Let me preface this by saying that I never ever thought I’d write an article with this title. Retail has been first and foremost an aching pain in my feet and a constant annoyance in my life, but yesterday I worked my last shift in my first retail job so this article is due.

Retail positions are the most EXTRA things you’ll ever be involved with; there’s literally no reason to kiss up to anyone screaming and annoying you — unless, of course, you’re wearing a uniform and a name tag. Working in retail gives your customers free license to make you put up with things that are way above your pay-grade, as though you being up on your feet for eight hours five days a week isn’t enough. The field is degrading and a pain and the world’s biggest inconvenience, but there’s something to be said about what it teaches you.

It beats any social anxiety you ever had right into the ground. OK, maybe not completely, but starting in a retail position with anxiety is a rocky road trip. I came into my job terrified of speaking to customers and answering the phone and I left being comfortable enough to argue away an expired coupon and explain sales to people who barely even spoke English. I’ve had the phone monologue beat into me for so long that I sound like an answering machine when I pick up, but I haven’t been nervous about it for over a year now. The best thing about answering the phone all day is the fact that you’re never going to get nervous calling up your doctor for an appointment or doing a phone interview ever again. Talking to strangers is going to become second nature and I’m not quite there yet, but I’ve still got a few more years to serve in retail so I’ve got time.

The weirdest lesson retail has to offer though is how good it feels to come home with aching feet. For the past two weeks, I’ve been working double shifts almost every day and 15 hours of smiling at rude people really drains a person.

Coming home at the end of the day is pain in every part of your body, it’s lying down and feeling like the mattress is going to swallow you whole because you have no energy to move. It’s dragging yourself out of the house at 6 a.m. in the morning to open when just yesterday you got home at twelve after a closing shift. It’s constant exhaustion and survival mode and not having much time to eat or sleep or breathe.

Still, there’s something oddly satisfying about working yourself to the bone; something oddly satisfying about putting in the hours and feeling truly worked out at the end of the day. It’s not pretty or fun, but retail forces you to become a prideful person when everything in the environment is determined to take that pride from you.