Current Events > How do people work in retail for 10+ years?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Like, maybe if you work for a Mom and Pop and you can actually visibly see the growth in your company, but how the fuck do some people manage 10 years or more at something like Wal-Mart or Walgreens?
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a lot of people dont have much of a work ethic tbh
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Crushes your soul and indoctrination to the general culture = lack of ambition.
Not that I have issue with people working in a store all their life if they're actively happy or anything.

For some people they don't have much of an option.
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Why work hard to improve when the government will supplement their needs?
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They do it so they can complain about the oppressive capitalists and further push their communism indoctrination on other people
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I wondered this same thing. My original career plan when I worked at Mervyn's (started when I was 17): Work there for 10 years, retire, then come back, work there for another 10 years, retire again, then work there for another 10 years, and retire again. They had some kind of thing where you could "retire" and get a pension if you had worked there for 10 years.

6 months in, I was like "Yeah, that's not gonna work." The store closed down after I was there for about a year and a half, any way. I had no idea what I really wanted to do for a career, but I knew it wasn't working in retail for 30 years.
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I'm assuming these people aren't career minded - they make enough money to supplement the lifestyle they lead and get their enjoyment through other things. Ultimately, if they aren't stressed out about it, good on them.

CableZL posted...

I wondered this same thing. My original career plan when I worked at Mervyn's (started when I was 17): Work there for 10 years, retire, then come back, work there for another 10 years, retire again, then work there for another 10 years, and retire again. They had some kind of thing where you could "retire" and get a pension if you had worked there for 10 years.

6 months in, I was like "Yeah, that's not gonna work." The store closed down after I was there for about a year and a half, any way. I had no idea what I really wanted to do for a career, but I knew it wasn't working in retail for 30 years.

That's me right now. 6 months in at Walgreens' and if anything, it motivated me to try even harder in life because I can't be stuck at this job for that much longer. I mean, the pay is low and while the work is easy, it's mind-numbingly dull and repetitive. Not to mention having to deal with dumb ass customers EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
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M_Live posted...

I have a buddy who's some sort of management at Staples, I worked for the company for a few years (like 2), got a supervisor position, and used my experience to move on to something better. Tried to get my buddy in at my new age, since I started out with the company making more than he had at 8+ years, he interviewed, nailed it, they offered him a job, and he turned it out because Staples offered to match the pay. After 8 years, they offered to match the starting pay of an entry level position, for somebody who's management in the company. Idgi, some people just really get trapped in.

Jesus Christ....
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DragonGirlYuki posted...

For some people they don't have much of an option.

Yup. And I wish them all the best. I couldn't imagine dealing with the American public for 10+ years.
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most of our long time associates I meet at wally world seem to just stop giving a shit after a while which is a pretty good survival tactic.
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RchHomieQuanChi posted...

That's me right now. 6 months in at Walgreens' and if anything, it motivated me to try even harder in life because I can't be stuck at this job for that much longer. I mean, the pay is low and while the work is easy, it's mind-numbingly dull and repetitive. Not to mention having to deal with dumb ass customers EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

Yeah, I mean... The work is definitely easy as hell and your responsibilities aren't really that big of a deal. It's still stressful because they typically give you a crapload of stuff to do, but at the end of the day, everything you're doing is simple stuff. Dealing with idiotic customers is definitely a huge drawback to a lot of jobs like that.

I moved on to tech support eventually, and it was pretty much the same thing. It's better than retail and obviously requires you to be knowledgeable about the stuff you're supporting (or at least be ale to find resources to help you figure things out quickly), but... You still deal with idiotic customers.

Now that I'm a network engineer, I feel like I'm much happier in life. My responsibilities are a huge deal and it gets really stressful having the weight of an entire organization on your shoulders during a network outage, but the bad days are few and far in between. Also, I rarely deal with end users at all these days. Even then, I'm just dealing with people who work for the same place that I work for, and people are generally super cool here. I primarily deal with routers, switches, and firewalls, and those things do what I tell them to do 100% of the time.
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I used to pick up hitchikers on my way to work at the ski resort, and most of them were lifties. I'd ask them if they thought their job was boring and they'd always say "I just don't like responsibility"

I've learned that is how a lot of people think. They want easy and just enough to get by.
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A job is a job.

Better than bumming for change in front of a Walmart.
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PrettyBoyFloyd posted...

A job is a job.

Better than bumming for change in front of a Walmart.

At least the guys "bumming for change" in front of Walmart don't have to sell their labor to their corporate slave masters
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