megatrina wrote:Much better than working in retail. Ugh! I did that long enough.
Oh, geez, yes. I was in retail for the first several years of my working... not because I'm remotely suited to it (I love helping people, but I'm shy/quiet and work efficiently, plus idiots drive me nuts, so I'm not well-suited to dealing with the general public) but because it's one of the few sectors that'll hire someone without a lot of experience or training.
And what does retail involve?
Standing
Walking around
Generally being on your feet all day
Lifting/carrying heavy objects
Cleaning
Stocking
Reshop
Need to have everything clean and stocked before you can go home, even after the customers utterly trashed everything because nobody can be bothered putting unwanted stuff back where they got it, so tack on another 1-3 hours onto the end of your 8-hour shift...
And at the same time you need to:
Ring up/help customers and keep the lines down even though the managers deliberately understaff the payroll every day (to save money) so you never have enough cashiers/floor staff to handle the customer flow. (Ever wondered why register lines are so horrible and there's never anyone to help on the sales floor when you need it? That is why.)
Smile and be friendly and cheerful all the time even when customers are busy screaming at you and questioning your intelligence and/or parentage because it's somehow *your* fault that the other customers bought out all the latest Flash Shiny Coochie Me Elmo doll their kid wanted, or that we don't sell computer printers here because this is a toy store, or because you can't help them *right this second* even though your arms are piled full of merchandise you needed to put away, or that they can't return that fully-assembled Lego castle with no packaging or receipt, etc... Because the Customer Is Always Right even if they're being rude and wrong.
Make quotas of pre-sells, warranties, and harvesting phone numbers even though customers don't want pre-sells or warranties and hate giving their phone number...
If you ring register, carefully count and keep track of all the money that passes through your hands down to the penny and keep all the related paperwork filled out.
And so on. Basically you need to be a janitor, a warehouse worker, a stockperson, a banker, a salesperson, and an HR spokesman at the same time. You also tend to spend a lot of time getting belittled and berated by managers and customers alike. And what do you get for this? Minimum wage. That's pretty much it. Few places pay better than minimum wage, and even fewer offer health insurance, vacation/sick pay, or anything else. (And even if they do offer health insurance, you likely can't afford it without using up half or more of your pay each week.)
Now, there *definitely* are jobs out there where the actual work is worse, I'm not denying/claming that. For instance, I wouldn't want to be in the military and respect anyone who is (as long as we're forced to fight at all).
But, I'm assuming that in those other jobs you at least get better compensation for your work than the absolute bare minimum your employer is forced to give you by law. It's the combination of the lousy work *and* getting piddly can't-support-myself-on-this-without-holding-two-or-more-jobs-at-the-same-time compensation for it that's the kicker with retail.
But I'm not bitter.