Such a time is also rush hour for 50-year-old Huang Lizhen and her 45-year-old colleague Cao Yahua, though they handle it in a different ways.

Inside their small yet cosy Kedi 24-hour convenience store, located near a bustling bus stop in Shanghai's Pudong District, Huang and Cao are fully occupied, serving customers one after another. People come in mostly to buy something for breakfast and for a warm respite against the outside chill.

Around them is a joyful and comfy holiday atmosphere, as the store is well decorated with jubilant pictures of Santa Claus as well as small stuffed toys, despite its small space. The store covers an area of about 60 square metres, including a tightly packed indoor mini warehouse behind the main business area.

"A steamed bun? OK!"

"A can of milk? Needs heating? No problem!"

"I got your 100 yuan... Here's the change. Thanks!"

"Sometimes, you've got 17 or 18 hands in front of you together with remarks of rushed customers like 'Hurry up! Hurry up!'" joked cashier Huang, referring to the challenging morning business.

"At those moments, you really need more patience... and I also tell them 'Why don't you leave home a few minutes earlier?'" said Huang, whose infectious exuberance demonstrates her outgoing and sociable nature.

Having worked at the store for nearly a year, Huang seems quite used to the rush-hour tension. She has concluded that milk and boiled eggs are customers' favourites for breakfast.

As usual, the shopkeepers are busy until about 9.30 am, when most locals have already arrived at their workplace.

Only then can Huang and Cao take a breather, check bills, reload the shelves and talk excitedly about the robust chocolate sales of the previous night - Christmas Eve.

A learning experience

There are more than 3,000 other stores of the same kind in Shanghai. They have mushroomed since 1996, under banners such as Lawson, Liangyou, Meilin 85818, Lianhua Quik and C-Store.

Li Zhishan, a retired teacher who lives near Huang's store, said: "To have such a store in your neighborhood is quite helpful, especially when the service is really nice."

The Shanghai Kedi Convenience Store Co Ltd alone has developed a network of more than 700 outlets in Shanghai and other parts of East China.

The boom of convenience stores in Shanghai has created nearly 30,000 job opportunities, especially for local laid-off workers in their 40s and 50s, according to officials of the Shanghai Municipal Commercial Commission.

The one where Huang works started operating three years ago under the direct management of Kedi, but it became a franchise member of the company late last year as 43-year-old Li Xiulian paid 90,000 yuan (US$10,900), including a refundable 80,000 yuan (US$9,700) as a deposit, to own a three-year operating right for the store.

A former dairy worker, Li later extended the contracts with her eight clerks in the store, including Huang and Cao, who are all middle-aged women who had to take early retirement or look for a new job.

Li and her followers look at the business in their own way.

"To me, it's just like I paid the 90,000 yuan (US$10,900) to get a stable job in return," said Li, who takes charge of the store's daily management and makes sure that its business is well on track.

Unlike traditional family-run convenience stores, Li's store has strong technical and logistical support from Kedi based on a citywide computer network, Li said.

Such support ensures a daily timely supply of most goods automatically according to information on the sales volume of different products of the previous day. The information is transmitted to Kedi via the cash register.

With that back-up, Li and her staff only have to restock the shelves with the new goods, which mostly arrive between 8 am and 9 am.

For some goods with a big daily turnover, such as milk and bread, the staff order the specific amount needed in advance - which is based mostly on the previous day's sales.

If some goods do not sell well, Li and her staff report to the company and have these products taken away.

"It looks easy enough, but that is not in fact the case," Li said.

It has taken time and hard work for Li and her staff to learn every aspect of how to run the business, ranging from keeping a comprehensible daily accounts record to maintaining a clean and tidy shopping environment for customers.

While Li herself has to learn to cope with a lot of troublesome and complex accounts figures to ensure that the store operates healthily, her staff have their own concerns.

"Once you begin working here, you constantly have new things to learn," said Huang, recalling the days when she began her job as a cashier.

Taking early retirement in 1999 from her previous job as a printing worker, Huang had very limited business experience.

Working behind the cash register, she has to memorize the prices of quite a few goods that have no bar code. She also had to quickly grasp how to operate a computer - all at an age of 50.

Battling her ageing memory, Huang worked out a low-tech solution. On small cards, she wrote every specific code and the corresponding price for the item as well as every specific computer procedure. She studied them whenever she was free.

Even though she now boasts an intimate knowledge of the prices of more than 1,000 products in the store, she said she still has to go around the shelves now and then to recheck the prices, especially for products on sale.

"We feel like school students with so many things to remember," said Huang.

Fierce competition

Li and her clerks have managed to maintain the store's monthly revenue at around 220,000 yuan (US$26,600). Such a track record is laudable, especially when the same neighborhood has Alldays, another convenience store.

But Li and her staff do not regard the close competition as a big deal. "I really don't care much about their (Alldays') business... What I know about is focusing on our own part well," said Li. She said what occupies her mind most of the time is all the trivial yet specific things that arise at work.

"In a small business like ours, we have to rely on nothing but the quality of our service to attract customers and beat our rivals," said Huang.

They said maintaining a friendly relationship with many regular customers is far from enough.

Sometimes, customers do not want to get their hands sticky and will not buy zongzi (pyramid-shaped dumplings made of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves) unless Huang or Cao unwrap the dumplings for them, Huang said.

"Even though it's trivial, we always try to find time to do so. Otherwise the customer just leaves or goes to our rivals," she said light-heartedly.

The staff have added some new services, such as collecting residents' monthly public-utility payments and helping them order milk on a daily basis.

"Sometimes, I even feel like learning some English to better help my foreign customers," Huang said.

Whenever customers come with queries, such as the location of a nearby pharmacy or if they need small change for a bus ticket, Huang and her colleagues always patiently try to meet their needs.

"Don't they only need a bit of convenience? That's just what we try to supply," said Huang.

Night shifts

While storekeeper Li works from Monday to Saturday and is mainly in charge of daily business from about 8 am to 5 pm, the other staff are arranged in pairs and are expected to take turns in working 12-hour day and night shifts.

The seemingly formidable night shift is easy to handle, Huang and Cao said.

The really sleepy hours come around 3 am but the hours pass quickly as they begin busy preparations for the morning business, including boiling eggs and heating milk.

"When you get yourself fully involved, time flies quickly," said Cao. "But we do need to drink some coffee beforehand to keep us sharp-minded throughout the night."

However, they must stand for most of the 12 hours, which is physically challenging for the middle-aged women.

"It was really tiring at the beginning... Even now, it is still the case that, when I get home, both my legs feel exhausted and I can't stand up again once I sit down, unless I don't sit down at all," Huang said.

But that is by no means the end of their trouble.

Huang feels most uncomfortable when some fussy and inconsiderate customers say things like "You are nothing but a laid-off worker!" when they are not satisfied with their purchase.

Nevertheless, that unhappiness seems to occupy only a small part of their life compared with what they gain from the job.

In terms of monthly income, storekeeper Li usually nets nearly 3,000 yuan (US$360), while the other staff earn around 700 yuan (US$85) on average from the store, in addition to their original pension or other benefits.

They all try to balance their work and family lives well by quickly resuming their roles as responsible housewives when they are off-duty.

Yet money is not the only gain. "I really love this job because it gives me a full life," said Huang.

"What matters to me now is to try to find something I enjoy at work and I know that I should cherish the chance when I have got a job at such an age."

(China Daily January 7, 2003)