We all heard that retail is where you truly get your experience in. It's where you learn how to solve problems, how to deal with people, and how to prepare yourself for your next job. And to the uninitiated, it seems like it's the easiest job in the world. But the hardest part is ultimately dealing with people.
We're told to steel our emotions and give people the doubt when they are rude. That they could have something going on in their life like a death in the family or they lost their job or they had a divorce or they had cancer, or whatever excuse you can think of. But if we have an event like a death in the family or someone in our family lost their job, or we were losing our job or we have cancer, etc; we're expected to just take it. Put a smile on our faces and act like everything is honky dory. When the reality is that it's not the case. If we work hard people assume it's because we love our job, not that we need that job to survive.
How is it fair that a customer gets to treat another person like trash, but it's not fair for a retail worker to tell them that's not how it should be? Why is it perfectly okay to excuse how some people act towards retail workers because "oh they might be having a hard time?" We all are going through a hard time. We're humans and have the right to express those emotions.
For those of you with children who have been known to go off on a cashier because the price displayed differently, look at your children for a moment. You are there to teach them a lesson, to guide them on the path to adulthood. They're taught in school to teach others as you want to be treated, and there you are, having a fit like they would because something didn't turn out how it was expected. What are you teaching them at that moment? That it's okay to throw a fit when you don't get what you want? That it's okay to treat retail workers like they're below you? Is that how you want to teach your kids to act in society? Even, consider this for a moment, what if they're teenagers and decide to get a job at 16 in a retail store. What would you do if they came home upset because someone was a jackass to them? I'm sure the protective parent in you would want to march to the store and deal with those people.
And that's the thing, you have to step back and imagine what if they were your child. If you wouldn't your child to go through that, then why put another person through that. And that's what you have to ultimately consider. We may be retail workers, but we're human. We are your mother, sister, daughter, father, son, grandchild, lover, etc. And another thing to consider in this tumultuous time, you could one day find yourself working in retail. That retail worker could very well be you. The question is do you want to be treated rudely? If the answer is no, then don't be rude to retail workers.
