We have all been there. At the age of 15 or 16, your parents expect you to get a job and, of course, the first place most people go is into retail. Most of the time, that is where all the job openings are and you really don’t realize why until you are there.

1. Customers are dreadful.

Now this does not mean that all customers are awful, it just means that a good amount of them are. You will always have that one customer who insists everything is on sale and is not ringing up the right price. You will always have that one customer who yells that they want a manager or threatens to have said manager take your job away. Regardless, retail makes you aware of how awful people are and it makes you lose hope in humanity.

2. Customers constantly ruin all your hard work.

There is nothing quite like the feeling you get when a customer tears apart a display looking for the right size pants or when a young child sticks his hand out and knocks down all the merchandise you just finished blocking. You are unsure whether you want to get mad, curl up in a ball and cry or just walk out the door. Most likely it is a mix of the three because you just spent an hour perfecting a display for someone to come along and ruin all your hard work.

3. There is never enough staffing.

Anyone who has ever worked in retail can relate to this. Nothing is worse than having a line and not having enough help to get rid of it. It becomes 100 times worse when it comes to door-buster sales or Black Friday because it is days like that which make you realize just how short-staffed you are. You are forced to deal with all of the customer complaints while trying to ring up people, get another one a fitting room and answer the phone, all while trying to remain calm. There is nothing better than having a line and having no one respond to your pleas over the walkie-talkie system.

4. Doing your scheduled time is never enough.

While being short-staffed is awful, getting called in on your day off is worse. You would think that after all the hard work that you have put in, you are entitled to enjoy your day off but that is never the case. Minimum wage jobs always demand more, and what makes the situation worse is that these jobs always remind you how replaceable you are. If your manager says jump, then you better ask how high or you might as well say good-bye.

5. You are forced to be cross-trained.

Being cross-trained means being trained in more than just one area or department. This means that you are now “qualified” to work in the other departments when they need you which in my experience is always. Once you are cross-trained, you might as well say goodbye to your original department because you will always be needed in the new department. Goodbye stockroom, hello front-end.

6. You experience awful things.

You would think that working a minimum wage job would be no big deal and that nothing bad ever happens, but you would be wrong. You would be so very wrong. You would not believe half the stories that retail workers are able to tell. Someone needs to write a book about all of these ridiculous stories because they need to be told to someone. I am sure the book would sell millions because who would not want to hear about the couple who called a retail worker asking for a threesome?

7. You are trained to be fake.

Everyone knows that when you work in retail, you are not able to voice your opinion. Even if you are having the worst day of your life, then you are required to “leave it at the door” and tell them that you are fantastic, and then proceed to try and sell whatever management wants you to get rid of. If a customer is being rude to you, then you are told to put up with it because customer service is their number one priority. It doesn’t matter if you are on the verge of crying or if you are about to lose your temper, the customer is what truly matters. Instead of being able to say what you believe, you are told to lie and to be happy about it.

8. You seriously don’t get paid enough.

I know many people say this about their jobs, but it is true. It sucks getting paid $7.25 an hour and having to deal with customers getting mad at you for no reason. Most of the people who work in retail already hate their job and having awful customers only makes them hate their job more. Most people will want to quit their job within the first few weeks and the only thing keeping them there is their desperate need of money.

While minimum wage jobs are not the best, there are some good things that come out of the job. You learn to respect other minimum wage workers, you make some really great friends and you learn the ways of the world. One of my favorite parts of working in retail is seeing the same customers come in every week and watching them get excited every time they see me. While I work for the money, part of the reason I stay is for them.