THERE IS A HELL! - - - IT IS CALLED RETAIL CUSTOMERS DON'T REALLY UNDERSTAND RETAIL WORKERS

Customers don’t Really Understand Retail Workers       o You don’t get paid nearly enough to play security guard with someone else’s money. Wearing a nametag makes people think you have way more power than you do. Just because I fold the jeans doesn’t mean I can give them to you 75% off. Nothing more frustrating than people asking for hook-ups (discount) that you yourself don’t even get as an employee. You won’t get paid like the CEO, but you will take complaints and verbal abuse for him/her. People will become hostile with you in regards to issues you have no hand in establishing or eliminating. Those responsible in corporate are probably on a retreat, golfing or laying in the sand listening to crashing waves while the common employee folds, lifts, hangs and cleans up to the sweet sounds of criticism and Bitter Sweet Symphony by The Verve for the fourth time today. There’s a uniquely disrespectful, helpless feeling that is only experienced when a customer comes in a few minutes before closing and shops leisurely as if your personal time is worthless and you don’t mind staying late. They don’t realize you can’t even begin several closing duties until they’re done. Or even worse they know it but simply don’t care. People will look down on you because of your job and they may not directly say it, but you can always identify when it’s happening. Black Friday isn’t some fun, festive day to save a few bucks on a TV, it’s more of a showcasing of how terrible some humans can be and how low many will stoop for worldly objects. It’s essentially impossible to be spontaneous or make plans during the months of November & December because your employer wants your existence to revolve around pushing sales and being available at all hours. A social life is non-existent during the holidays. When you work retail, whether it’s working the floor at a convenience store or a big box store, working the register at a family business, or taking orders at a fast food restaurant (I know that’s more hospitality/service-oriented, but it’s still the same set of skills I’m talking about), you start gaining the one thing that I think is really important for everybody to understand: The ability to read the customer. If you’re unable to read the customer, to adjust to a customer’s response in real-time, directly in front of your face, I think you’re missing out on something that makes ev ery great businessperson truly exceptional. We’re living in a faster world, and if you can’t reverse-engineer your customer's finish line in order to make him/her happy, you’re going to have a very hard time breaking through the scale and the speed that we’re now dealing with thanks to the “stream economy.” As somebody who likes to yap – and let’s be honest, I love to yap. I love to talk. I love to hear myself talk. I love to be heard – It’s shocking to me how much I like to listen. To be honest, I used to struggle with it. “Why the heck do I like to listen so much?” And then it dawned on me (which probably prompted me to write this article): “Oh… I’m a really retail orientated person.” I had no choice. Customer walks in and I had to listen. Long before I dodie ste®eo p®odu©tion ™ Page 4 of 9

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