Current Events > How much do you think you would hate working in retail?

(+) Yeah! (+)

how?

I've done it for 5 1/2 years and it doesn't bother me much.

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Did it in highschool it was fun. During the holidays and black Friday though is pretty rough.

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Did for a few years. Sometimes it was good, but corporate was hellbent on making it worse.

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Did it for several years during and a little bit after college. It was leagues better than food service, the company I worked for was pretty nice, and my coworkers were all cool.

Feel like my experience was an outlier though

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Working in it right now, it's fine although one of my upper managers is a colossal fuckwit sometimes

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I hated it, it was stressful.

Had to be on the look out for shoplifters.

Thered be homeless and drug addicts coming in and stinking the place up and/or making a mess.

Sometimes customers would almost fight each other because they thought the other was cutting in line.

Hours being cut all the time and irregular schedules.

So much crazy s*** happened & crossed paths with weird ass individuals. When I thought I had seen it all something new would happen.

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iPhone_7 posted...

I hated it, it was stressful.

Had to be on the look out for shoplifters.

Thered be homeless and drug addicts coming in and stinking the place up and/or making a mess.

Sometimes customers would almost fight each other because they thought the other was cutting in line.

Hours being cut all the time and irregular schedules.

So much crazy s*** happened & crossed paths with weird ass individuals. When I thought I had seen it all something new would happen.

i mostly agree with this, though i don't see many homeless and drug addicts stinking up the place. you're last paragraph, absolutely.

Worked in retail and it was pretty miserable.The worst part was the inconsistent schedules. There was always something to do, but it wasn't meaningful work, just chores.

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bump

I just hated the low pay

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I rather enjoyed working at Target when I was younger but man the pay sucked.

Balrog0 posted...

I just hated the low pay

you dudes consider the retail managers to be low pay also?

Sounds like one of the worst possible jobs for me. I'd hate it for a variety of reasons.
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I like it, better than working in a fast food place tbh.

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CwebbMichSac4 posted...

you dudes consider the retail managers to be low pay also?

I mean, yeah kinda. I make more than I would as an assistant store manager at walmart. My friend is a general manager at KFC and makes way less than I do.

edit - but to be clear I was just talking about being a general associate or w/e the term you want to use is; the reason I wouldn't want to be management in retail is managing retail employees sounds awful, not the pay

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mach25687 posted...

I like it, better than working in a fast food place tbh.

yeah, who wants to work in fast food?

Balrog0 posted...

I mean, yeah kinda. I make more than I would as an assistant store manager at walmart. My friend is a general manager at KFC and makes way less than I do.

edit - but to be clear I was just talking about being a general associate or w/e the term you want to use is; the reason I wouldn't want to be management in retail is managing retail employees sounds awful, not the pay

how? managing retail associates sound awful? how so?

lol I mean I imagine anyone who has worked in retail would understand why that would suck

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but you consider the managing part to be the absolute worst part of the manager's job? there's lots of bad parts to it

Although I didn't hate it, I'm in no rush to go back to it, even if I were financially independent and didn't have to worry about making a living wage.

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I don't think i'd hate the experience, but I'd probably be wanting to leave after a couple of months at it.


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CwebbMichSac4 posted...

you dudes consider the retail managers to be low pay also?

It absolutely is.

I worked at a grocery store for nearly 6 years and due to my position, ended up finding out exactly how most of the head department managers made there. They made anywhere form 35k to 50k plus bonus, usually around 10%. This was at what was supposed to be a high end grocery store. Keep in mind that they are expected to work minimum 48 hours per week and it was not uncommon for them to get only one day off per week off, if that. Also keep in mind that they rarely only worked 48 hours per week, it was usually more than that.

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Everyone should have to work retail for 6 months to a year once they have left school/college just to learn how stupid the general population of the entire world actually is and to understand what it's like to be on the other end of a customer shouting at you when there is fuck all you can do and you have explained the situation to them and their options very politely repeatedly lol.

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I've been in retail for 13 years. It's a shit industry.

I've only worked retail and food service in my life and I prefer retail.

Its still just as bleh as any other job.
.

ffmasterjose posted...

I've only worked retail and food service in my life and I prefer retail.

Its still just as bleh as any other job.
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Yeah, food service is one of the few industries I can imagine being worse than retail. I mean besides stuff like shoveling shit or climbing through sewers.

spikethedevil posted...

Everyone should have to work retail for 6 months to a year once they have left school/college just to learn how stupid the general population of the entire world actually is and to understand what it's like to be on the other end of a customer shouting at you when there is fuck all you can do and you have explained the situation to them and their options very politely repeatedly lol.

so you don't think much of most people do you? you think most customers suck, at the places you work at?

Nah I had many absolutely amazing customers and many absolutely horrible ones but forgive my mini rant lol though people should work retail just to see what retail workers have to deal with imo. And thankfully I don't work retail anymore.

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I worked at Target during my highschool years...
The beauty advocates did nothing except talk on their phones, bitching about how boring their jobs were...
While I had to take pallets full of furniture, sporting goods, kitchen items on the freight elevator on the second floor... uboats constantly flipped over trying to get them across receiving (which was always backed up by traffic or pallets), freight elevator sometimes got stuck and larger items wouldn't fit in the guest elevator unless I took the time to pull shit off the pallet and come back for it later only for someone else to take it somewhere else because they didn't know where it belonged...
Boxes fell because the folks on the line didn't give a shit about the condition of product (weight of the boxes crushes smaller items), they were rushed and boxes were placed unevenly causing boxes to fall over...
I told myself that I would never work at retail anymore. If shit like that happens in Target, I couldn't imagine how much worse it be at Walmart or Best Buy

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CwebbMichSac4 posted...

but you consider the managing part to be the absolute worst part of the manager's job? there's lots of bad parts to it

The two bad parts of service sector jobs in my experience are employees and bosses. So which of those is the bigger issue for you depends on where you are on the food chain. of course middle management gets it worst.

Lots of service sector employees complain about customers and there are bad customers, but they paled in comparison to shitty coworkers - again, anecdotally in my experience.

The other parts of management don't seem to bad, except to the extent that they involve managing people

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Not so bad, I only met a few unreasonably angry customers over a year of work, but I honestly just find them funny.
Most people don't even speak, that can make sitting as the cashier a bit monotonous.

Balrog0 posted...

The two bad parts of service sector jobs in my experience are employees and bosses. So which of those is the bigger issue for you depends on where you are on the food chain. of course middle management gets it worst.

Lots of service sector employees complain about customers and there are bad customers, but they paled in comparison to shitty coworkers - again, anecdotally in my experience.

The other parts of management don't seem to bad, except to the extent that they involve managing people

idk, i think the customers might be worse than the workers. you're not in customer service anymore? i really don't like working in it either.

I did for 3 and a half years. Had some great co workers that made the workday flow easily. Eventually the manager took most of his frustration on the workers and they all left except me. The new employees were not the same and they left months after all the time I put training them. I eventually said fuck this place and took another job.

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I work in retail at an especially large box chain, it's ok 75% of the time, trash the other 25%

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ive never done it. could probably run the fuck out of a register and am great at small talk.

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