People always gloss over how mentally damaging it can be to work in retail. I fucking hate that whenever I say “I could never work in retail again” someone has to reply “You snowflake millennials can’t take a starter job because you have to INTERACT with other people” No. Fuck you. I’ve worked as a planetarium host. I’ve worked as a public speaker. I’ve worked as a tutor and as a student teacher. I can work with people. I can work with crowds. Retail was fucking different. Retail was being treated as a subhuman. Retail was being treated so poorly that you have anxiety attacks before work. Having to work retail was a factor in my last suicide attempt. If I hear you say one fucking word about retail workers playing the victim I will personally break every bone in your body. Fuck You.
The holidays are coming up. Retail workers are going to be spiraling into a nightmare beyond human comprehension. If you’ve worked retail, you know this. If you haven’t, be aware of it. Please be kind to every retail worker you come across. Please be patient and understanding. It is misery out there.
Fun story: I used to work in retail at a liquor store. Well, I’ve worked at two but this was the second one, meaning I knew the work, and I knew that liquor stores could get some really brutal customers. So one time, a few guys came into the store (which opened out on one side into a mall, and had main doors to the outside further down, basically two openings, so it was always fun to keep track of people).
But these guys just seemed like the typical dudebro type, they were in their probably early-mid 20s, so a little older than me at the time, and I’m a tiny twink so I just sort of prepared myself for some awkwardness between us, some posturing on their end maybe, and that was about it.
But. But. Instead they tried playing around with me, to see if they could get me to turn my back??? Like they asked for some stuff they clearly didn’t need help finding, and when my back was turned (to face a glass beer case, so I could easily see what they were doing behind me in the reflection, and out of my peripherals), they mimed stabbing me, holding an actual, real knife.
Now I actually wasn’t afraid at all, because I still just thought this was their really, really Extra way of being bro-format homophobic (we got a lot of that at the store because everyone there was gay, including the manager), plus I’d been alone running the store countless times, so fear had been stamped out of me. So I just turned around and stared at them deadpan, I was really and truly bored with their antics and unimpressed. They just stopped immediately, went quiet, paid for their beer, and exited back into the mall.
After I finished my shift my mother was absolutely panicking, because she’d just heard on the radio news on her drive to pick me up that three different people had been ruthlessly stabbed in that exact mall that day, at the exact time I was working – and this was a tiny, tiny mall.
So yeah retail is dehumanizing at best, and life-threatening at worst. Be nice to retail workers. And to the customers who’ve never worked in retail themselves that goes double, because you don’t know juuuuuust how many wildly terrible people we’ve already had to deal with before you. :’)
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ForLoveFromFear 