Sheila Burnett – Elizabeth Pack

Sheila: We used to see of course Elizabeth Pack around a lot, and she always had time of day to stop and talk to you.

Simon: What was your impression of her?

Sheila: I was very taken with the fact that she was around and would talk to you and she might ask you what you were there for, not particularly so in other words she’s not pushing sales. And then she’d say. “Oh, you might like to look at such and such.” It was more that you asked her a question rather than pushing, which was very nice.

Simon: I guess that the process of you when you walked in the shop, how much … there’s a sort of almost a sixth sense of the people that worked there maybe had of knowing whether you just wanted to have a look by yourself or …

Sheila: I mean they might very well say, “Good morning” to you or whatever, but they wouldn’t come up immediately and ask you what you wanted, which left you to browse, but they were there if they saw you getting quite interested in looking at a certain group of things.

They’d then come up and ask you if you hadn’t already spoken to them. You know, “Can I help you?” and so I would say it was very laid back, but always somebody there and you didn’t feel you were being harassed.