1.
-My name is Mathew and I work at the Virgin megastore in Brighton store and I’m a sales assistant.
-How long have you actually worked here?
Two years.
Long enough to have an idea about people’s tastes. Tell me about your customers. Do they mainly buy cassettes or records or CDs these days?
The popular format is CDs. Generally speaking. LP sales are falling. Cassettes are just remaining a constant.
Can you tell by someone’s looks what sort of music they are going to like?
Yeah, I mean you can sort of spot various trends. There will be older age groups from like sort of 50s onwards who will buy easy listening. You’ve got like the youth groups whom come from the rockers, to the ravers, and so on. They’ re all easy to spot.
2
-But, could you tell, say if someone was coming in and were a classical fun?
No, definitely not. They come in all shapes and sizes. They are the difficult ones.
-How about your musical tastes?
My taste, I like black music: rap, soul, funk.
-Do people ever come to you and ask for advice?
Yeah. All the time, that’s the major part of the job: questions on bands, songs who recorded what, where can they buy this record, that CD? If we haven’t got it, where can they get it? Why isn’t it available? This, that and the other. Hundreds of questions.
-So, do you like working here?
Yeah, I do. Working with music, it’s a lot of fun. It’s hard work but it pays off, it’s good.