working in retail/service?

[shootthebandit]

Something ive always found weird about service and retail workers is that there seems to be a lot of complaining from people who work these jobs. I often see internet memes like "things on retail workers will understand" and such like. It got me wondering why we only see groups like this. You dont see pages called "mechanics problems" or "things only manual labourers will understand"

Im not saying its an easy job and im not saying you dont get obnoxious dickhead customers (I probably fall into this catagory sometimes) but customers pay the wages of the staff

Surely ever other job equally has stuff to complain about. You dont see manual labourers complaining lugging bricks around all day. You dont see lorry drivers complain about long shifts and time pressures and you dont see nurses complain about being overworked, underpaid and understaffed

Like I said im not having a pop at you guys, you do a stellar job and youve got a lot of shit to contend with while being massively underpaid but im just trying to fathom why there seems to be a lot of complaining and "you dont understand till youve worked retail" mentality that you dont really see with any other job

Edit: perhaps its due to the average age being pretty low and thus a bit of naivity towards work. Its just a theory, what do you guys think?

 

[MysticSlayer]

I think it has a lot to do with how relatable it is. A lot of people, at least here in the United States, work in some service-related position at some point in their life, so writing a "things only retail people will understand" article is an easy way to get it shared due to the high number of people that worked those jobs. There's also the fact that retail and service jobs probably have the worst reputation when it comes to dealing with people, and many people have probably witnessed first-hand how crappy it can be without actually being on the giving or receiving end of the confrontation.

A more cynical theory, though, is the fact that it gives people the opportunity to feel superior to other people, and considering retail people are looked down on a lot, they probably relish in the opportunity to feel superior to other people more than the average person. At the very least, I know I was certainly a lot more judgmental of other people while I was working in retail simply because of all the crap I had to deal with from other people.

 

[Eamar]

- In retail you work long hours (you're there before and after business hours, not just when the customer sees you).
- You are earning minimum wage, or maybe a fraction above it, but almost certainly not a living wage.
- You work weekends and holidays, because that's when the customer wants to shop most.
- You are probably right at the bottom of a huge, convoluted management chain, so your voice is never heard or valued, even when there are really important things that require attention. When they're not fixed, it's your fault.
- Conversely, if you do something well, your manager takes the credit. Not always deliberately or anything, but that's how the chain works - Head Office Blame[sup]TM[/sup] trickles right down to the bottom (you), but Head Office Recognition doesn't.
- You are completely and utterly expendable, and at least one of your superiors probably makes sure you remember this constantly.
- You have to put up with unbelievable levels of shit from customers, but no matter how unreasonable their demands are, if they leave the store unhappy you are the one who'll suffer.
- Your performance is judged according to ridiculous, artificial or downright unpleasant criteria, like how many customers you can pressure into signing up for a spam mailing list loyalty card or doing a meaningless survey; when they fill out said survey, anything less than a completely perfect mark out of ten will be seen as a failure on your part and you will suffer for it. The customer doesn't realise this and you can't tell them, so when they put an 8 or a 9, quite reasonably thinking they're helping you out, they're actually screwing you over.
- Customers (not just the overt assholes) automatically make all sorts of assumptions about your intelligence, competence, level of education, aspirations (or lack thereof), and general character based solely on the fact that you work in retail.
- People treat you like a servant. They dehumanise you by clicking for you, talking as if you're not there, looking through you.
- You're treated like public property. It's fair game for strangers to make comments on your appearance or lecture you about what you should be doing in life. If you're female, you'll acquire your very own handful of creepers, leches or even bona fide stalkers.
- You are the public face of an organisation, therefore everything is your fault and you're meant to have all the answers. Everything from price increases to product changes was your personal decision and you need to answer for it.

I could go on.

Not saying that everyone has a terrible experience, or even that I completely hated it (I didn't mind my old retail job, and I'm actually looking for something similar at the moment), but believe me it's truly unlike most other experiences, and the "you don't understand until you've worked in retail" line is completely justified. I didn't think it would be when I started, but it is.

 

[shootthebandit]

- You are completely and utterly expendable, and at least one of your superiors probably makes sure you remember this constantly.

