240 thoughts on “5 Reasons Not To Make Retail Your Career”

1. This article also applies to grocery stores and food service. Hell on fucking earth

   1. My wife and I both had brief stints in Grocery. For me, it was 30 years ago doing manual registers (no laser scanning). I had to type at a zillion numbers a second. The lines were always long. In merchandising, again, constantly busy. Hardest minimum wage job I ever had. ZERO benefits. With restaurants or department stores, I could at least get a discount.
      That being said, a union job at a Safeway or Harris Teeter (or especially Costco, non-union) actually is a good gig from what I’ve heard. Just shut off your head and run stuff over scanners. They do inventory control at night so the floor work is less hard than I remember it.

2. I once sold ladies’ shoes at a mall over holidays. I closed some serious ass, including a hard 9 slavic russian girl. Kept her for months. The rest of the job was a joke, of course, so I robbed the place. Then I got back to my actual career. lzolzozlzozlzozl

   1. Women’s shoes? Were they Steeeeeeeeeeeve Maaaaaaaaaaaaddens?
      

      1. this is so horrible it must be art.

      2. I fucking MET Steve Madden. He came to do a promo / signing at our store. One big giant jerk off, that event… but hot chicks everywhere

3. In america 75% of retail purchase decisions are made by females. Walk in any department store and the first thing you see on the ground floor by the doors is merchandise for women. The mens section is often in the back or even in the basement, the less valuable real estate. You’re going to be selling to women so sales people who stick with it are usually females or gay males because they are naturally more comfortable in that space. If you’re going to do retail as a male find something where you interface with male customers. Men are more analytical in their purchase decision, does this product do what I want and is it priced correctly. Females are much more likely to purchase something because of how it makes them feel.

4. Well, of course, if you do something half-assed for a short time and hate it, then you won’t like it and improve. And people get “stuck” in work that they don’t want for all sorts of reasons, through lack of drive, aptitude, opportunity, or other reasons. This is not a retail-specific criticism – go work in construction, or banking, or warehousing, and you’ll find the same thing going on.
   Floor retail is hard work and not very glamorous, but that specific experience is only one facet of the entire industry, and there is a lot of opportunity in the industry at large. Sam Walton built the largest company in the world [Edit: Modern company… Rockefeller’s & Carnegie’s companies were larger in real terms, and the Bells may have been larger in aggregate] because he loved retail and got good at it. Four of his heirs are in the world’s top 20 richest people at around $40B apiece. Let that sink in. Zara, Target, name it, etc etc are built around a need to get people their “stuff”, and there is tremendous innovation in the direct and ancillary industries. If you take the time to build the expertise in the industry, there is opportunity.
   So judging an entire industry by a couple summers working an hourly job is like judging Internet commerce by being a seasonal picker in an Amazon DC. Hard, yes. Unfulfilling, sure. Does doing it make the entire industry worthless? Hardly. At some point you need to build experience and expertise doing something, and floor retail is the basis for expertise in that industry.

   1. Your criticism is just scarecrowing the author’s argument. The author isn’t saying that every last facet, every single position in the retail industry is bad. Rather, his argument is about the general shittiness of the industry for people starting at the bottom.
      For most people, retail is a low-pay, low-opportunity profession, a pyramid with a wide base and and a narrow middle.

      1. His article is titled “5 Reasons Not To Make Retail Your Career” and he’s totally ignoring the “career” part of it. Article would be better framed as “don’t work floor retail for your summer jobs if you don’t have to.”

