​Excerpt from In my Wainwrights Shoes  
Guilty but Innocent! Stigmatic Bipolar Conspiracies
By Chris Wainwright,​
 
                                                                                     4. Lithium Metamorphosis

I retired as a solicitor and returned to our family business hoping to start feeling better. To be honest I was a bag of nerves doing my best to hold things together. My nerves were on edge and my confidence was so low that I once even had to walk away from the customers I was serving. It might have been a form of panic attack but I was badly depressed most of the time and I shouldn’t really have been working. I was making an effort to get back myself back in the saddle. Losing confidence happens to us all but when a serious established depression is the cause it's another matter entirely. I was so ill at ease I kept worrying about what to say if anyone I knew came in the shop and asked how I was doing! My story was that selling footwear appealed more than the law but I don’t think people were convinced. I don't know what my brother David thought! He'd joined the business straight from school against Dads' advice without going to university or getting other work experience. He seemed happy enough but missing out on a degree was a mistake. While I was ill the difference between us didn't notice until my metamorphis following treatment by the 'experts'. I’d fought the depression for several years but now it was becoming difficult to even put on a happy face. When I broke down at Leicester Uni my doctors hadn't warned me I might need to return if I felt depressed again. They certainly never hinted that I might experience a manic episode. When that actually happened the medics brushed the incident aside not that I knew the facts at that time. I'd thrown my legal career in and reached the end of my tether. I drove off into the woods with one of my guns for what I now think of as a “trial run”. As I say I look back at the occasion as an experiment not an attempt to see how far I’d go. I can’t have completely hit rock bottom but I was quite close. Sat in the car prepared and ready really focussed my mind. I imagined the consequences and knew it wasn't right. 
 
Saving Wainwrights Beaconsfield
Several months after my 'experts' diagnosis at the Warneford Hospital I was working with father, brother and an experienced staff at Princes Risborough. With the three of us there the shop ran like clockwork and customers had an unbeatable service. At that point David and I worked well together. Dad said we had a good business between us. At my suggestion we called ourselves ‘Wainwrights Footwear Specialists’. We needed to adapt the business and were it not for a monumental spanner in the works we could’ve opened a specialist store in High Wycombe. Out of the blue, however, dad dropped a bombshell. He told me he was on the point of surrendering the Beaconsfield lease and closing the branch which had become unprofitable. Following uncle Dereks retirement the business had been run by his manager but sales had been steadily declining despite the double unit store being located in a prime position. For many years Dad and David had not been able to work out thereason for the decline. I’d worked at the branch while I was ill with depression and feeling awful (dad and I thought I could ‘work’ myself better but it was the wrong thing to do). Now that I’d been diagnosed and was fully recovered I recalled my uncle Derricks remarks on retirement and had some knowledge of the shops staff and history. Dad asked me to meet the manager in a last ditch attempt to see if I could find anything wrong.

During our first meeting I soon found some obvious problems which the manager promised to put right. The following week however little if anything had been done. We therefore agreed on the jobs to be carried out for the next meeting but this time I found that nothing at all had been done. David and I met him for a progress review and we all agreed that the branch should run to the same standards as Princes Risborough and Great Missenden.
The next day I was on holiday but apparently the manager simply handed in his resignation whereupon Dad dismissed him on the spot. On my return he told me to manage the store myself. Unbelievably it went straight back into profit. It was lucky for Wainwright & Sons that my bipolar was now properly treated and I was at last free from crippling depressions. I've never had a repeat since then.

Commonsense told me the Beaconsfield store wasn’t being run properly but it turned out to be worse than I'd imagined. Dad said he didn’t know how I’d turned its fortunes around. Truth was the manager had been fooling around with the staff, ignoring customers and generally running the business down. How on earth could David not have noticed the managers poor attitude? He’d been working there regularly over the years and must have had suspicions. Most ‘absentee’ retailers send in ‘spies’ to check and report back how their stores were being managed! Dad didn’t need to do that because David was there but neither of them owned up to their failure. Had dad put him on the pedestal I vacated and now he could do no wrong?

Dad was pleased for once that the Beaconsfield shop was back in profit. My success however didn’t suit David. His resentment or more accurately jealousy became all the more apparent. Common enough in family businesses I could hardly have expected it in our own from my own brother! The immediate increase in takings coupled with Davids own longstanding failure to resolve a serious problem left him feeling inadequate. He let the shop come close to collapsing right under his nose but I never once criticized him for his ommission. I'd had the principles of teamwork drummed into me from an early age! When people work together they put the team ahead of themselves. I don’t think my brother ever had enough practice at that.​

Getting Beaconsfield back into shape wasn’t the easiest of tasks but I was determined to do it. There was a bad atmosphere initially with some difficult staff who wanted to do as they pleased. Customers told me the branch had a bad reputation but I assured them I’d put things right. Retailing local adults and childrens footwear is a peoples business and having staff with the necessary 'people' skills is crucial. I was surprised after the first week that takings had  increased considerably. After my first year turnover was up by almost 70% (£350,000 approx) which stands as a record between the branches. Since uncle Dereks retirement in 1981 I estimate the Beaconsfield branch to have lost an estimated two million pounds in turnover!

Soon after I became manager the landlord offered to sell us the freehold! Dad jumped at the opportunity and held it in trust as C&D Properties for us four children who would also pocket the rent formerly paid to Landsec. Stephen and Sandra had a quarter share each even though they'd never worked in the business. If my undiagnosed manic depressive illness hadn’t forced me to leave the law and return to Wainwrights shoes my medical metamorphosis by lithium wouldnt have happened. Dad would’ve sold the failing Beaconsfield outlet and couldn't have acquired the freehold.