Poll of the Day > Is retail at the very bottom of jobs that you'd like to do?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Coincidentally that's what i'm in. Is it at the very bottom of your personal list? Any job group lower?
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I could say shitman but they could work their way up to water quality control trade so idk.
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It was bad when I did it. But I was also a stupid high schooler, so...
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No. It's the only job I'm qualified for.
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I can think of worse jobs. Telemarketing for example seems like it would be awful.
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No. Course it's still pretty low down there. Have you tried stenography? That blows.
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what is stenography?
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I imagine fast food is worse
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Retail wasn't too bad. Dishwashing was absolute hell.
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funkyfritter posted...

I can think of worse jobs. Telemarketing for example seems like it would be awful.

You mean phone retail.

Basically any social job can go suck balls.
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^ The sucky thing is social jobs aren't so great and I'm not cut for hard labor, so...
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Person106 posted...

^ The sucky thing is social jobs aren't so great and I'm not cut for hard labor, so...

Same here.
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I mean, as a pharmacist making 6 figures in a retail job, yeah, I still feel like it's the bottom of the bottom. It's based entirely around enabling the worst aspects of humanity to make profit.
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Retail depends a lot on where you work. But overall, I think food service was the poorest experience I had.
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Certainly not the best but far from the worst so no.
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I actually wouldn't mind going to work at Walmart again but I hate the woman who does the orientation. Not only is she a smart ass with an attitude, but she always had us unloading trucks even though that was not in my job description.
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The thing about retail is that you really have to be a people person, and a lot of people who work retail arent so the work is really draining on them since they basically have to put up a fake persona.
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construction

shit pay for a shit job and you're so tired by the time you get off you don't feel like doing anything with your shit life.

I made it all of two weeks at my only construction job
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Better than alaskan fishing, offshore oil drilling, coal mining, etc..
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There are many jobs worse than retail. And I'm not even talking the obviously terrible jobs like janitorial work or a garbageman, but shit like fast food and call centers which have all of the unpleasantness of retail while moving at a much faster pace.
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Menial factory work is one of the worst.
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Oh definitely. I see it everyday. To be at telemarketing or even as a sales assistant is a Godsend for most people here. If you're male and without skills, you're put to hard labour. And the living and employment conditions are just horrendous.

And if you're female, you are a maid or domestic helper. And I don't need to tell the implications of such jobs. :((((
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Solid Snake07 posted...

construction

shit pay for a shit job and you're so tired by the time you get off you don't feel like doing anything with your shit life.

I made it all of two weeks at my only construction job

lol

What work did you actually do? Because it's really imdustry dependant on how hard you work on site.
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JebronLames posted...

what is stenography?

Taking dictation, i.e. writing down what other people are saying.
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DiScOrD tHe LuNaTiC posted...

JebronLames posted...

what is stenography?

Taking dictation, i.e. writing down what other people are saying.

Yea. It doesn't *sound* too bad on paper. After all, go into a meeting, record what happens, then go home and type it up. Then you actually DO it and realize that professional stenographers have patience on par with Jesus himself. Each meeting ends up being tediously long unless you get seriously lucky. You would be surprised just how long a group and debate the manner of windows and permissible building materials for house repairs. You aren't allowed to distract in any way and have to remain as still and unobtrusive as possible. You will then have to go home and basically sit through the ENTIRE MEETING two to three more times! Only to inevitably have some dumbass demand that the minutes get changed because they claim that they said something that you KNOW they didn't say because you had to go over the meeting multiple times. You will be point blank in the crosshairs for every terrible politician and, even if they aren't aiming for you, you'll have a front row seat to every little bit of terrible interaction.

However, the absolute worst part is that you'll learn who is capable and willing to work together and who is little more than an asshat who managed to trick people into voting for them, only to watch the former get kicked out of office while the latter remains just because the average voter will likely vote a straight party ticket.