Whilst I agree with all of your points. Ill focus on this one as it raises a further point.

A skilled workforce (I hate to refer to people as 'skilled' or 'unskilled' but its just a general term) will most likely be unionised and if they have a complaint (provided its legitimate) they will be able to approach their employer about it. In retail people will be inclined to avoid complaining as they can be replaced by a 16 year old tomorrow who they can pay £5 an hour and has little to no experience in employment (so they can dick them for more hours etc). Where as the 'skilled' employee cannot be replaced without training so they have more of a bargaining chip with employers

You work weekends and holidays, because that's when the customer wants to shop most.

I worked in argos for a few months over christmas as a teenager. As far as I remember we got a day in leiu or a bonus for doing bank holidays (I dont know if this is relevant to all workplaces)
[/quote]

 

[Colour Scientist]

- In retail you work long hours (you're there before and after business hours, not just when the customer sees you).
- You are earning minimum wage, or maybe a fraction above it, but almost certainly not a living wage.
- You work weekends and holidays, because that's when the customer wants to shop most.
- You are probably right at the bottom of a huge, convoluted management chain, so your voice is never heard or valued, even when there are really important things that require attention. When they're not fixed, it's your fault.
- You are completely and utterly expendable, and at least one of your superiors probably makes sure you remember this constantly.
- You have to put up with unbelievable levels of shit from customers, but no matter how unreasonable their demands are, if they leave the store unhappy you are the one who'll suffer.
- Your performance is judged according to ridiculous, artificial or downright unpleasant criteria, like how many customers you can pressure into signing up for a spam mailing list loyalty card or doing a meaningless survey; when they fill out said survey, anything less than a completely perfect mark out of ten will be seen as a failure on your part and you will suffer for it.
- Customers (not just the overt assholes) automatically make all sorts of assumptions about your intelligence, competence, level of education, aspirations (or lack thereof), and general character based solely on the fact that you work in retail.
- People treat you like a servant. They dehumanise you by clicking for you, talking as if you're not there, looking through you.
- You're treated like public property. It's fair game for strangers to make comments on your appearance or lecture you about what you should be doing in life. If you're female, you'll acquire your very own handful of creepers, leches or even bona fide stalkers.
- You are the public face of an organisation, therefore everything is your fault and you're meant to have all the answers. Everything from price increases to product changes was your personal decision and you need to answer for it.

I could go on.

Not saying that everyone has a terrible experience, or even that I completely hated it (I didn't mind my old retail job, and I'm actually looking for something similar at the moment), but believe me it's truly unlike most other experiences, and the "you don't understand until you've worked in retail" line is completely justified. I didn't think it would be when I started, but it is.

This sums up the shit parts of working in retail pretty well.

I worked retail jobs through university and while some of them were definitely better than others, days of getting abuse from customers over something that's completely out of your control is extremely draining. I've had people talk to me as if I was a piece of shit and you have to not only grin and bear it, but be overtly positive and bend over backwards to please a person who's tearing strips off you for something completely trivial.

That said, I absolutely loved some of my jobs, one in particular, but that was largely due to having really supportive and friendly management and coworkers. Also, it was a high street sex and lingerie store so people were generally less likely to cause a scene due to the, eh, "sensitive" nature of their shopping trip.

I had one job in a clothing store and my manager was the biggest **** I have ever met in my life. The shop had a huge staff turnover because she would basically force people to leave if she didn't like them. She would pick on you for everything, make snide comments, cut down your hours as much as possible and she fabricated a customer complaint against me to senior management so I'd get an official warning. I started applying for jobs after that and quit a couple of weeks later.

Obviously, some of these problems aren't unique to retail but the retail environment has a special way of making you feel like dirt.

 

[Eamar]

A skilled workforce (I hate to refer to people as 'skilled' or 'unskilled' but its just a general term) will most likely be unionised and if they have a complaint (provided its legitimate) they will be able to approach their employer about it. In retail people will be inclined to avoid complaining as they can be replaced by a 16 year old tomorrow who they can pay £5 an hour and has little to no experience in employment (so they can dick them for more hours etc). Where as the 'skilled' employee cannot be replaced without training so they have more of a bargaining chip with employers

That's exactly it. I don't think it would be so bad if so many employers didn't use that as a stick to beat you with, though.

