? An illiterate who left school with no qualifications whatsoever due to being a habitual truant and was sacked six months later for dissent. That same person three years later became a respected troubleshooter for one of Europe’s leading retailers in a vital sales support role to some of the industry’s most ruthless salespeople. As the years moved on, this individual carved out a career through sacking, redundancy, and resignation. Through hate campaigns, profiling, and malicious complaints to almost singlehandedly stopping the United Kingdom arm of a worldwide company from going bankrupt. But most importantly of all, along the way, he helped to turn that consumer dream into a reality for thousands of customers for over twenty-seven years.

That person’s name was Steve Beattie, and this is my story.

Chapter 1

In the Beginning

Thursdays were my favourite days in the fifth form in 1981—when I actually bothered to attend school that is. The morning consisted of PE and the afternoon a double period of technical drawing (TD). A very relaxed and enjoyable day that from memory always seemed to be sunny. The long walk home would be rewarded in the evening by the TV shows Tomorrow’s World and of course Top of the Pops. In between times, I could read my How It Works manuals and even spend some time in my bedroom designing, for the umpteenth time, a new model railway.

Homework was usually done in the lunch hour or at the last minute before class, but Thursdays was a light day with none to worry about. The school essay books covered in brown paper and adorned with track plans for said model railway could be left forgotten usually discarded in the hallway to annoy my pernickety mother.

Occasionally, the thought of what I wanted to do once I left school would come up. I really had no idea. I liked the thought of becoming a commercial artist or graphic designer but in practice had no chance of being accepted by art school. They wanted qualifications, such as O and A levels, and I had neither. In fact, I sat only four CSE exams, failing one and narrowly passing the others. I stayed on to the sixth form later that year, but it wasn’t at all what I thought it would be and left in January ‘82. In all honesty, I left long before then; I quite literally just stopped going.

Truancy had long been a problem with me and had become increasingly worse over the years. That and my appalling spelling and handwriting placed me in an impossible position employment-wise, although I was always good at art and TD. Those skills without English, however, were not considered relevant. The local Career Office tried to find something for me but failed, and I signed on, destined to join the ranks of the other four million odd unemployed in the first recession of the Thatcher government. Eventually, I found myself on a YOP (Youth Opportunity Program) course for painting a decorating run by Watford Community Relations Council and spent most of ‘82 decorating a church. Although enjoyable, it only lasted six months and I signed on again.

Whilst the word truant would conjure up an image of a lazy yob hanging around shopping centres smoking with like-minded hooligans, in my case this couldn’t have been further from the truth. I spent my time at home drawing, designing, and model making. I was able to produce some very accurate scale drawings and had designed a complex exhibition layout for a model railway club I was a member of. This project was complete with baseboard design, material list, and track plan. I also started producing working drawings to hand-make some models that I could not afford to buy or were not commercially available.

The reason why I was a truant was because I had little or no interest or even appreciation of the subjects I was being taught at school. Constantly in trouble for poor handwriting, bad spelling, and bad time keeping implied to them I was just lazy and not bothering. Lessons were boring and uninteresting, and I could not see the relevance of them to real life. I just couldn’t see an end product, so I opted out and concentrated on doing the things I enjoyed.

Being in a single-parent family with a mother working full time made truancy fairly easy. The school didn’t bother following up my absenteeism and my mother had given up on me as a useless teenager. Prior to being placed on the YOP course, I had let myself go completely, not bothering to wash and letting my hair grow long and matted. I was in a dreadful state not helped by poor relations between my mother and me. However, that course had given me some self-respect, and although I still had no idea of what I wanted to do, the winter of ‘82/’83 was not as bleak as the year previous.

In January ‘83, I broke the normal daily monotony by walking into town to see if there was anything in the job centre worth going for. En route, I bumped into an old school friend who was on his way to the Career Office. I joined him for the hell of it, and although I was too old for the Career Office could not help noticing a job advertised for a kitchen planner. The position was not local and insisted on A level TD, maths, and English, preferably the minimum qualification being good O level grades.

I left him to his interview with the adviser and walked back to the job centre. There I spotted the same job again advertised, and alongside it another similar position, but this time there were no grades mentioned and the company was not far from where I lived. I took the card and approached a rather stereotypical fifty-something woman in horn-rimmed glasses and a very officious persona.

‘I’d like to apply for this job, if I may. I’m very interested,’ I explained.

