The owner of toy shop chain The Entertainer is warming hearts everywhere with his deep sense of Christmas spirit.
Gary Grant is a prime example of how you can have a keen eye for business, while still treating your employees with kindness and humanity.
A dedicated Christian, Gary always shuts up shop on a Sunday – at all of his 149 locations – in order to give his hard-working employees a chance to spend quality time with their families.
Even with Christmas Eve falling on a Sunday this year, Gary is staying firm to this policy – even though it means missing out on some extremely tempting profits.
This is the very first time since 2006 Christmas Eve has fallen on a Sunday. For many less devout bosses, this would have posed quite a dilemma – after all, Christmas Eve is big business for the retail industry.
Indeed, Gary has estimated the toy chain would have pulled in 1.5 percent of the annual turnover on 24 December, if the doors were to remain open.
The year ending January 2017 saw an annual turnover of £152,605,000 for the popular toy shop chain. However, business has since expanded, with many more stores having opened. So yeah, we’re talking some serious dough…
The thought of making big bucks hasn’t stopped Gary from making sure each of his 1, 700 employees has the day free to focus on what really matters. (Spoiler alert: this doesn’t involve spending all day at work).
According to the Metro, this anti-Scrooge made the following statement:
We don’t trade on Sundays, any Sundays of the year, and as the dates have fallen for the current year, we will be closed for what will be the second largest trading day of the year.
As a Christian, I believe in families and just being around for our children and our grandchildren, being able to have one day we can meet together, we can eat together and stay together as a family, I think is very important.
Keeping the Sabbath holy is one of the 10 commandments, so I felt I shouldn’t be opening the doors on a Sunday.
For many of our 1,700 staff, they say the fact they can have a day off with family on a Sunday is really important to them, regardless of what they believe.
Is anybody else picturing the wise, kindly toy shop owner from Home Alone 2 right now?
Gary’s focus on giving his workers a precious day of family time has earned him a great deal of respect.
One person tweeted:
Just seen that Gary Grant (owner of the Entertainer) won’t open any of his stores on Christmas eve and has given all his staff the day off dispite [sic] the money his company will loose [sic] out on and continue to support his beliefs of Sunday being a family day #respect
Another remarked:
Good for him. How many shopping days do we need?
No matter what faith or beliefs they follow, all bosses would do well to follow Gary’s example of putting people before profits.
Jules studied English Literature with Creative Writing at Lancaster University before earning her masters in International Relations at Leiden University in The Netherlands (Hoi!). She then trained as a journalist through News Associates in Manchester. Jules has previously worked as a mental health blogger, copywriter and freelancer for various publications.