You don't have to deal with shrieking customers (least not as much) or engage in mind-numbing manual labor; but you will have your soul slowly squeezed until it's crushed knowing that the reason the local puppy orphanage was closed was because a certain someone in city hall hates puppies and managed to find the one tiny flaw that let them rezone it as a 'no puppy zone'; and that they're almost guarenteed to win re-election because that same shrieking customer who thinks that Hot Pockets should be hot right out of the box will vote for them. All because they're of the same political alignment.

Edit: For clairty; where I live we have about an 80-90% turn-over rate for stenographers after the first month. There are only, like, five who have lasted the whole year. I even remember one flat-out breaking down and crying herself to sleep after one of the council members started yelling at her for showing up ten minutes late thanks to traffic.
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Cleaning up poo in any capacity to is last, then retail. As much as I hate retail, wiping some old person's butt or picking a turd up off the floor are worse.
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TheCyborgNinja posted...

Cleaning up poo in any capacity to is last, then retail. As much as I hate retail, wiping some old person's butt or picking a turd up off the floor are worse.

i think i might have seen the worst job in the world on the national geographic channel a while back, the person who has to prepare the deceased's bodies that come in and prepare them for burial etc
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I'd rather be Oprah Winfrey's personal scratcher than work retail.
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BTB posted...

I'd rather be Oprah Winfrey's personal scratcher than work retail.

what do you hate so much about retail?
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JebronLames posted...

TheCyborgNinja posted...

Cleaning up poo in any capacity to is last, then retail. As much as I hate retail, wiping some old person's butt or picking a turd up off the floor are worse.

i think i might have seen the worst job in the world on the national geographic channel a while back, the person who has to prepare the deceased's bodies that come in and prepare them for burial etc

Do you know how much funerals cost? Also those people require tons of training and get paid.
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Having done both, I'd definitely take working retail over doing a physical labor job outside.

After working for a liquor delivery company during college, I can safely say that getting screamed at by idiot customers is NOT as bad as unloading a truck on a loading dock when it's 4 degrees out or hauling 50 cases of Jagermeister up three flights of stairs in when it's 95 degrees and humid.
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SideshowBob311 posted...

I can safely say that getting screamed at by idiot customers is NOT as bad as unloading a truck on a loading dock when it's 4 degrees out or hauling 50 cases of Jagermeister up three flights of stairs in when it's 95 degrees and humid.

I can safely say the opposite, lumping shit about isn't too bad as long as you prep right.
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Nope. Definitely near the bottom, but not quite the worst.
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Just above begging and shitting yourself for money, prostitution is actually a few steps above.
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Kyuubi4269 posted...

SideshowBob311 posted...

I can safely say that getting screamed at by idiot customers is NOT as bad as unloading a truck on a loading dock when it's 4 degrees out or hauling 50 cases of Jagermeister up three flights of stairs in when it's 95 degrees and humid.

I can safely say the opposite, lumping shit about isn't too bad as long as you prep right.

To each his own I guess...but I will point out that I was never so physically fucked up from talking to a customer that I vomited after. Can't say the same about hauling the Jagermeister.
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No. I worked stockroom at Toys R Us for about 5 years and liked it. What store you work at probably has a lot to do with how much you like or dislike the job.
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Here's the list of jobs I've had:

Food preperation/kitchen grunt in a BBQ restaurant. Not that horrible, the only real downside was idiots putting knives in the sink full of water or no one emptying the grease tray under the portable smoker when they were supposed to (half full) and then expecting me, a scrawny fifteen-year old, to be able to lift and carry it without spilling (when it probably weighed around a hundred pounds lipping full).

Bag boy at a grocery store. Dealing with idiots was bad (one woman got me in trouble by claiming I crushed her eggs...by putting a loaf of bread on top of them), but the worst part was dealing with the weather. 95 Farenheit with 99 percent humidity? Bring in the carts from the parking lot! 20 F with wind chill of 5? Bring in the carts from the parking lot! A downpour that would have scared Noah? Bring in the carts from the parking lot! And toward the end, we (bag boys) had to start wearing a button-down shirt and necktie for some asinine reason.