         1. The crux of the “career” part of his argument is Reason 4. There are plenty of people who work retail for more than just a summer job, and there is very little opportunity for those people to move up. Maybe after someone puts in year after year after year, maybe after getting some college education, maybe then he’ll be able to move up. Of course, if you’re going to spend those years working hard and possibly going to school, then there are much much better opportunities than a slim chance at retail management,

5. Reason #6: The music you will have to listen to on repeat for 8 hours a day EVERYDAY is pure torture, I’m talking having to listen to Maroon 5’s “Sugar” about 100 times a week.
   Christmas is the absolute worst. Horrible renditions of all the holiday hits and Celine Dion’s “Oh Holy Night” will make you want to jump outside to the suicide net when she hits those ending high notes at 4:15 (again, 100 times a week).
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBVUVTj0Big

   1. I would have to say “All I Want for Christmas is You” by Mariah is a zillion times worse.

   2. i feel your pain, brother. i once worked for 10 days straight as a photographer at an automobile convention. same playlist all day long. hundreds of mindless drones passing by you every second. the chicks from marketing bothering you to smile more. after 10 days of this repetitive input, i almost literally lost my mind in a way that made me not tick right for about a year.
      made me sincerely believe in the possibility of torture through sensory overload. let somebody watch the teletubbies for a weak straight without sleep and they will do everything you demand. just speculation, of course.
      but it is fascinating that chicks can handle this so well, being nice and serving for the customer. guess it comes with the submissiveness.

      1. Imagine being one of them. Getting attention from hundreds of men, and looks from perhaps thousands or even tens of thousands. A lot of women genuinely like that idea, which is why you have those girls who dress in skimpy bikinis and stretch all over the hoods of cars.

         1. but when you hit on them, they will afterwards say: “what a dickhead. doesn’t he know that i am friendly because i have to be?”

         2. The hypocrisy of female plausible deniability at work, they enjoyed being sexy and the attention it garnered (safely voyeuristic), but had their bubble burst by a guy they didn’t find attractive (superficial judgment).
            Time to justify how in the world this scrub could ever be hitting on the perfect princess and in public of all places (never mind most all of it was resultant from her decisions), go super hamster:
            “It’s just a mistake, he’s a perverted misogynist asshole, that’s it run with that. It couldn’t be that I am shallow in judging him, or that I was secretly fantasizing about making all the attractive men stare and desire me, oh no, never that. Too bad he isn’t better looking, though, I’m feeling a little horny. Why does the only guy to talk to me today have to be him?”

         3. unless he has money. then she will accept his invitation to paris. no, she would never do that, of course, if she thought that … my god.

         4. And for the women who don’t receive attention from Men, Feminism.

         5. Like the Mr Plow episode of The Simpsons.
            

         6. “but when you hit on them, they will afterwards say: “what a dickhead. doesn’t he know that i am friendly because i have to be?””
            Dude… when a chick you don’t know is all smiley and nice to you, it is because she either 1.) Wants something or 2.) Is selling something.
            And this has nothing to do with you as a man, but you have to understand women’s true nature.
            Thats why it is never good to assume a waitress or hostess is into you no matter how flirtatious she may be. In this context she is getting paid to be a cock tease, pure and simple.

         7. i know.
            do you think this goes as far as to agree to meet me the next day to fuck and telling me she is looking forward to it?

         8. I cannot say for certain, Tom. Has this happened or is it pending?
            She may be just saying this to make a fool of you. Or she may, at that moment, actually mean it and intend to fuck you but decided not to because of the 10 other offers she got on her tinder account she decides to meet up with someone she thinks is more interesting.
            Again, this is not a reflection on you as a man, this is typical female behavior and mentalities today.
            Or she could follow through and fuck you.
            But my advice would be to see what happens. If she pulls a no show, then use it as aversion therapy.

         9. this happened to me last year. she was a receptionist at a hotel and left me a note the next morning that it wouldn’t work out. i figured she had changed her mind over night. no big deal, i was just curious. i filed it as a failure, but i would still be surprised if a girl could mimic all the body language convincingly. then again, i lack the experience to judge it. i will have to draw my own conclusions when i gain some more expertise.

         10. “. i filed it as a failure, but i would still be surprised if a girl could mimic all the body language. ”
             Dont think of it as a failure, but rather it is experience. We all need experience (good and bad) on order to become good at things. But there has been numerous articles written at ROK and even roosh’s personal site about how social media and all the high tech toys are turning women to worthless scatter brains.

         11. why do you engage in this kind of coddletalk? a failure is a failure. it is experience, too, sure. but why not call it what it is? no need to foster sensitivities. or we end up like the pc idiots, e.g. calling being fat “curvy”.
             yes, may be true. i see it in myself, also. find it hard to focus on something these days.

