THERE IS A HELL! - - - IT IS CALLED RETAIL THERE IS A HELL AND IT IS CALLED RETAIL! | Page 9

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8. People set off small explosives in dressing rooms.
Or, at least, they must, given the state they are in 90 percent of the time upon someone
leaving one. People apparently just try something on, decide it’s not for them, and then
crumple it up and throw it on the floor like a scrap piece of paper. Hangers are scattered by
the mirror, dresses are thrown over the chair, pants are hanging by their belt loops off a
hanger hook — it’s like a war zone. You will come to find that the person who actually
gathers all of their clothes, properly hangs them back up, and gives them back to you with a
small “Thank you” is essentially a modern-day Gandhi. Otherwise, most people will just treat
you like you are some combination of their mother and an indentured servant, only there to
pick up after them and relieve them of the pressure of having basic human decency.
9. You will be forced to ask people if they need help, and then punished for doing
so.
One part of working in retail — especially more “upscale” retail — is that you’re expected to
ask everyone at one point or another if they need any help with, I don’t know, looking at
shirts or something. You are doing your job and gently asking them if you can do something
to assist them — no big deal! The customer could easily just say, “No, thank you,” and to be
fair, some of them do. But many of them will take this opportunity to turn on you and hiss
about how they’re doing JUST FINE THANK YOU as they shuffle away from you like you were
about to mace them. People will not hesitate to let you know how much your simple question
is ruining their shopping experience, their day, and their entire life. If you’re interested in
quitting, I recommend doing the whole retail world a favour and responding to such rude
customers with “I did not even give a monkeys about helping you anyway you bridge troll.”
Or something of the like?
10. When you get a call between 06:00 and 07:00 AM on your day off, you throw
the phone across the room.
You throw it across the room, then you go out back and dig a very large hole, then you bury
the broken remains of that phone, then you napalm the entire backyard, then you have your
whole house bulldozed, then you destroy your phone service provider’s headquarters. You
are not going into work today. They are not going to get you.
Someone once said “In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they
are not.”
And in my 40 years plus of working life in various industries I have definitely come to the
conclusion that an ounce of action is worth a ton of theory and theory is

splendid - but until theory is put into practice, it is valueless.

Most people have proper nightmares about being chased by monsters or falling out of an
airplane or falling overboard on a ship and drowning. I have nightmares about working in
retail. These nightmares make me long for the good old days of my childhood when I
dreamed of werewolves, plummeting from a cliff or aliens bursting out of my chest. But in

dodie ste®eo p®odu©tion ™

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