The woman looked over her glasses and, after a pause, barked out the qualifications required: minimum O level again. My heart sank. I explained to her my hobby, that I could produce drawings and I was very keen to learn. She huffed and picked up the phone, tutting as it rang.

‘Mr A? I have a young man here who would like to apply for the vacancy.’ And with a sigh, she continued. ‘He has none of the qualifications stated but says he is very keen and has drawings to show you. Personally, I think you’re wasting your time but… Oh… Oh… Hang on…’ She paused and with some embarrassment looked up, saying, ‘He’d like to see you. Can you get there this afternoon, around 2.00 p.m.?’

It was just approaching lunchtime, but that still gave me enough time to get home and grab my drawings. But the vacancy had leapt off the wall at me and without further hesitation I replied, ‘Yes, I’ll be there.’ In retrospect, I should have lodged a complaint about this woman, but at last I could see a ray of light.

It had started snowing and I had no money for the bus. I walked back in the heavy snow, found my drawings, and made my way up to the showroom, arriving wet and dripping.

I walked into to the studio and saw a serious-looking young man in his mid twenties sitting by a portable gas fire. He was dressed in jeans and a jumper and I thought he was a warehouse man or something. I introduced myself. ‘All right, mate. Is Mr A around? I’ve come for an interview.’

The young man looked up from his papers and to my surprise informed me, ‘Yes, I’m here. You must be Steve. Please take a seat.’

Great start. Insult the MD. Well, he wasn’t dressed the way I expected a designer to dress. The showroom wasn’t what I thought a design studio would look like either. Small and dimly lit with no drawing boards, bar a small portable unit on the breakfast bar of one display.

The position was outlined impassively, but the job seemed right up my street. I showed A my drawings and he was very impressed, just what they were looking for. Things seemed promising, and although he had other candidates to interview, he would certainly be in touch.

I was expecting to hear in about a week’s time, but two weeks came and went with no news. Time dragged by, and by the end of February I still heard nothing. I was distraught. I thought I’d done so well in the interview. March came and my absent father gave me some money for driving lessons, which at least gave me something to look forward to.

I’d given up on the job and was concentrating on building some baseboards for a new model railway when one morning the phone rang.

‘Steve? Hi, it’s A. Have you found work?’ I was surprised but it seemed they had not forgotten me after all. I replied I hadn’t and was ‘just building a model railway layout.’

‘Good. Can you pop up for a chat?’

The weather was warmer, although it was raining and for the second time I entered the showroom dripping wet. This time I knew who I was seeing and made no mistake. A younger lad, B, appeared prior to A, and both seemed pleased to see me. The atmosphere was much lighter and A explained the situation. B had been interviewed just after me and had similar talent but he had hired B due to the fact he had a driver’s license and O levels. However, as business had expanded, he realized he needed another person and I fitted the bill. The start date was not immediate but just after Easter some four weeks away. The job was mine if I wanted it.

I didn’t hesitate. It was what I wanted to do, even though the pay was crap, only forty pounds per week, but it was more than I was earning on the dole and it was a job. I was issued with some brochures of the product to look through and returned home to tell my disinterested mother of the good news; my father, however, was very pleased.

The company I was to start work for was a franchise dealership for importers of midrange West German kitchen furniture. It had free reign on appliance suppliers but could only promote the importers’ furniture. The director, A, was an ex-surveyor and fitter who had just started in business by himself after working for the previous owners. For reasons unexplained, the previous company had a large number of unfinished kitchens and was owed a considerable sum of money. A had approached the directors and agreed to complete the outstanding orders in return for the final payments. This had been agreed, and as a result, he had launched his own business.

However, there was a twist. Although operating from the same showroom and the new company trading under a different name, they were not allowed to use the previous owner’s name to promote their new business. This was a big problem as the showroom had a large sign outside with the former company’s name on it. The new company was not allowed to change it. It also became clear very early on that A had become very dissatisfied with the franchise terms and the lack of support. The importer spent no money on national advertising and provided very little backup.

Our company was formed by A, the director, with a sleeping business partner. B was his first assistant, and then came me. There was a part-time bookkeeper and a team of subcontract installers who where later replaced after problems. The showroom opened six days a week, and most of us worked all six days.

