Why did anyone ever shop at Grace Bros?

One word: QUALITY.

I shopped there because the salesmen were so ffffffffffreeeeee!

They had a very active tea room scene.

[quote] They had like one cabinet of mens shirts, a tiny rack of hats

Shows how little you know.

Ground floor had perfumery, stationery and leather goods, wigs and haberdashery, kitchenware and food...

First floor had telephones, gents ready-made suits,shirts, socks, ties, hats, underwear and shoes...

Second floor had carpets, travel goods and bedding material, soft furnishings, restaurant and teas

Yes, R4, but still a very small selection of the items they did carry. Like I said, one small cabinet of mens shirts, and that was it!

It was a TEEVEE show.

Because there wouldn't be a TV show if nobody shopped there.

They had display models. One sweater and the different sizes and colors were in back, for just one example.

[quote] They had display models

They certainly did.

Because they wanted to hear all about Mrs Slocombe's pussy

and I am unanimous in that

Mr. Humphries provided extra "services" in the fitting rooms.

Yes! I shopped there when I was in Sydney in 2003. It was the name of their biggest department store. Not sure relation it had to the name Grace Brothers chosen for the show. Anyway Sydney’s Grace Brothers has since changed its name to Myer.

It was back in the day when sitcoms could look like a staged play would look - like Archie Bunker's or Ralph Kramden's living room.

[quote] Why did anyone ever shop at Grace Bros?

Next question.

People had less money in the 70's so there was less choice available.

Most of their business was bespoke tailoring, OP.

Young Mr. Grace needed room to get around in his wheelchair.

I like how the store was open from 9:30am to 5:30pm and closed for an hour at 1pm for lunch.

That pretty much explains why no one was there.

Why did such a small store have so many staff? There was always more staff than customers.

Why didn't the Ricado's apartment have a bathroom, you stupid fucking troll, OP?

I LOVED those old school department stores. In those days there was little competition, no big box abominations and discount stores. How I loved walking through them looking at the variety of goods in old-fashioned displays. I'm 68 and there were still many around when I was growing up in San Francisco. The City of Paris, The White House, the Emporium, etc., and the downtown Woolworth's with it's candy counter and lunch counter service.

r22 I remember those too ... and having to get all dressed up to go shopping "in the City." (Born in San Mateo; grew up in the East Bay.)

R23 Do you remember Capwells, then it became Emporium-Capwell? The Oakland store downtown was cool.

[quote] I like how the store was open from 9:30am to 5:30pm and closed for an hour at 1pm for lunch.

in the US, 9:30 to 5:30 were common hours up until the late 1970s, usually with one or two night openings per week. I was in London in 1985 at Christmastime and even the biggest stores only extended their hours until 6:30 or 7.

I never knew Grace Bros closed for lunch. I never understood how they were all allowed to have lunch at the same time and now I know.

I 'm old enough to remember when stores closed on Sundays. There was talk of sacrilege when the stayed open seven days a week.

It was a calmer, sunnier, more relaxed time then. Hula hoops, roller skates, Spam casseroles, MAGA!

r24 We mostly went to Capwell's in Walnut Creek. But in downtown Oakland, in addition to the flagship Capwell's, there was also a Rhodes and an I. Magnin. There was also a suburban Rhodes in Concord. (This was in the late '50s/early '60s.) I lived in the East Bay until 1970. I remember my mother's Capwell's Charge-A-Plate.

R22- I loved Woolworth's. Loved how the wooden floors creaked when you walked on them. And it was more fun browsing up and down the aisles because you could always find something to buy. I used to sit at the lunch counter and have a coke and fries when I stopped off after school.

Those were the days.

Yeah? And I went to Bullocks Pasadena to get new shoes.

My brother and I got our feet Xrayed in the machine to make sure the shoes were the right size.

Grace Bros. would have looked larger if they had not put up those walls at each end of the floor. They could have been a little more creative and figured out a way to open up the space to make it seem like they had a lot of stock.

AYBS is still a good show in the occasional rerun.

