As we celebrate this milestone, we invite you to join us in reminiscing with our Otter teams as they share their cherished memories, reflections, and emotions from their time at Otter Garden Centres.
I was born in Plymouth and live in nearby Plymstock. I worked for a while as a childminder and a preschool teaching assistant, and I came to Otter as a temporary seasonal worker in 2005, on the tills. I stayed on, and one day I was nabbed by Lyn to work on garden sundries!
Garden sundries covers lots of products: bird care, tools, watering, lighting, garden décor, containers and chemicals. There are three in the team, Chris our team leader, and Bryn. We work well as a team; we often get together and have feedback chats.
Early on, lighting was only a small part of what we stocked, but with the growth of solar lighting it’s really changed. People really want to make their gardens look prettier with lighting. Bird care has trebled in size.
We sell a lot of our own bagged bird seed, bird feeders – and other wildlife items like hedgehog houses. Customers are more environmentally aware, they understand that hedgehogs eat slugs which is a natural way of keeping them in check, and they are much more interested in organic products.
Christmas has moved to different areas of the shop – it’s massive now and spreads right across the branch. All the other departments decorate their areas too.
Technology has changed the way we do things. We used to have to manually put a code into the tills, and every item had to be priced with stickers. Now we just have the prices on the shelves, and the barcodes are scanned at the tills. So no more running around putting stickers on everything!
We’ve had several changes of managers over the years, and they all bring their own take on the business. But always the overall feeling of the branch stays the same.
Everyone chips in and helps with everything, such as when we get a big delivery.
At Christmas in particular, when the stock comes in, everyone mucks in, helping with the displays, decorating trees, and getting decorations on the shelves. And taking it all down again afterwards!
I’ve dropped a pot of paint a few times when unpacking a pallet, which meant rushing off to find some sand to cover it before clearing it up.
I live close by which is great. Previously when I worked in the city centre, I had to think about traffic and parking, now I’m just 10 minutes from home. And I really like the people I work with. We get on really well.
The business has always had a family feel. Jacqui used to come down for the Christmas preparation with Sabine and Aaron. She still comes down from time to time, and we were all pleased to have a visit from Malcolm and Marilyn this year.
A huge thank you goes out to Anne for sharing her memories with us!
Keep an eye out for more heartwarming tales from our amazing team as we continue our 60th Anniversary celebrations!
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