         12. I’ve had this happen even after I’ve fucked the chick. Women have emotional breakdowns for unspecified reasons. They create little scenarios in their head (what if he? What if I? OMG STOP STOP STOP!!!) that have absolutely nothing to do with you. You didn’t fail, she did.
             The cure for this is just to get another chick. Keep the bases loaded I always say.
             Good luck, brother.

         13. Its failure but it isn’t yours. You mustn’t think of it as your failure because you will tie yourself up in knots with the next chick worrying about what you did wrong with the last chick. You did nothing wrong. Nothing. Take this as the word from a man with 25 years of game experience.

         14. when a customer orders something and i promise to deliver on a deadline, but don’t, i have failed. it doesn’t matter if a hurricane crashed the plane that was supposed to deliver the ware.
             but i see your point. do not try to see patterns where there are none.

         15. I didnt intend it like that, though I understand that it could be taken as such. I’ve been around longer than you to the point where I just don’t give a fuck and would never see what that chick did as failure. In fact I never see failure as anything more than useful information for future decisions and ways to proceed.

         16. “when a customer orders something and i promise to deliver on a deadline, but don’t, i have failed”
             The difference is here that we are dealing with the contempiraey human female who cannot be counted on her word for anything.

         17. yes, i share your way of looking at it. i just prefer to use words in their normal meaning. i am not sure where to concept of having failed “as a person” comes from.
             my dad builds houses and says that nowadays, the youth can’t take any criticism. like you can’t tell them their work is shit or they go cry.
             taking responsibility is a great thing, even if it is not your fault. and it is of course no reason to not love yourself anymore or obsess over such a failure.
             it’s too bad that even between men, language has begun to have certain pc undertones. you should be able to call someone loser without that person giving up over it, for fucks sake.

         18. like a hurricane.

         19. Essentially correct. She promised something and failed to deliver.

         20. that’s true, too. but the core of my idea is: i chose to pursue fucking her and i failed. end of story. whether it is my fault or not, it is what it is.
             judging her for not delivering would only serve the cause to avoid girls like her in future or generally have a better selection. judging her to assign blame, that’s pointless.

         21. When the lion fails to catch the wildebeest, he doesn’t consider it for a second. He catches his breath, waits for another opportunity and goes again.
             The failure of the human being is that he worries about his failures too much.

         22. note a funny thing about written words and the judgmental conventions: while i said that i consider it a failure, i did not say i worry about it. you assumed it. that is more of a symptom of a society that worries too much about failures. it is so that we grow up simply associating certain words, phrases and beliefs as naturally connoted with a certain emotion.
             thus, when i write a girl “i take what i want”, she may interpret it as sad, me having given in to the cold hard brutalistic nihilism. while that is absolutely not what i meant.
             when i write in a discussion that the strong shall survive and the weak naturally perish, it has the undertone of emotional detachment, arrogance, naivety. yet the statement itself carries no emotion, it is just a statement.
             society does not even have to refute arguments of it’s enemies. it only has to make the “false” beliefs evoke negative emotions. it’s really weird and i am not yet sure how to completely break free from it.

         23. There is an irony here in that I did not say you worried about your failures you assumed that was what I said. I left it to you to decide how much of what I said applied to you.
             That said, on balance from your comments, you do seem to be somewhat down on yourself as a result of your interaction with this girl.
             I recall something I read once about winners and losers. Winners blame other people for their failures. Losers blame themselves.

         24. This is the modern feminist paradigm of what I call the reverse burka: Women should be able to dress as they please (even walk around naked) but only the men THEY are interested should be allowed to look at them otherwise the reverse Taliban cracks down.
             In the feminist mindset, she should be able to do as she pleases and offend as many as she likes but NOBODY (men) have a right to offend HER (in the name of equality, of course.)
             Another ugly aspect to this worldview is that they don’t view ugly men as human. When I see an ugly girl I wouldn’t want to bang, I don’t think of ways to destroy her for the crime of living on my earth but rather compassion. If I see an elderly woman struggling to open a door, I help her. It’s about human compassion which modern feminism sucks out of women.