I worked in argos for a few months over christmas as a teenager. As far as I remember we got a day in leiu or a bonus for doing bank holidays (I dont know if this is relevant to all workplaces)

I worked for Hotel Chocolat (chocolate shop, so you can imagine how busy we were around Christmas/Easter...), and we didn't get anything extra for working bank holidays. You're right though, I think it's incredibly variable.

 

[Eamar]

I had one job in a clothing store and my manager was the biggest **** I have ever met in my life. The shop had a huge staff turnover because she would basically force people to leave if she didn't like them. She would pick on you for everything, make snide comments, cut down your hours as much as possible and she fabricated a customer complaint against me to senior management so I'd get an official warning. I started applying for jobs after that and quit a couple of weeks later.

One of our Senior Store Managers (not the manager of the store I worked at, but not quite a Regional Manager either) was exactly like this. It was absolutely horrendous, but in the end all six of us who worked in my store, including the manager, quit within days of each other, leaving her with a massive mess to explain to the people with actual power. It was almost worth the months of abuse just to see the look on her face

 

[shootthebandit]

That's exactly it. I don't think it would be so bad if so many employers didn't use that as a stick to beat you with, though.

Its really unfair and due to the fact they cant complain they obviously seek another outlet for there complaints

I worked for Hotel Chocolat (chocolate shop, so you can imagine how busy we were around Christmas/Easter...), and we didn't get anything extra for working bank holidays. You're right though, I think it's incredibly variable.

Hotel chocolat is amazing. I wouldve hated to be you working there resisting temptation to eat the chilli chocolate slabs

When I worked in argos I was in the store room and handled all the deliveries so I didnt have any experience with customers (so I guess it wasnt proper retail)

 

[Kricketz]

Something to keep in mind, at least here in the USA, is that the Retail/Service industry probably contains more workers than most other industries. The reason that you hear so many gripes about the retail/service industry is probably because soooo many people work in the retail/service industry. Also, it's not just teenagers but college students, contractors possibly looking for a second job, people who were forced retirement at their old job but wish to continue working, bored old people with nothing else to do, etc...

Now I've worked in the food service industry for about 4 years ( a few years in High School and College) and I've also worked retail for 2 years, and I've also worked a warehouse job for 1 year where we basically moved crap all day. Out of all my jobs, I prefer the warehouse job, simply because I knew what to expect going in every morning and I didn't have to deal with Customers.

Customers...the one thing I hated about working food/retail. Dealing with customers can be mentally taxing to the point where you start to feel physically exhausted. Customers WILL treat you like crap. Most customers try to be know it alls. I've seen customers come in to a store regularly just to file complaints in an attempt to cheat the system for replacement goods.

I'm in contracting now and my customers aren't as bad but I do not miss retail at all. Not one bit.

 

[shootthebandit]

I've seen customers come in to a store regularly just to file complaints in an attempt to cheat the system for replacement goods

When I worked in the storeroom (basically like working in a small warehouse). Argos is a catalogue store so people order a product and it comes down from the storeroom. Theres no products on display

Customers would buy an item and it would then be reduced. They would return it for the price they paid and comeback later to buy it at a reduced price. Me and one of the women downstairs caught onto their schemes and she would she would wait for them to return it (it was usually the same people so we recognised them). She would call up to me and I would put a reservation on every single one of said product. They would then return for the item only for it to show "nil stock". We used to laugh so much

 

[Twinrehz]

I work in retail as well, and have some other gripes with it.

I spend a great deal of hours in the register, and while they can be viewed as small annoyances, they're nonetheless annoying.

People who spend overly long just finding their money when they're paying. I've seen customers fiddling with cash and cards for over a minute before reaching any kind of conclusion as to how they want to pay, while people are standing in line, often with 5 or fewer items, spending their lunch break waiting for some 70 year old's brain to start working.

People who don't understand the function of the yellow button on the card reader (don't know what that's called in english), and either press the red button or pull their card out because they punched the wrong code (sometimes after they've got the message that the PIN was wrong and they need to type it again). I should be allowed to yell at these people, but I suppose they might be offended by it. Incompetents often get offended.

