"Everyone should have to work retail."

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I hear this a lot on the Internet. I'm guessing "everyone" means NTs. Well I think everyone should take medication that induces executive dysfunction, so they can know what it feels like.

My first job was in retail - Very humble beginnings.

I never want to work retail. Sounds like hell to me.

Screw Retail!

If you don't have to work Retail, then you're very fortunate.

But if you have to, you have to make the best of it.

Do these strange people ever explain what the benefits of working in retail might be? I can't think of much myself. I was rather under the impression that working in retail sucks bigtime.

They just want people to know how much it sucks to work in retail, so people treat retail workers better. I kind of understand where they're coming from, but to me they sound like whiny college students. I used to treat retail workers like crap, but I had a reason.

When retail workers act fake it really gets on my nerves and it makes me feel uncomfortable. It's pretty much the uncanny valley effect at work. I now know they're told to act fake, so I try my best not to be rude. Unfortunately everyone has a different definition of rude.

Some retail workers think they're entitled to everyone engaging with them. Not everyone that's going shopping wants to be social. They should accept that some people ignore them or avoid talking to them.

I would have jumped at the chance to work in a retail store. Instead, I worked at a cinema when I was 15 years of age where, after every screening started, I was required to clean the restrooms, toilets and all. Don't tell me about "jobs Americans won't do." In fact, 20 years after that, I was a house manager at three of our county government's fine-arts theatres where, you guessed it, one of my duties was keeping the restrooms tidy. I guess that I worked in whatever job presented itself.

So, by comparison, selling sweatshirts at The GAP seemed like luxury.

I would have thought most of us already know how much it sucks to work in retail without having to live the experience. And I don't see how pretending to be charmed by the feelgood hype they're forced to exude is going to stop it. I think the real problem is that those retail workers have conned themselves into thinking that their bosses are right, presumably they find it less bruising to their pride to believe that than to accept they're being shafted and that there's nothing they can do about it. Sometimes I think people too intelligent to be taken in by obvious business hype should be awarded a special badge to show that we will buy less, not more, from those who try their stupid, dishonest tricks on us.

Most of my work experience has been in retail. Some customers are jerks and they treat store employees like crap just because they can. But in my experience, that's actually not very common. Most of the time people DO have a good reason, and usually it's because of the store has some stupid policy that pisses them off, or screwed up in some way. The employee just gets caught in the middle. It's not fair but it is what it is. The job calls for a lot of empathy and diplomacy. Some people just don't have it, and maybe they shouldn't be working in retail, but they probably don't have a lot of other options. So the customer just gets stuck with them.

Now I have been that customer many times, and when I feel a store employee is being rude or insolent with me, I don't have a lot of patience with it. Because I have been in their shoes and I know how you're supposed to treat a customer. And I know that whatever they feel disgruntled about is probably more the fault of their employer than any customer they have dealt with that day. And it's not right to take it out on the customer. So for me, having worked in retail doesn't make me inclined to be nice to someone just because they work in retail. It doesn't make me feel sorry for them.

The real reason why retail sucks is not because of the customers. It's because these companies are run by people who are clueless, who are out of touch with their customers and leave their low-wage employees stuck in the middle, with very little incentive to actually make the customer happy - which in turn provokes the customer to treat them like crap. So I don't see how it's supposed to help anything for the customers to know what it's like to work in retail.

I think people who work in upper management and corporate leadership of retail, food service, etc. should all know what it's like to work at the very bottom ranks of their company. Whether that means they are promoted from those ranks, or just have to work a "field day" on a regular basis to see what it's like. That's probably the only thing that would improve retail job conditions.

But to me when people say "everyone" should work retail...what that implies is that customers should feel sorry for people who are working those jobs, and just be "nice" instead of holding the store accountable for making things right with the customer...because compliant, passive customers are soooo much better for the company's bottom line, than those nasty ones who complain or ask for refunds for the defective china-made crap they are selling, etc.