         25. ironic indeed. but since you brought it up as a result to my comment, i thought it plausible to assume you were assuming that i meant it the way you assumed i did.
             it has been almost a year since that happened. i’m over it.
             i don’t think that that last sentence makes sense. after all, should sjws not be winners then?

         26. When I moved to Philadelphia, I encountered a lot of women who were harsh on the street but relaxed once they reached their “safe” areas. Being friendly and smiling on the streets (even men) was an invitation for every street person to bother you.
             But at the same time, women want men to approach them and entertain them (as Roosh says, the clown) so they dress attractively to “attract” the men they desire. It’s like someone running a personal ad on every street corner. They advertise far and wide but only want a few select respondents.
             In the old days, a “lady” with that attitude would put in the effort to reject unwanted men politely and even humanely.

         27. gotta say, i can’t remember having been impolitely rejected ever by a beautiful girl. at least as long as i was somewhat polite myself. the ugly ones, on the other hand, seem to have a far colder attitude.

         28. Context. Think more historical generals, successful football coaches, etc. versus their unsuccessful peers.
             SJWs might outwardly blame others, but for perceived failures of others to meet responsibilities that the SJWs place upon them. Inwardly though, I suspect that SJWs are deeply troubled people with significant self-esteem issues.
             You assumed that I assumed that you were assuming?

         29. I’ve found some woman believe they have had conversations with you that never actually happened. They apparently can’t tell imagination from reality.
             Sometimes they extrapolate on a simple “yes” or “no” and imagine a conversation took place that didn’t.
             ‘Do you like Italian food?” Reply; yes, becomes “I thought you were taking me to the Italian restaurant, we talked about it and you told me how much you loved it.
             They can remember a shirt you wore 10 years ago but can’t remember the conversation two days okay. They seem to “dialog” shit in their heads and imagine conversations the way they’d like them to go. Not the way they actually happened.

         30. I found that too. I think it’s something women often claim men need to have: “self confidence”. Self-confidence backed by actual assets makes it possible for someone to be compassionate and emotionally invulnerable to rejection or rejecting others. You’re still hot even after the other person is gone.
             An ugly person whose pissed at being ugly wants to take out their frustrations and lack of self-esteem on someone else. Nobody is better suited for that scapegoat role than the poor, hapless ugly guy that hits on her.
             What’s funny, I think, is that after years of treating beta males with such disrespect, when an alpha-type male does show interest in them, these women don’t know how to interact with them.

         31. What makes man the greatest predator on Earth is precisely because we have the consciousness to learn from our mistakes. Heck, even the lion you mention learns from his failures. That’s why cats (lions and housecats) are one of the few predators that “play with their food.”
             In this analogy, rather than prey it would be useful to consider lion mating habits such as fighting the alpha male lion for control of the pride. They do NOT engage in that challenge lightly nor shake off the failure and try again the next day. When they lose, they get a real beating. When they win, they know that another battle could happen the next day.
             It’s a tough life.

         32. that’s my point. those who have self-esteem issues act to make it look like they are not to blame, yet secretly eat themselves up. those with fine self-esteem will take the blame outwardly, yet be indifferent inside.
             so while my female working partner is still rambling about what i did wrong, i am already thinking about how to solve the problem.
             no, but almost. i assumed that you assumed that i was thinking what you assumed i was.

         33. Yes, lions do learn but the crucial part is that perceived “failure” does not trouble them in the least. What I am getting at is that you need to avoid dwelling on “failure”. It is not healthy.
             Lion mating is very different to human mating (thankfully, that’s why we developed abstract thinking). When the males are 50% larger than the females in a species, then the males fight each other for access to females. Human males are only 33% bigger and so we have to petition females for access.

