Have You Ever Worked In Retail?

Mr. DS · November 17, 2010, 12:36:27 PM

Speaking mainly retail stores such as Walmart, Target, Best Buy, etc. I started working retail when I was a senior in high school for a popular pharmacy chain. That lasted through college and lasted until about one or two years after I graduated.

Its a field I don't look back on in fondness. In other words, I left it ten years ago, hung my smock/name tag from the rafters and never looked back since. I think most people have worked a crappy retail job at some point in their life. The pay is low, the management usually doesn't know their @ss from their elbow and the customers can be really mean spirited. I had people throw money at me, scream at me and one or two that I swear were inches from swinging at me.

On the other hand, I did make many friends in the business some of which I keep in contact with today. Then there were the customers who I actually looked forward to seeing. I recall one older gent who came in every Sunday from the old folks home nearby. He'd always buy a paper and a candy bar and we'd shoot the breeze for a long time. He'd always have a yarn to tell and I'd always listen with a smile on my face. Then one day he disappeared which makes me think he may have passed on. Wherever he is I hope he is doing well.

I'd say I was pretty awesome at customer service. People would bypass the other staff just to ask me. I guess I got the reputation as "that guy" in the store who knew everything. Perhaps thats why I'm a hard @ss on extremely bad customer service. No matter how hard it gets I don't feel staff should ever disrespect the customer even if they are wrong.

In that light, I guess if anything retail did teach me a bit of patience. That and some wonderfull tricks at basic math. But other than that I don't miss it or have any desire to go back to it, even part time.

So how about you? Have you done your time in the retail world? Are you still there awaiting parole? What stories would you like to share?

akiratubo · November 17, 2010, 12:41:17 PM

I worked at Lowe's for three years. It was awful, everyone was so pointlessly cruel. I wanted to die. Thank God I got out.

Flick James · November 17, 2010, 01:18:28 PM

Oh God, yes, I did. Every time Black Friday rolls around I stop for a moment and express to the Supreme Being my gratitude for not working in retain any longer.

HappyGilmore · November 17, 2010, 09:55:17 PM

My first two jobs were retail oriented. The worst one was K-Mart, just after high school. They hired two of us the same day, me and this other guy. They put the other guy in sporting goods and electronics, and I got layaway. The problem, being, that I'm 5'3", 125 pounds. The other dude was 6'2 and 235. Logistically thinking, I'd assume that the job requiring a person to lift tv's and assorted heavy items up and down ladders would go to, I dunno, the taller guy who's a hundred pounds heavier than me.

Not to mention, I had to work Black Friday, and well, customers suck.

JPickettIII · November 17, 2010, 10:42:59 PM

Let's see,

Foot Locker, JoAnne's I think, Autozone and Checker Auto.

Foot Locker blew

JoAnne's stunk

Autozone was cool except for Jason and Eric.

Checker Auto did not care about me or the other people. I will never take my money to Checker Auto again and if I see my old boss Peggy stranded on the side of the road, I would keep on driving. She made Checker Auto much more worse.

Later,

John

Trevor · November 18, 2010, 06:13:39 AM

No, I don't work in retail but I do work with the public on a daily basis, 8 am to 4 pm. 99% of the time it is a pleasure but there is always that one client that ruins your day. I caught a researcher downloading all of the files on the reading room PC in the library: all the files are my work that is available for the public to use on site but this guy downloaded the lot. If I didn't hear the 'bing-bong' sound when he removed the memory stick, I wouldn't have bust him.

I also should have ~~kicked his ass out of there~~ I mean, asked him to leave, but I didn't.

Trevor · November 18, 2010, 06:20:29 AM

Quote from: The DarkSider on November 17, 2010, 12:36:27 PM
I'd say I was pretty awesome at customer service. People would bypass the other staff just to ask me. I guess I got the reputation as "that guy" in the store who knew everything. Perhaps thats why I'm a hard @ss on extremely bad customer service. No matter how hard it gets I don't feel staff should ever disrespect the customer even if they are wrong.

That's pretty much the way staff members and clients treat me here as well ~ a noted film critic here asked to see my boss after working with me for about two hours and he asked her where she'd found me as "this guy knows more than I do". Now THAT kind of comment makes the 21 years of my life that I've dedicated to this job of film archiving worthwhile. The pay we get is not great but the customer satisfaction is.