Retail store setup/electronics clerk. Sweeping out an upper floor so dusty that every time I blew my nose for two days my snot was grey (they didn't provide face masks, naturally), putting the entire weekend's worth of cardboard into the chute for the outside compactor (after I left on Friday afternoon, the weekend crew would just dump it back there instead of actually throwing it in), helping put pretty much the entire store together 10 hours a day 6 days a week for 6 months and then not only getting passed over for a department manager position, but getting fired for being accused of stealing $20 from my till (when there was a security camera literally right above me, I would had to have been an idiot).

Waste cotton gatherer/Dock worker at a cotton mill. First one wasn't so bad; just walk around the mill lines, picking up bits of cotton that had been ejected from the machines and putting it in seperate boxes so it could be fed through again. Did that for a week then got offered a permanent job loading rolls of cotton on the dock. Went in for my first shift at 5 a.m., didn't get off until 9:30 p.m., after loading 27,000 pounds of rolls of cotton (50 feet long, 4 feet around) by hand. Woke up the next morning and could barely move. Decided mill work was not for me.

Car wash minion/detailer. Wasn't too bad, except my dumb ass started in the middle of summer. Was "on call" on weekends I didn't work because I lived like a quarter mile from the place, then overslept one time and got canned. My fault, though, didn't check my alarm clock the night before.

Dairy & frozen manager/stocker at an independant grocery store. The most fun I've ever had working anywhere, hands down. Everybody who worked there was nuts, but in a good way. Place got killed by a new grocery store and then the local Walmart finally converting to a supercenter. The last month, we were doing $40,000 total store a week (for comparison, one department where I work now does that in a day).

Grocery stocker at Walmart. It has its advantages and drawbacks, but it's pretty much "I know how to deal with this bullshit, do I really want to go somewhere else and learn to deal with new bullshit?"
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Basically work sucks, I know.

This topic makes me think of Koga. Where's he been?

I hate retail but I'd do it again over any job in the food industry.
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Mead posted...

The thing about retail is that you really have to be a people person, and a lot of people who work retail arent so the work is really draining on them since they basically have to put up a fake persona.

Exactly! The actual work involved with retail isn't so bad but having to deal with people who couldn't care less about you all day, every day gets incredibly draining.
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No. I have a strong sense of smell and a weak gut. So anything like garbage truck driver, sewer worker, or porta-potty cleaner would be pretty far down there.
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JebronLames posted...

BTB posted...

I'd rather be Oprah Winfrey's personal scratcher than work retail.

what do you hate so much about retail?

The working around people all the time part.
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If you have an endgoal, it's fine. I'm actually about to go back to Wal-Mart for another 4 years while I get my degree; that's not counting the 5 years I did prior to this.
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i would rather retail than be a waiter
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Hell no. Fast food service industry. I'd rather be poor and homeless than serve this ungrateful culture a flipped burger.
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Retail sucks.

But I guess it depends on what kind of retail. Ive been working in the grocery industry for a little over eleven years now and Im really starting to hate it. Its physically AND mentally exhausting. I gave myself a fucking hernia a couple years ago from pushing myself too hard. Not to mention all the lifting and bending and kneeling. It just never ends and I dont get compensated nearly as well as I should and they definitely dont hire enough people.

Id love to get a non-retail job but this is the only thing I know how to do. Im considering leaving this place to look for work at somewhere like Best Buy or Target, because I think working with electronics and stuff like that would be a lot better than dealing with food.
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Nah I work overnight at Walmart and it sucks but it could worse (no customers!). Personally, I try to avoid jobs that involve a lot of phone calls or talking in general.
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Much to my surprise, I didn't mind the customers so much. When they were around, the managers would leave me alone.
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WarGreymon77 posted...

Much to my surprise, I didn't mind the customers so much. When they were around, the managers would leave me alone.

in general i dislike customers more than managers, you disagree?
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Factory jobs suck your soul worse than retail, the only other job I worked that I hated that much was McDonald's, but all the other food service was much better
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