The Retail Hellscape

It’s not exactly a “hidden truth” that retail can be unbearable for the employees. Soul-crushing might be a better way to describe it.

I worked retail for nearly two decades in one form or another. The cycle generally went something like this:

• start sales job
• get promoted into management
• leave for a better opportunity
• start over somewhere else

I didn’t hate all of it. I created solid relationships with some of my clients even. I bought my house from a customer who was a real estate agent. I was married by a customer who was a mayor. I met my mechanic through one of my many retail jobs.

The constant battle between trying to make sales quotas while providing good service was the biggest toll-taker though.

While your customers will love you for taking good care of them, your employer might not enjoy the fact that you aren’t trying to squeeze just one more penny from them at the risk of creating a bad experience. Just decide to use your own best judgement for a customer interaction, and hold off on a particular offer to save face, well - you might as well just be begging for a write up. At the very least you’d better be ready to dance while trying to defend your perfectly reasonable actions.

Sure, corporations exist to make money. However, there surely could be a balance between trying to manipulate someone into spending money on things that don’t really add any value to their lives and selling them something suitable for their needs. In a perfect world, taking no for an answer would be something that you could do in a sales environment.

If retail sales were a first date, there would be a lot of misconduct getting reported. Sometimes we have to do things we aren’t proud of to earn a living though. For many workers in these industries, there aren’t many minutes of sleep lost over it either.

I’m good at selling. I’m even good at it in a way where I don’t have to be “shady”. The toughest part about being a sales person with a conscience is that you burn a lot of calories for things that only really matter to you and your own perception of your character. It’s tiring. It’s tiring for you, and for those around you. Tiring for them because they feel the stress you experience second hand. Tiring for them because you don’t feel at peace.

I won’t pile on the hate train of the general public, because honestly, most interactions aren’t even memorable. The ones that are memorable though, are often memorable for all the wrong reasons.

Every time I retell a story from some bad customer interaction I’ve had over the years, I can feel myself emotionally being dragged back to the exact moment it happened. It’s genuinely traumatic. I mean, r/talesfromretail exists for how relatable it is to the Retail Army.

I planned my escape for a long time, always keeping an eye open for a decent opportunity. With the best dose of luck I’ve had in my life, one fell into my lap.