Mr. DS · November 18, 2010, 08:07:12 AM

QuoteChecker Auto did not care about me or the other people. I will never take my money to Checker Auto again and if I see my old boss Peggy stranded on the side of the road, I would keep on driving. She made Checker Auto much more worse.

There was one d!ckheaded manager I worked under that made my and a couple other people's life miserable because he just didn't like us. Why, I really don't know. However I said (and I still stand by it) if he got hit by a bus in front of the store I wouldn't bother to call an ambulance. Yep I hated him that much and he deserved it.

asimpson2006 · November 18, 2010, 08:45:02 AM

I worked at a grocery store for about 2 and half years, senior year in High School, and the 18 months in Tech school. I didn't care for most of it, mainly because the weekend shifts were never fun, Saturday mornings were busy, and Sunday Mornings after church got out (around 10 ~ 11 am) until about 4 or 5 PM were ALWAYS busy. I generally never cared for working Sunday's mainly because I missed some sporting events during the day, and the times around any major US holiday that involve food being cooked were always busy. The only things that I enjoyed about working Sunday's were that I got an extra dollar an hour (so instead of the 7 something I was making I would make 8 something an hour). Plus I usually flirted a lot during that time with the female customers around my age.

Trevor · November 18, 2010, 09:10:09 AM

Quote from: The DarkSider on November 18, 2010, 08:07:12 AM
QuoteChecker Auto did not care about me or the other people. I will never take my money to Checker Auto again and if I see my old boss Peggy stranded on the side of the road, I would keep on driving. She made Checker Auto much more worse.

There was one d!ckheaded manager I worked under that made my and a couple other people's life miserable because he just didn't like us. Why, I really don't know. However I said (and I still stand by it) if he got hit by a bus in front of the store I wouldn't bother to call an ambulance. Yep I hated him that much and he deserved it.

There is one member of our staff here ~ not in this building where I am now, thankfully: he is in another department ~ that I dislike so much, I would not pee on him if he was on fire. I wouldn't want to waste the pee.

Hammock Rider · November 18, 2010, 09:55:47 AM

In high school I worked as a movie theater usher. I had a blast! Not only did we get free movies but almost everyone who worked there was a teen-ager so it was kind of like a hang-out. We sort of ran the place and did just enough work to keep ourselves off the manager's radar. It was a geat teen-ager job.

Later I worked at a grocery store as a stocker and hated it. It was boring and most of the people who worked there didn't like it either. Made for an unpleassant enviroment. Also, I had to join a union, which seemed pretty silly to me since all I did was carry boxes around.

Then I got a job at Borders Books which turned out to be a love'hate thing. I loved working at a book store and some of the co-workers and customers were vey cool. I had some very interesting conversations at the store and went to some cool parties. But there were also customers who were terrors and managers so shifty and scheming they could have stepped out of an episode of The Tudors or Rome. When corporate started micro-managing the daily details of running the place, I knew the end was near.

3mnkids · November 18, 2010, 02:16:01 PM

Not retail but I have worked in parts, service, body shop and the front office of car dealerships and let me tell ya, there is nothing worse than people and their cars. ugh, douchebags every.single.day.

Ash · November 18, 2010, 05:57:13 PM

I worked at Target twice.

The first time was awesome! I worked in the toy department.
All the people I worked with were my age and we all got along really well. Sometimes on weekends we'd finish zoning the store after it closed and go to this one chick's house (she worked with us) to party and get drunk. I have fond memories of us hanging out at her house tipping back cans of Busch Light while still wearing our Target uniforms...khaki pants and red shirts. (some of us still had our name tags on)
The management were all really cool, too.

Then I went back a year later and it was absolutely awful.
All the cool people I'd worked with had been replaced by idiots with no sense of humor and even worse, no sense of fun. The management had changed and they were all a**holes.
It wasn't a very pleasant place to work the second time around.

The Burgomaster · November 18, 2010, 06:57:23 PM

I worked at:

* PJ's Pet Center
* Regal Shoes
* Sunglass Hut
* Florsheim Shoes
* Home Video Center

All of these jobs were between 1980 and 1991. I haven't worked in retail since then.

Raffine · November 18, 2010, 07:07:27 PM

When I was in high school I worked for several years in the tropical fish department in a small locally owned 5 & 10 store. I even got my picture in the local paper when we got a rare albino Khuli Loach one day in a fish shipment (DIME STORE GETS RARE FISH!).

I had a great time!