         34. Very true.

         35. Begging for sex from females is a relatively new phenomenon in human history (and particularly, human history). Without a welfare state, single mothers and their brood starve to death. Watch slumdog millionaire for the future of the west’s welfare state.
             Humans have greater prerequisites for survival than normal animals (watch Naked and Afraid). For about 100K years or so, we need to make clothes, form social groups, weapons, etc. Beta males that felt exploited could literally vote with the feet and leave and then the alpha is left with a harem that needs to be fed and protected.
             Female lions are an interesting aberration because they are sort of like what feminists want to make human women into: They are independent financially (able to hunt on their own, in groups) and don’t really “need” a man other than for sperm. The males evolved into “bad boys” that turn on the women, but wind up killing any offspring they sense are not theirs. It appears to “work” for them. 🙂

         36. “When the lion fails to catch the wildebeest, he doesn’t consider it for a second. He catches his breath, waits for another opportunity and goes again.
             The failure of the human being is that he worries about his failures too much.”
             wise words

         37. One interesting point about female lions. Yes they do hunt but when they are successful, the male comes along and helps himself first while the lionesses wait, hence the phrase “The Lion’s Share”.
             Its a bit like the relation between a pimp and his hoes.

         38. Totally true. They only even TALK to you because you’ve got something they want. And don’t forget that they’ll use you as a back to walk on: In retail, when a girl comes to you complaining about management, it’s so she has something to rat you out to your manager about.

         39. Oh yeah, they don’t operate in reality most of the time. And notice that when you tell them something important, they conveniently say you never told them.

         40. Some of you boys have led very secluded lives.Of course all females need attention. The female who got no attention in our primitive past would die.

      2. You know you’re in trouble when you know what songs come next.

   3. Hell let me add Reason #7: Black Friday
      Forget spending time with your family for Thanksgiving dinner, if you plan on staying awake because you will need to work overnight because of mindless consumers who have allowed Black Friday to have a midnight opening because they couldn’t wait till 12PM to do their shopping. That’s also including the violent and wild herd-like mentality of shoppers during that day.

      1. Correct. South Park captured the “spirit” of having to work the Black Friday shift perfectly.
         

      2. “Hell let me add Reason #7: Black Friday”
         Hell yeah. Americans are complete assholes that day.
         https://youtu.be/PRkOBgVx9Dg

         1. I could only watch a few minutes of this before I came ill. Not if they were giving it away.

         2. Man, the U.S. is turning into a true suburban jungle.

      3. Reason #8: Scammers.
         Believe me, there is no scam low enough that some shitbag won’t try it. Whether it’s distracting your attention while they steal something off another shelf or they find an incorrect price tag and they demand you sell the item for that price. Meanwhile, you have to keep smiling while you know the shitbag is stealing your commission from another sale you could be making. Or buying stuff on credit cards and returning it the next day, like expensive stereos for a party and then bringing them back the next day.
         Then there’s the Indians and Chinese who try to haggle like they’re in a bazaar in Baghdad and won’t shut up until they get their special price.
         In the end YOU LOSE. And your shitty boss blames you for not being being a more aggressive salesperson.

         1. I know many of these VERY well. Annoys the hell out of me to have to serve these people.

   4. Sting – “Fields of Gold”

   5. I generally listen to radio when in car. Typically Talk Radio. But on days when I flip through dial, there’s some Top 40 songs which make you want to take gun to head.
      There’s one station in-particular which used to have good variety but for whatever reason now just plays teeny bopper shit.
      Besides Maroon 5 “Sugar” and that f-ing “Shake it Off” these two songs drive me absolutely NUTZ!
      1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo1VInw-SKc
      2)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4_6N-k5VS4

   6. Without hearing it 3 times a day at my gas station clerk job, I would have never realized how much I loved Phil Collin’s “Something Happened on the Way to Heaven.”
      

      1. Wow. That brings me back to my childhood. Haven’t heard that song forever but remember it being big when I was little.

      2. Numerous plays of Phil Collins? Now that really is going beyond all humanitarian considerations…

   7. Truer words never have been spoken.

   8. Yeah when I worked retail, Christmas was the worst. XM Holiday station every fucking day from November til January, same shit every day. I think McCartney’s wonderful christmas time made me want to commit suicide more than any other song. Besides that, the everyday music was not much better. XM easy listening channel was the go to in the store, I heard Micheal McDonald almost everyday, and I cannot fucking stand Micheal McDonald.

