LogFAQs > #948379782

Working retail can be good or bad, but it depends on where you work.

I worked at wal-mart for 7 years and hated it. I work at a smaller, gov't owned liquor store now and I love it. The difference is I get paid more money at the liquor store to do far less work, and less things can go wrong at the liquor store.

Wal-Mart played up my anxiety for a lot of reasons, the two big ones being lack of staff and the service desk.

When I started at wal-mart, staffing was never amazing but it was adequate. When I left we were so understaffed. On busy days like Saturday and Sunday we'd have only a handful of registers open despite 5,000 people wanting to check out, and we did not have a huge self checkout area. So being the cashier in those scenarios was painful. I was great at my job and can hold down a line, but knowing at any moment a customer could throw a temper tantrum because not enough lines open(and nobody to help out) got to me. That is the reason I quit. Staffing got too thin and I was tired of walking into an anxiety fire most days.

The service desk just sucks because of the general nature of it. In my personal life, I never make returns unless absolutely necessary, and I try to do my research into products to see if thats the one I need. Some people I feel like have nothing better to do than to not research anything and just buy stuff and if its wrong they know they can bring it back. Then you get into all the fraud associated with the service desk(returns, check cashing, moneygram, bill pay, moneycards, etc) and people wanting to melt down because their item is 78 years old and our return policy is 90 days....ultimately if I got a job at one of these places I would REFUSE to learn the service desk. All I did at Wal-Mart was fill in for breaks and even that got to me.

At the liquor store its much better. Very few returns(and we arent taking returns at all now because of covid), and it isnt as busy. Business isn't the problem, but when it is busy we generally have the staff to handle it.

The biggest challenge is always customers. Every single person I've worked with in retail has always had shit to say about customers. In general, customers are fine, if a little stupid on average.

Ultimately retail can be alright if you can put up with idiocy and repetitiveness. I'm pretty good at both. I stuck around so long in retail because I don't make life changes often and it was a job. But I am happy where I am now, where I never was at wal-mart.