I work for a company that literally uses the term "compliance" constantly in their jargon, regarding customers...above all else they want compliant customers. Not happy customers, not satisfied customers...they want compliance.

Well, come to think of it, maybe some people really should work retail, just so they can understand how disturbingly Orwellian some of these corporations are, and how much they are trying to brainwash people and stamp their influence over the whole of society.

Yeah a lot of times they are doing it just because they are told to act that way. But not always. Some do it just because they like to be that way. I agree with treating them like crap if they don't back off. No one should be forcing a customer to interact.



In all my retail jobs I can't think of a single person I've worked with who believed their/our bosses were right, or didn't know they were being shafted. I never worked in anything high-end so maybe that's different. But in my experience pretty much everyone who works retail thinks it's a bunch of BS, including most of the managers.

Retail is one of the worse jobs to ever be in. I can only fake nice and I care so much before I don't. After a while I got away with being a smart ass because I gave up caring about being fake. It was exhausting. It was tiring. And to be frankly honest, it doesn't humble me to be a better customer because the times I get irritated as a customer are not the same reasons other customers get upset.

Working both sides, I can understand retail sucks. But from a customers point of view, retail customer service sucks.

To be honest I still really hate self check out. I don't know what it is but I hate self check out. From a customers' POV, that really sucks to only have 2 huge lines open and I have to stand in this huge line just to get any help.

I hate being ignored as a customer.

I hate rude service, "can you help me"

"i'm actually on my lunch break"

"oh I am sorry, do you know where someone is that can help me?"

"No I am sorry," walks off to take break. And I get you, you want your break.

But I worked in both retail and fast food. Whenever I was on my lunch and saw my store getting slammed or looked like a ghost town, to provide that customer service I went out of my way to help no matter what. And that's good retail service.

And that's my expectation of them as a customer from being a retail worker at some point in time.

So it doesn't humble me. Because I know the retail worker's dirty little secrets and rude behaviors and all the little background stuff and then they beg for customers to be humble. When most of them are negative behind the customer's back.

I probably got the wrong end of the stick about the reason why retail workers were saying we should all do their jobs for a while. Seems that what's really going on is that they're just trying to emphasise what a miserable job it is these days. Sounds like they could use a good trade union, if such a thing exists.

I can only wish I had the capability to work retail, or anything else for that matter.

Retail sucks and so does cleaning. I've done them both. For me retail sucks more.

To those who are bothered by the "fakeness" of retail clerks, try pretending to be interested in 50+ people a day and see how sincere you are.

I worked in retail for a bit. And I was awesome. I was never fake. I went out of my way to help customers. I worked harder than almost all the other people who worked there. I did my job to the best of my ability despite the fact that I was paid next to nothing.

I did on occasion piss off rude customers because sometimes I talked back to them. I learned how to deal with them eventually. Get a manager, and let the manager suck up to the rude customer and deal with all of their b.s., even though the customer was wrong.

All of the people that I had trouble with were women. Most of them were trying to cheat the system by doing something that they weren't supposed to be doing, and that I wasn't allowed to let them do. Then I would tell them no, and they'd get mad and go complain to a manager. Then the manager would give in, and allow the customer to do the thing that they weren't actually supposed to do, and cheat the system.

What sort of things were they cheating the system out of?

1. Using coupons in a way that wasn't intended, and that they also obviously knew that they weren't allowed to do, and then pretending that they didn't know.

2. Trying to get deals that they knew didn't apply to what they were purchasing, and then complaining about it.

3. Trying to return items that they weren't really supposed to be able to return, and then complaining when they weren't allowed.

4. Deliberately trying to distract cashiers so that they would get free items. If a cashier would forget to ask certain questions, the customer would often get a free item, depending on what kind of program was started to "motivate" the cashiers to sell better.

Men didn't usually bother to do these things. Probably because men didn't really care to shop there, and also because women often feel comfortable bullying other women, but men can't usually get away with that type of behavior. Not in public, anyway.