   9. Rio- Duran Duran
      Easy lover- Phil Collins/Phillip Bailey
      Dancing in the street-David Bowie/Mick Jagger
      My heart will go on- Celine Dion
      Tell me lies-Fleetwood Mac
      I’ll be there-Mariah Carey (MTV live), sing it lance. Sing it…
      And many more.
      Three years straight…Every f**king day. Never again.

6. “stick and grow with our company, because the sky is the limit.”

   it wasn’t retail, but exactly this fucking sentence made me feel guilty enough to not just fuck it and move on. ended up staying with that low-skill job for some 7 years. my boss was one of those people’s people and had a great skill to make me feel like he was my friend (“look at how far you’ve come due to me. i support you wherever i can, even if others don’t”) and expecting me to reciprocate his friendship.

   1. He was probably a fag trying to “groom” you.

      1. first time i hear that idea. the guy was married. and unmarried. but about to marry. yes, interesting. and disgusting.

7. you didnt like dealing with stuff like this?
   

8. Always have a plan. Many people that get (themselves) stuck in low-wage jobs have no plan at all. They just keep doing what they’re doing because it’s easy, because it’s what they know. They hope things will work out (such as by getting promoted), but they don’t actively take steps to make that happen. To make matters worse, they don’t have a backup plan in case the hoped-for promotion falls through.

9. I worked retail in high school. A few completely random thoughts…
   – I hate Christmas music. Absolutely loathe it. After working 14 – 15 hour days listening to it non-stop, I cannot listen to it even fifteen years later.
   – You make just enough money to pay the bills, do a happy hour here and there at Applebees, and you get a discount so at least you are dressed nicely. I can see why some people get lulled into being complacent. That paycheck covers all your basic needs, and you don’t take your job home with you. It’s also nice to have off on like a Tuesday and a Saturday sometimes.
   – Decent social network if you work at a big place. However, people tend to make their lives revolve around it.
   I don’t know. In my opinion, self employment really is the only way to live. Make a bunch of money, and then spend a few months not working. Answer to no one, and tell annoying clients / customers to fuck off. I fired a client this week because she expected things to get done immediately (even if it meant working over the weekend), and didn’t want to pay me up front. She got pissed to learn that I was out to dinner with another client (after a long hard day in court) instead of working on her matter. I don’t think this is working out…

   1. What kind of business do you own? How do you take off from work for a few months and then come back without losing your customers?

      1. I own a law firm, write, and invest in real estate. I also have a consulting company. Taking a few months off as a self employed attorney is virtually impossible. Writing and consulting can be done from anywhere. Real estate investment is the best. It’s hard to get into, though, because you need cash to start playing the game. I’ve never taken an entire month off, although I’ve basically worked part time the entire summer and done a bunch of mini-vacations. Ideally, I’d like to get out of law completely, but it’s a stable income.

   2. IT can be ok, if you can avoid long hours and having to be on call very often. my current job has me working just a few hours over 40 most weeks (not bad for the US), doesn’t push me to do a lot of useless certs, and i have an eager-to-be-liked manager who always approves time off to take care of the car, go to the doctor, etc.

      1. My buddies in IT do pretty well for themselves. Usually a nice six figure income and reasonable work weeks. I suppose this is tangential but…
         The difference is what you do with that six figure income. Some buy a BMW, a big house, cable television with HBO, have kids who they send to private school, wear nothing but expensive clothing, and eat out all the time. Or maybe they put a few dollars into a savings account each month.
         What always concerns me is how frivolous some women are with money. $500 for a handbag “isn’t a lot”, $2000 a month for private school is “necessary”, a $300 dinner “isn’t that expensive.” I’m not saying all women are bad with money, but I do a bit of divorce work. Often when I go over the finances I’m like “Christ almighty. You two would actually have savings if it weren’t for the 50 pairs of shoes, expensive handbags, dinners out, private school tuition, Yoga classes, car payments, Nextflix, Hulu Plus, HBO, Showtime, and a cellphone plan with like a billion gigs of data. Most of which was paid with a credit card that now bears interest.”
         I choose to live frugally. I live in a big house, but it cost me next to nothing because I picked it up in foreclosure and then rehabbed it myself. My car is paid off, and I rarely drive anyway. I don’t have cable. No credit cards. I’d rather have all that money to myself, to either squander on things I enjoy, or to invest it in ways to earn more passive income.

