All sorts of feelings about Arcadia going into administration. When I was 18, my first proper job was as a deputy manager at the Burtons store in Banbury. The pay was appalling and having to work every weekend sucked, but I have lots of fond memories and made friends for life.

I had previously worked at the store on the shoe concessions (while finishing my a-levels) and when I decided I didn't then want to go to university, it felt like I landed on my feet when they offered me the job.

That said, Arcadia had some properly dubious practices when I worked for them. For instance, we were encouraged to put people on tiny contracts and have most of their hours as "overtime" so we could pay less holiday / sick pay.

Also, we had to hard sell every customer on the store credit cards and insurance protection, which, when I was 18 I had less scruples about than I would now.

The area managers wouldn't let us hire cleaners, so every day after the shop was closed EVERYONE would have to clean the store. We were always envious of the bigger city stores that (we assumed) employed cleaners.

Deliveries would come in every Wednesday at 5am. Why so early I will never know. But if you were on the delivery shift, you would have to get there to meet the truck and try to rapidly unpack everything before the store opened. *So* much plastic packaging in those days.

The store I worked in closed around 8-years ago. It was never as busy as they hoped. I remember some days we would have literally 10 customers. Those days could be excruciatingly boring. So we would create little volleyball games using the fixtures as nets and a tennis ball.

The worst time of the day was 4pm when you had to go on a conference call with the area manager and be publicly berated if you didn't meet sales targets. My one memory of her is the time she drove from Peterborough to London with her foot on the clutch and burned it out.

The weirdest thing is that I still have dreams that I return to work at the shop as a sales assistant (despite it not existing). In the dreams I can never work the tills. It feels like returning to a place I am fond of and despise in equal measure.