We All Know Retail Is Toxic, So Why Don’t We Quit?
I am a licensed retail therapist. Also known as an emotional punching bag. The receptacle for your day-to-day baggage. A stand in for the niece who doesn’t talk to you for God-only-knows-why. Enabler of the shopping addict. Friendly, smiling face with unwavering patience, a can-do attitude, a knack for conversation, and sparkling eyes that burn out as soon as she’s off the clock. Doler of irresistible deep discounts. Sales associate. Cashier, eventually replaced by any other warm body/robot/monkey that will work for cheaper than my hourly wage.
However you want to spin it, as a sales associate, my job is to sell. What this ultimately means is being as cheery, helpful, affirming, jovial, and passive aggressively, subtly pressuring as I need to be to get someone to spend their last twenty dollars in my store. We sales associates don’t like to think of ourselves as manipulative, but would we really be laughing out loud at stranger’s corny jokes and affirming the fact that it’s totally justifiable to blow $300 on a bunch of decor that will just end up collecting dust in an attic if we had any intention other than to help close the sale? I devote anywhere from 10–39 hours of my week to a company that pushes me to get every customer to spend at least $25 (even if they just walked in to snag a $1.99 chocolate fix on their lunch break) for…the sweet, silent…
