Retail woes - general consumer attitudes

I hate working in retail, I really do.



My theory is that everyone should work in retail at least once in their lives - then there would be a lot less rude bitches and assholes walking around.



Manners and general social etiquette disapear for many people as soon as they walk into a store: yelling and swearing after being overcharged a whopping ONE DOLLAR, the sarcastic eye roll when told something is out of stock, whistling and snapping of the fingers to get my attention, the grunt in response to your 'hi how are you' ussually paired with the ungrateful snatching of their bag of stuff at the end... I could go on forever.



People seem to think that retail workers are dumb, stupid high school drop outs with sub par intelligence who can't find 'real jobs' and therefore deserve to be treated like absolute shit. In actual fact, a lot of us are in university, completing our degrees while working part time trying to gain some work experience or just some extra cash on the side.



Why do you think the staff turnover rate is so high in retail? Coz working in retail is only a TEMPORARY part of our lives until we move onto bigger and better things.



Now, the attitude many people have (and i quote) are "they should have stayed in school" and "it's their job, it's what they are getting paid to do."



As I have already said, many retail workers ARE actually in University, or completing high school (yes we do have real lives outside of work). BUT.. even if someone was a high school drop out, what gives people the right to treat them any differently? So maybe they aren't the brightest of people, maybe they don't have the intelligence, maybe they just don't WANT TO. At least they are trying to earn money to support themselves. How does that give people a free pass to treat them like crap.



Yes, we are getting paid to help you out and serve you, but would it KILL YOU to be civil.



Just because I WORK here doesn't mean I will eat, live and DIE here.

I didn't purposely overcharged you ONE DOLLAR to rip you off and put that WHOPPING ONE DOLLAR into my own pocket.



So you bought a faulty product.. shit happens... come back, tell us nicely what the problem is and we will do our best to give you an exchange or refund .. don't come into the store yelling and abusing me or I might suddenly feel the need to enforce our strict refund policy which doesn't allow any returns on your particular item ;)



Didn't mama ever tell you to ask nicely?