At first glance, a television show set in a medieval, fantastical world filled with murder, sex and violence galore would appear to have nothing to do with a modern societal construct such as retail, but you would actually be surprised...
1. Your life is in a constant time warp.
When I was a little girl, I always felt bad for the retail people that said, “Have a good one” upon completion of ringing up our items because I thought they had been working for so long that they had forgotten whether it was day or night.
Now I am that retail person. (And my childhood insight was most certainly accurate. About 99 percent of the time I do not, in fact, know what time of day it is and I say that phrase 97 times over the course of a shift.)
2. This generation of pre-teens is relatively horrifying.
On a daily basis, 13 and 14-year-old girls walk through the store in outfits that I myself would consider questionable even for a night at a club. If you have not passed through puberty yet, I should not see your belly button in broad daylight, thank you anyway.
3. It is impossible to avoid seeing people you went to high school with.
You can’t run and hide to escape awkward encounters and making small talk with those folks you spent four years not being able to wait to get away from.
I am incredibly sorry that I do not care about where you go to school or how your summer went because you did not even care to learn my name until senior year please move along your merry way have a nice day/life goodbye.
4. You work so often that it is difficult to make real plans.
And when your friends have 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. internships, and your schedules are innately opposite, attempts can be frustrating and futile. You can ask, “Hey, is anyone free at 11.30 at night after I get off work on a Tuesday?” But that will often leave you feeling like:
5. When you forget your name tag.
And a new coworker or customer asks you what your name is or who you are:
6. When it's three-and-a-half minutes before closing.
You hear the ominous sound of the door opening and look up only to see a customer walking into the store as opposed to out of the store as they should be:
7. When you work back to back.
Especially the closing-then-opening shifts (a.k.a the infamous "clopen") and you wake up the morning of your opening shift questioning your decision to even have a job in the first place:
8. But then remember how much you need the money.
9. When a customer tries to convince you.
When they are convinced that you do in fact have something in the back when you have just told them several times that you are out of stock.
10. The dreaded Black Fridays.
You can't forget the overwhelming sense of terror when you are met with a scene that looks a lot like this one upon the opening of doors on Black Friday:
11. You got it!
But at the end of the day, you can walk out of work knowing that regardless of its challenges, you have a job, you're making money and you're blessed.