As well as having to close on Sundays, shops (stores) in The UK used to have 'half day closing' by law. Most chose Wednesday or Thursday for some reason? The law wasn't officially repealed until 1994.

Still happens in small towns though.

The store always felt like something from the Soviet Union, especially the women's flimsies.

Liberty in London do a modern take on the 'old fashioned' shop look. It is still very exclusive, expensive and popular.

If stores closed at 5:30 and weren’t open on Sundays how did anyone do any shopping?

I think it’s bad enough that Trader Joe’s closes at 10pm instead of 11 or midnight.

Up until the 70s, married women with children were not likely to work outside of the home. They were the ones who did all the shopping during the day, R35 .

Or men, like my Dad, would pop into the men's store near the office during a lunch hour or during the last half-hour before closing time.

R35

I will try to explain peoples shopping habits the best that I can remember.

Women didn't generally work full-time (or at all) after marriage (most were pregnant when they married). Childcare was almost unheard of and you relied on older relatives or friends if you needed any. If they did return to work after their children went to school it would be part-time. They did all of the food and children's shopping.

Men working in offices and factories only worked Monday to Friday. If they needed anything they would shop on Saturday or in their lunch hour.

The opening hours of Bars (Pubs) were even stricter 12-3pm on weekday lunchtimes and 5:30-10:30pm in the evening. On a Sunday that was reduced to 12-2pm at lunchtime and 7-10pm in the evening. That became more flexible by the late 1980's and was almost totally deregulated in 2005.

I've been watching a lot of AYBS on Youtube recently.

Why did anyone work there is a better question. How could they survive on the pay ? It never looked like they were raking in big commissions.

They would have all been members of the Shop Workers Union. (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) USDAW.

It was very powerful from the 1940's onwards. If they got commission it would have been on top of the union's minimum wage, which was fairly high.

Jenner’s department store, Edinburgh. Still on the go. I went in and fully expected a Scottish Mr. Humphries shop bottom to ask if I was being served.

Would it be fair to say that Mr. Humphries was a shop bottom archetype?

Were they part of the Union though, it’s seems like the custodian was, he always bragged about the overtime he got by being in the union where as the sales staff wasn’t allowed that.

Wasn't Mr Harman The Union Rep?

If you worked in a shop in the 1970's and 80's you didn't have much choice. I worked P/time shelf filling in the early 80's and had to pay to USDAW. I was only 14/15 at the time. The salary was good though, about £4 an hour in 1982. Probably equivalent to about £20 ($30) an hour now?

Those are some British teefs there R15.

Well I think R37 is really extrapolating out his ass or he really didn't live through those times. Certainly some women were pregnant when they got married but MOST women were not.

More memories from the olden days. Until I was about 10 (1960) we had only one car, which was common at the time. My father took it to work. I can remember walking about a three-mile round trip with my mother to the grocery store. Sometimes we brought the shopping cart home, but mostly she shopped when my father was not at work or they went together.

We also didn't' eat or buy all the crap that families do today. Small house, small closets, no clutter, no junk food, no soda. Just simple healthy meals and enough clothing to fit in a 6 ft wide closet and not a walk-in. One TV that did not run 24/7. You got a test pattern at about 10 PM. Mom was stylish and she and grandma sewed a lot of their clothing.

Later, in my teens, we had more money, more cars, a bigger house, and more stuff. It was all good.

R47 I was in a thrift store a few weeks ago and they had a 60s dinner service. The dessert bowls were TINY. They ate far less than we do. I’ve decided to only use old dinner ware now, try to get back to a more modest time (and waistband).

I agree completely that the woman who WAS pregnant when she married was in the minority.

And believe you me, it was a scandal even through the sixties. Of course, those babies were always born "prematurely."

I looked at ads from the Chicago Tribune and while the dept stores closed downtown, the ones in the suburbs were open Saturdays from 9am - 7pm and from 11am ( or noon) till 5pm or 6pm on Sundays and that was in the 50s.