Elderly often tend to start punching their PIN too soon, or don't hear the reader's beep that it didn't read the card properly.

People who look accusingly at me when the reader tells you that you need to take your card out, and reinsert it. There's nothing wrong, it just didn't read the card right the first time!

I could go on, but it mostly boils down to this: Anything that makes it take longer paying for your items, when it clearly didn't have to.

I could just be psychotic, I sometimes get annoyed by people who shop in bulk.

Oh, and stuff that's on sale. People go NUTS over these things, it's like the second coming of our lord and savior, and buy those items like they haven't seen food in ages.

And people are completely oblivious to any mess that might be on the floor, that we haven't had time to clean it up yet (which, in the shop I work in, we often don't). They just stomp right through it, dragging filth all over the floor, leaving marks that require more intensive cleaning than if you had just used your eyes and avoided stepping in it!

 

[seaweed]

Just think about it. You're spending half your waking life in a place where complete strangers belittle you and treat you like trash. After a couple years of it, you'll seriously consider becoming a misanthrope. Customers can do whatever the hell they want to you and you have no power in the situation. You almost always have to work weekends and holidays. You generally make minimum wage or just over if you're lucky. Head office is braindead nine times out of ten and will treat you like garbage. In some places your hours are determined by what the sales for the day were on the previous year, so if there's a blizzard or something, you can end up having no hours or no support. If you work for a larger chain, management will often schedule as few employees as they possibly can, which makes the customers extra annoyed at you. Some nights there will be four employees total running a 100000 sq ft. store.

Honestly, I'd rather go back to my back-breaking manual labour job. It was easily a thousand times less stressful and I could actually be reasonably sure that I'd be able to make rent and feed myself decently every month. Retail is a joke and you should either never start or leave immediately. Out of my 4 years in retail I've only had one job in it I'd call good.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Snip

I hate to admit but as much as I actually do liked working at my current retail store but you are spot on with the downside to working in retail (in saying so I am grateful that most of the customers I face are the friendly eldering residents).

I would like to add to your list cos is that customers still butt into the shop minutes before closing time, thinking that we haven't got a home to go home to after work especially on a Sunday (FFS people! Work hours are suppose to be shorter on a Sunday compared to the weekdays and Saturday!).

 

[teqrevisited]

There are small victories to be had in retail work.

Whilst I'm waiting to start a new job I've been doing some at a local shop and there was this woman that came in on wednesday who was loud, rude and arrogant for a start. She brought this thing up to the till, I scanned it and asked for the payment. She said it was marked as a different price so I asked her nicely to wait while I got someone to go and check. She exploded into "Oh I'll fetch it my bloody self" and stormed off. I took one look at my supervisor and he told me that she'd just been trying it on with him about something else. Well, when she came back, it was brilliant: she was wrong. She bought it in the end but she couldn't bear to look up from the floor, much less actually look at me, and when she left the shop I gave a long distance high-five to my supervisor.

I don't mind it really. I just like to have fun with their ignorance.

 

[TakerFoxx]

SNIP

Well, with things like mechanics and construction workers, their jobs mostly consist of working together on long projects that they've been specially trained for and are knowledgeable about. Sure, there's some interaction with customers, but it's not especially high and they tend to (comparatively) have only a few customers at a time. With retail, their jobs are all about dealing with customers, constantly, all the time, sometimes dozens per hour. Their whole day revolves around the whims of an endless parade of strangers while being at the bottom of a corporate food chain that, more often than not, treats them like mushrooms (kept in the dark and fed on bullshit). As such, things tend to be...more unpredictable and chaotic when compared to other jobs.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Eamar's list pretty much hit too close to home for me. I worked at a 16 screen cinema for almost 7 years, made it to assistant manager(with about ten other ass. managers and 4 salary managers, pretty busy place) shortly after high school, then saw the chain get bought out by AMC[footnote]Asshole Movie Corporation[/footnote] 2 years later. It went from long hours at slightly over minimum wage, dealing with rude customers and managers not scheduling enough/ the right employees/ placing kids movies in too small of a house on Saturday mornings to everything else on that list along 6 managers(including me) being demoted to regular employee with high management somehow losing competence despite being the same handful of people from before the takeover.

