A Better Person Because Of It, or We Should All Work A Week In The Retail and Restaurant Sectors
The only thing I miss about working retail is the intense, if inchoate, sense that it was all for something far more epic and beautiful than its parts. Often, as I surveyed racks for correct garment sizing (for what seemed like millenia), or attempted to ignore the petulant women scoffing at us overworked cashiers, I would entertain the desperate mantra: This-is-all-gonna-make-A-Great-Book.
If I hadn’t tried to imagine what Melville felt like on the whaler Acushnet or what Kafka thought about on his way home from doing legal stuff at an insurance office, it would’ve meant the surrender of my sanity. There was simply too much human nature going on. The superannuated retirees, with their walkers and racism, fighting with Customer Service over twenty cents, the Brentwood housewives who couldn’t hide their contempt when told all of the available Customer Service cashiers, all two of them, WERE at their registers already please wait for the next available one sorry and no need to raise your voice ma’am; the Iranian women who tried to return used Wal-Mart clothing*, or clothing they’d haphazardly sewn from upholstery fabric, for some store credit.
After a while, I realized that it didn’t matter if we did a good job or not. The goal of the consuming party (the Customer) differed greatly from the goal of the party purveying (Corporate). In this dynamic of labor, what I call the Sewage of Retail, and regardless of what actually transpired or the context of a day, Corporate only heard about complaints. Complaints that may, but likely not, have been heeded because Corporate only cared that our transactions were 17 seconds per item each. If we fell to the bottom of the Associate’s Times list, we were given a lecture on how to improve; that was the only instance in which we were given feedback on negative issues. I came to look forward to customers with carts filled with crap to ring up because the computer system would average the items out, and instead of telling me to
WORK FASTER!
it would offer a hearty
GOOD JOB!
Odds are, however, that the person in front of me would’ve disagreed. Working Customer Service was a gold mine for anecdotes and a nightmare to live out. My least favorite moments usually involved me telling a person that “no, our policy doesn’t allow that” or “no, the receipt is correct” or “no, that’s not the line, the line starts behind the 19th person over there,” because it was always personal. I was put on this good earth to make sure nothing good happened to them, ever.
The worst was when I was told that I didn’t know anything, that I was stupid, or that I had to go learn a thing or two, little girl. Personally, that’s my Achilles Heel. You can call me ugly (it hurts, but then I can always throw on some lipstick and snap my fingers at you), but I made it my life’s goal, long ago, to know more than I knew the day before. It’s why I have a ridiculous amount of books and why I’m so hard on people who aren’t open-minded, intellectually humble, and/or equally curious.
In hindsight, though, I was definitely learning stuff that books can’t give a girl. I learned how to keep my cool under pressure, I got tougher skin (there’s only so many times a person can call me a stupid bitch before I automatically shoot them an are-you-kidding-me-slut-I-went-to-USC look and yell, “Next!”) I also learned how to be a more mindful person. Because no matter what the store policy is, if you’re nice to the person on the other side of the counter, you’ll probably be the first and the last of that particular day to be kind to them; they will recognize it.
You may not get what you want. But, at least, you definitely won’t end up a villain in the book they inevitably write.
*I didn’t work at Wal-Mart.
