Retail is the second largest form of employment in the country, according to a study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Also, 33 percent of retail employees make less than $8.50 an hour.
What the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not have is any information on the misery that comes hand-in-hand with a retail job.
For anyone who has ever spent any time under the thumb of a customer consumed with purple-faced rage, it is no surprise that the retail turnover rate is 34.6 percent.
I would like to reach out for a moment to anyone who has had the good fortune to avoid toiling in the pit of despair that is cashiering and selling clothes, books, electronics or other miscellaneous items.
These people, the lucky few, live in blissful ignorance of the suffering that occurs behind the cash register.
The average cashier, according to the BLS survey, makes $7.82 an hour. This is the lowest median wage in the retail field, with the next lowest, counter and rental clerks making nearly $1.50 more an hour.
If the level of crap that employees had to endure determined the pay scale, this would be drastically different.
As a cashier at the Staples copy center, I can attest that retail jobs suck. Customers are rude, inappropriate and impatient. And forget about blowing off steam on an irrationally angry customer. They are always right, no matter what.
If that means accepting their return of a half-used bottle of barbeque sauce, so be it.
Perhaps mandatory time serving behind the cash registers and on the sales floors would educate a people on what patience and fake-understanding really means.
Plaster that smile on your face, folks. No matter how much they talk at you, keep smiling and keep the customer happy.
Perhaps then people will realize that your local Payless assistant should not be treated as a stress ball. Also, the long-suffering soldiers that man those tills are not receptacles for your bad-day-word-vomit.
I invite all shop girls, copy makers, baristas, cashiers and repair technicians to stand proud.
It may be forbidden to vent pent-up frustrations on the old man hollering about his uneven topping distribution, but we can pour anchovy juice all over the pizza.
Here is where the retail worker's power lies. The associate will appear demure, understanding, even pleasant in the face of your incoherent rage, but do not think fit will not go unpunished.
One person controls the information entered on your loyalty cards, the type of milk in your coffee, the cost of your copies. That person is the individual you are berating at top volume.
I invite all downtrodden, belittled and mistreated members of the minimum-wage militia to exercise your right to passive-aggressive revenge.
Until this mandatory service becomes law though, do not be afraid. Stand strong. Stand united. Stand against this unacceptable behavior.
To reach this representative of the minimum-wagers, email her at omcquarr@asu.edu