A was very much a people person. Outgoing and lively, he made friends amongst both customers and the other small businesspeople of the shopping precinct in which we were situated. B was a year older than I and came from a typical two-child suburban family. Slightly more reserved then A but presentable and conformed to all middle-class social expectations. I guess I was the runt of the litter: a bit rough round the edges and most certainly nonconformist, but dedicated and enthusiastic.

My first day arrived, and on a warm, spring morning, I walked the short distance to begin my working life.

My first job was to convert the new price list from Deutsche Mark to Sterling. I was surprised at the price of the individual units but was assured by A they were in comparison to our competitors, quite reasonable. My second surprise of the day caused some hilarity. I wasn’t used to modern kitchen furniture and expected the drawers to be like the old wooden ones at home, requiring a firm pull to open them. An instinctive firm tug on these draw units quite literally shot one across the showroom. Welcome to metal ball-bearing drawer runners.

That first week was spent mainly doing odd jobs around the showroom, cleaning up the small storage area, and answering the phone. This wasn’t what I had imagined of course, but I stuck with it. During that week, an incident occurred which would give me insight into a problem I was to face over the next twenty-seven years: my first malicious customer complaint.

I was alone in the showroom, holding the fort one morning. A and B were out on site and not much had happened. I took a few phone massages mainly from suppliers, but the next one came from a rather abrupt gentleman with a typical north London Jewish accent demanding the price of an oven. I apologized and explained I did not know, I had only just started but that A would be back very shortly and I would get him to ring. The customer was not impressed, giving his number while mumbling about the inconvenience.

Shortly afterwards, A returned and duly returned the call. I was sitting beside him in the back office and heard the screaming. ‘How can you call yourself a company? I had to phone three times this morning before I got a reply.’ This was a lie. He’d only phoned once. ‘Then I ask the price of an oven, and no one tells me! No one knows. I speak to this boy and he’s not interested, he doesn’t care! He doesn’t want to know. How can you employ people like that? You should sack him right now.’ I looked at A in a state of shock. Calmly he told the customer the price of the oven. The crux of the customer’s complaint, and the motive, then became clear, delivered in a calmer more consolidating manner: ‘Well, you know after all the inconvenience I should have it at the cheaper price. You know, too expensive. I’ve been so messed around today.’

The customer had been given a kitchen quote based on furniture and an entry-level oven. He wanted to upgrade to the more expensive model but didn’t want to pay the difference. I was told not to worry; this behaviour was par for the course. A dismissed his complaints and the matter was not raised again.

That incident left an impression on me, however. But it wasn’t going to be the last. Indeed these incidents did became very much par for the course right up until the end of my career. In spite of all the fraud and sharp practice I was to witness, by sheer number, crudeness, and malice, customer complaints of this nature far outweighed any malpractice by colleagues and competitors alike. It is ironic. You never saw those incidents on Watchdog.

Over the next few weeks, A spent as much time as he could with both of us. I learned the basic design rules as well as the finer points of the products as well as a bit about our competitors. At that time in the early ‘80s, if you wanted to buy a fitted kitchen you went to an independent retailer at a High Street showroom. There were no DIY ‘sheds’ (trade term for the likes of Homebase and B&Q) as such at that time, although MFI was well established at the bottom end of the market. In the immediate Watford area, there were eight independent showrooms including a well-known department store, plus MFI. The latter was not considered serious opposition as the quality of its product was widely agreed to be inferior to that as supplied by the independents (and that’s being polite).

In the shadows were the bogeymen of the Manchester-based ‘direct sell’ companies that were reviled by the independents for taking their business away with sharp practice and false promises. Stories of pushy salesmen who stank of drink, refusing to leave the customer’s house without the order, did the rounds, becoming industry folklore, repeated by both trade and customers alike. They were the enemy. A had been a surveyor for them at one stage and C, our new, fitter had just left them. I didn’t know what a surveyor did or much about them, but I was to find out a couple of years later.

A wanted me to concentrate more on the installation side as opposed to sales, where B was encouraged. I didn’t really want to do this, but I enjoyed the time I spent on site with as C’s apprentice, learning the finer points of actually installing a kitchen. He installed into me an invaluable set of ethics and working practices that I kept with me right throughout my working life. Sadly, I haven’t seen him since I left there but am informed he’s doing very well.

Ironically, as a designer and planner, I was less of a drain on A as was B. After a short period, I was considered competent enough to be allowed to go out on my own measures (site surveys) and provide one-to-one