They always liked to send home excess staff and let the remainder deal with an extra workload if business picked up. I'd go from being able to organize and count some inventory in the concession stand to the guy in a sharp suit frantically shoveling popcorn around because the boss lady made him count down and get rid of half his employees. They did that a lot on high school game nights and sure enough we be swamped by 9:30; they never learned.

I only stayed for another couple years because I got tired of being stepped on and told them "I'm one of the only guys who can run your fancy new digital and old 35mm projectors. Don't pull this penny pinching crap on ME again or I'll quit" That must've hit a nerve, 'cause they listened for once. I even heard them bad mouth me after I went on to a job that payed better that what most of the higher ups got, after doing extra stuff for the company for years. Stuff like that is why many retail drones complain, and I'm sorry that the last 3 paragraphs was that.

snip

To add to your statement, Doctors, lawyers, and other professionals can't complain about many things they'd encounter. For many subjects, they run the risk of revealing personal information or ruining their reputation. They also don't want trade secrets leaking out. [footnote]Hint: Hospitals have a big list of prices for all treatments the perform. The costs are so astronomical because they know the insurance companies will negotiate lower prices. If you don't have insurance, try as hard as you can to find out what an insurance company would pay for a procedure and barter you bill down. They don't stop this info from getting out, but sure don't make any effort to tell someone who is in a big financial hole.[/footnote]

Government employees are also usually restricted by laws/policies on how much they can discuss and are replaced as easily as retail pawns. It doesn't the government workers' bosses are pretty much the same suits that treat their retail drones like shit.

 

[Bertylicious]

- People treat you like a servant. They dehumanise you by clicking for you, talking as if you're not there, looking through you.

But you ARE a servant when you work retail. I mean, you're literally serving people.

Totes agree with everything you've said though..

OT: I think an explanation for retail employment being so prevalent in the public consciousness is the fact that many people work retail when they're young and even if you haven't you will almost certainly have been in a retail environment at some point. I mean, how many of us have worked as brickies? Or owned cars and been subjected to the appalling ordeal of taking your car to a mechanic to receive massive bills for all sorts of nebulous of stuff?

I'm guessing not as many as have worked in or been in a shop.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

All of the above, and more besides. I am working again today starting at 11am and I guarantee you there will be at least three Troll customers who will deliberately mislead me in what they want in order to cause grief for the general manager... which of course trickles down to me since The Customer Is Always Right(tm). I also guarantee there will be at least three who can't speak English, at least three too old to communicate effectively, and at least three who have no money on their debit/credit and will claim we are trying to scam them.

On the bright side, I feel like I would have reacted to all this much more poorly a few years back, maybe lost my temper visibly which is of course an invitation for them to report you (in fact I once encountered a lady who was carrying a list of the people in retail she had successfully gotten fired by complaining to head office. She seemed quite proud of it as she was using it to threaten me...). Despite everything I've said, I would endorse a mandatory one year of retail/food service work for everyone. It certainly teaches you patience and not to behave like a jerk when you're on the other side of the counter.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Eh, in Australia it's not so bad. You get the odd aggravating customer, but it's mostly ok.

Also, our minimum wage isn't calculated to insult workers.

 

[mecegirl]

I have to say. The idea that customer service/retail jobs are "unskilled" labor always bothered me. Because dealing with people takes skill in my opinion.

Just piggybacking on what others have said. People can be total asshats to retail workers, and yet retail workers have to be as polite and helpful as they can be in return. It is a skill that is learned on the job, because outside of the job you are generally allowed to defend yourself. But once that nametag is on.. Even beyond that keeping a store neat and organized is not something that everyone can do well. And trying to do so when you are understaffed(because corporate has this strange idea that less employees will magically increase productivity and profits) is damn near impossible. Just memorizing where items are in a store and accumulating the knowledge to inform customers about the differences between multiple brands. Something that should be their job in order to be the most helpful to their customers, becomes impossible when understaffed. The workers are too busy trying to keep the store from falling down around them to concentrate on their actual job. And all that does is makes customers more antsy (like some need an excuse).