The other night I’m at The Store talking to a few of my coworkers about their various previous work experiences and it dawned on me.
This is my first retail job. I didn’t get the “I worked at Taco Bell,” or bagging groceries at 16 experience. In fact when I was in high school and doing a whole whopping 8-12 hours a week at the radio station, I applied for some of these jobs and not a single one of them was able to work around me working 6am-10am two days a week and 6p-12a one other day. No joke, the Sanrio store told me I wasn’t committed enough to Hello Kitty if I had to work at my other job and go to high school too. Kinkos already knew I was a criminal or whatever from our newspaper escapes and even though I knew how to work their machines better than the person interviewing me, they gave me some kind of Voodoo Algebra test that I failed.
It was weird at 16, the only other place I could get work outside of the radio station was doing pay for piece articles for the local news paper. Hot Topic didn’t want me because I looked too “straight laced,” when they first opened in Bakersfield. The local record stores didn’t want me because again I already had a job.
If you’ve been following along, you know my radio career crashed and burned spectacularly. I had to find something else to do.
Hotels came along. My first name tag job. My co-workers asked me how I ended up there and my answer was pretty simple, I needed money and the hiring manger at the first place I worked was impressed with all the celebrities I had met. No joke, I dropped the K word and I was hired.
I still have zero idea how I ended up working where I work now. I just applied for everything and apparently I had that razzle dazzle or whatever, but I previous to this, I had never used a cash register. I had never counted back change. I had never cleaned a public restroom. I had never leaned over a deep fryer and hoped it wouldn’t kill me.
I grew up backwards. For the first 20 years of my working career I got to do whatever the fuck I wanted, wear whatever I wanted, do my hair however I wanted, practically go to work whenever I wanted. Fuck a name tag, I didn’t even know what one looked like, let alone a uniform. I had an office, with a door and my own fridge!
And then one day I didn’t.
One of my coworkers asked me why I didn’t count hospitality as a retail job and I couldn’t come up with a clear answer other than working at a hotel, taking reservations and basically being the face of where ever you are is a lot more like selling dreams than selling bananas. On the phone you have to really make where you work sound like a dream destination, you have to paint a picture with your words if you want to sell that room. When the people show up, you turn into a glorified baby sitter if you choose to see it that way or you can do what I did and try to make each visitor believe they’re special and that their vacation is all you care about.
You also do not have to deal with the sheer volume of customers or stacks of cash that you do in grocery. You don’t have to be as acutely aware of money, its all credit cards mostly and if you screw it up, its pretty easy to fix. And in most cases after 18 hours you’ll never see that person again.
Grocery is very much a retail job. You have to be mindful of coupons, club cards, charging for bags, like everything is a dollar or a cent. You absolutely have people coming in asking for a refund of a dollar because they forgot their coupons in the car or didn’t hear you when you asked them to enter in their loyalty number. If you haven’t argued with someone over the price of a cucumber, you haven’t lived.
But… grocery is also a hybrid of what I used to do at the hotel. It’s feeling out a customer and deciding what kind of experience they want. Are they in there every day? Learn their name. Are they picky about how their stuff is bagged? Figure it out and remember it. Remember that so and so comes in 3 or 4 times a day and hates bags and receipts. Know that who’s their whatzit used to teach high school math and is already counting out exact change. Know that one customer just comes in at night to shoot the shit. But, do not forget to count that money or write down whatever you dropped in the safe and hey watch out for that dude over there that most likely just stole a 226 degree chicken.
Sometimes I feel like if I had gotten a mall job as a kid or worked at Taco Bell, I would have been more prepared for what retail is really like. Like I would have been prepared for no days off, no sitting down ever, never knowing who you’re going to work with or even the fact that half of the people I work with are young enough to be my children.
(It’s me. I’m Sharon.)
It’s been a wild three+ years so far. When asked by people I work with what I’ve learned in the last 3.5 years, I can say these things:
-My customer service voice is lethal and sometimes I don’t know how to turn it off.
-I am nowhere near as bad at math as I thought or have been told I am. Like as much as I hate doing math because I had a real shitty time learning it growing up, I can actually do math in my head and on the spot. I like to think this is me using the part of my brain that used to remember phone numbers.
-I have zero problems not having a set schedule. I honestly don’t care when I work. I also have no idea what fucking day it is most of the time and as for time, if it isn’t my time to be at work, take a break or go home, I seriously don’t know or care what time it is.
-I really can demolish a salad or a bowl of fruit or a sandwich in 10 minutes… over a trash can… and have two minutes to spare.
-I can absolutely sleep for 10 minutes in a bathroom if I need to.
-If something gross needs to be done, I’ve probably done it. I also can’t turn this off either and find myself fixing toilets or cash registers or whatever when I’m out off the clock.
-I actually really do know the price of everything.
-You will absolutely get the highest volume of customers at 11:30pm at night. Doesn’t matter what day it is, they’re coming.
-Most people are not assholes.
-The local Sheriff is your friend if you work in a store.
-People still write checks and buy stamps at the grocery store.
-No one knows how to park.
-No one has a single fucking clue how to put a shopping cart away. People will go out of their way to put them anywhere that isn’t a cart return.
-So many people steal, either intentionally or not. We probably lose like 80 avocados a day.
-If someone tells you they’re having a bad day, you’re about to hear some weird shit.
-Magazines still exist. Grocery stores still sell paper backs.
-You can make even the most aggressive even violent customers like you if you can keep your cool and use soothing words and suggestions.
-Moms buy snacks at the service deli and eat them before they check out, I scan so many empty bags. This as I am told is because they want to eat an entire chicken strip by themselves and don’t want to share with their kid for a minute. Sometimes the grocery store is mom paradise.
-Babies either absolutely 100% love the grocery store or hate it. All the lights and stuff to look at and touch and all these crazy adults telling you how cute you are? And the cashier has stickers for you!? Babies love this. When a baby hates the grocery store there is almost nothing you can do that will make them like the grocery store. They are over it and the best case scenario is to find something in the basket they want to hold or get the mom or dad out of there as fast as you can. I can’t count how many times I’ve just handed a toddler a box of crackers and they sort of forget they are mad.
-Teenagers will stop acting like total assholes if you talk to them like they are adults. This includes when they are riding skateboards in the store or making fun of their friends loudly. If you can pick out the “mom” or “dad” friend in the group, you address them and they’ll make their friends settle down. Every group of pre-teens or teens has that responsible friend.
-The best way to get someone who is a problem to leave is just saying “Thank you, bye bye now.”
So even though I have no earthly idea what I’m doing and I started off at a disadvantage, I learn something new every day and I dig it.
Do you want paper or plastic?