There were some smaller chains like Korvettes, WT Grant and Goldblatts that were experimenting with odd hours. Zayre was open round the clock the week before Christmas in the 70s.

[quote] I looked at ads from the Chicago Tribune and while the dept stores closed downtown, the ones in the suburbs were open Saturdays from 9am - 7pm and from 11am ( or noon) till 5pm or 6pm on Sundays and that was in the 50s.

Maybe the mass marketers, but 'better department stores' were not open on Sundays until 1968 or 1969. Some stores, such as Bloomingdale's in NY and Robinson's in LA held out even longer.

[quote] Why did anyone work there is a better question. How could they survive on the pay ?

I worked in a union store in San Francisco and we were paid double on Sundays and holidays. I earned about 22K a year in 1983, which is $55K in 2017 dollars. Not a fortune, but a respectable income.

And yes, I was a big ol' shopbottom. I got many offers to meet for drinks (and more) during my tenure at that job.

Mr Lucas said he got 19 pounds a week gross and 11 pounds after taxes and deductions. The NHS took a dollar and change and Grace Bros had a retirement home they withheld for, that was in 1973. I assume the made commission on top of that. Miss Brahms also indicates they don't get overtime, while Mr Mash the maintenance man took home 60 pounds because of his overtime.

[quote]Maybe the mass marketers, but 'better department stores' were not open on Sundays until 1968 or 1969

Fields, Sears, Goldblatts and Carsons were open on Sundays in the suburbs from at least noon to five. Downtown they were closed though.

My mom worked in a downtown department store back in the fifties, and in the summer season, Memorial Day thru Labor day, The store closed at noon on Wednesday's. Never, ever were they open on Sundays. Mondays and Fridays, they were open until 9:00p.m.

People shop there because they know their suits/sleeves/pants etc. will ride up with wear.

"You've all done very well!" -- Young Mr. Grace

Why did the staff perform so many musical numbers?

R52 I would say that means Mr. Lucas made about $360 dollars a month in 2018 terms. Plus any commission, which he rarely got it seems. The others were there longer so I’m guessing they made more.

Many states had "blue laws" that forbade opening on Sundays. There are still remnants of these practices with respect to the sale of liquor.

I worked in a London independent department store 30 years ago. It was really similar to Grace Brothers.

The makeup women and clothes department staff were so snotty and rude to the other department staff, especially canteen. Most of the staff had worked there since the 1950s and would all fawn over the owner when he came in.

As another poster said, it was closed on Sunday’s and you’d get a lunch break and have a hot dinner (that’s your big meal mid day) with a desert that had custard! When they did late night Thursdays you’d get overtime and at Christmas it would open Sunday’s for 4 weeks leading up to it and you’d get double time.

The characters in are you being served are exaggerated but not much. The Miss Brahms types were on the make up counters and Mrs Slocomb would have been on the habberdashery. Captain Peacock was more of a store manager type and Mr Humphries was men’s clothing.

Cool story, R60! Thanks.

[quote] Mr Humphries was men’s clothing.

Except when he was at home or hitting the clubs, of course.

R46 It depends how old your parents are/were? My Parents and all of my Aunts & Uncles who married from the late 1940's to mid 1960's were pregnant when they were married! I think 'The contraceptive pill' wasn't prescribed to single women until about 1968.

Could have all been sluts I suppose?

I'm 68, and in the 1950s and early sixties many people married in their late teens. Premarital sex was taboo and babies born out of wedlock were "bastards." A young couple in my area of CA committed suicide because they were too scared and ashamed to tell their parents that the girl was pregnant. People married young so they could have sex. No need for that anymore.

My older sister married at age 18. She was pregnant although the wedding was already planned when that happened. My mother wept inconsolably when told the news shorty after their marriage. She was so ashamed we moved to a different town.

Things have changed so much we forget how bad it was. In spite of all that, shopping in the department stores at the time was really fun. Your ideal life was on display all around you, although very few of us achieved that perfection. I later worked in retail advertising helping to feed people's fantasies and collect their money.