         1. amen. sounds like you keep karen and beca in line, as you should.
            the car thing. luxury cars are stupid, unless maybe you can pay cash for one. they have to be one of the main reasons most americans are ridiculously in debt. delicious tacos (anyone remember him?) wrote a short story where the main character finally makes it, buys the BMW to show everyone that he’s made it, then realizes that basically everyone has that same car.
            about women, i tell younger guys that if a woman shows any sign of financial irresponsibility or excessive materialism, do not even consider marrying her. same goes for a woman who is not deeply committed to staying fit and controlling her weight. don’t even consider putting a ring on that.

         2. At one time, American cars had a reputation for being made well and lasting a long time (my father claims that the WWII years produced the best cars because they were built to last.)
            During the 50’s and 60’s, quality began to slide as the automakers rested on their laurels and took it for granted they had a captive market. Japanese cars were not that well made at first, but by the 70’s, they were starting to make headway.
            German cars have seen a similar slide. Mercedes and BMW were great when Joan Collins looked young (ok, that was 70 years ago) but seriously, mechanics I know are not impressed by them anymore. They’re ok, at best, but they also produce a lot of lemons. They aren’t the safe bet they used to be.

         3. it does seem like when i see a car broken down during rush hour, holding up traffic, it’s european (volvo, land rover, jaguar, BMW, etc.) as often as not.

         4. spent under $1000 on a beat up car that gets me to work. Invested 60 grand in 3 different blue chip stocks that pay dividends. Buying a house where I live isn’t an option. Most men just blow all their savings on…….yes……cars. Then their cars depreciate and they invest more into them….and then they get tired of them and get this…they trade or buy another one and give the rest to their half-wit wives who have the intelligence quotient of a bread stick. Every man I know who has a wife sees his saving evaporate into thin air and they have tremendous non-mortgage debt as well.

         5. I’ve never understood the love of cars. Mine is a cool old Land Rover, completely paid off. What’s funny is that people are impressed by it, even though it’s not a Mercedes or BMW. It’s a matter of being different.
            I barely drive it as I mostly Uber everywhere now. I’m tired of the parking tickets, paying for parking, fender benders, speeding tickets, etc. I’d rather people drive me places.

   3. In my personal opinion as far as career choice it’s either do what you love that utilize your mind or own a business nothing more any other job just do for short term

10. I work about 50hr/week in “retail” and it’s true how dead tired you are after a 9-12hrs of standing all day long. It’s just not natural. I’ve only been doing this for 3 years but I find that while the work is not physically intensive it does drain the life and soul out of you. All I can think about after a long shift is retreating to the comfort of my room and lying or sitting down with some drink and food preparing myself to do it all over again the next day. On my off days all I want to do is stay at home, do a bit of laundry, clean my place, stock up supplies, maybe go to the gym and get ready to for another week.
    I’m surrounded by women that work under me that I cannot even bang and instead I have to work with half wits that objectively have no other real use than for fucking (since most of them cannot cook anyway). The money is good (hint: I paid 40k in taxes this year) and I can’t entertain the thought of quitting until I accumulate enough capital for a retail business of my own. But yeah, if you are getting paid peanuts it’s really a no-brainer, find something else.

    1. “(hint: I paid 40k in taxes this year)”
       Thst’s pretty good. Are you in management? Or just working the floor?

       1. management. pharmaceutical related.

          1. Pharmaceutical is always stable!

          2. Sounds like he’s a street pharmacist though. Unlicensed.

    2. Dude, teach me the ways of making more than 10.50 an hour. haha, seriously though, 70% of the crew are halfwits, and only about 3 of us do shit. I worked last week sick as shit, puking my brains out etc, and I STILL did 3 whole isles by myself.

11. When robots replace people, we will all be longing for the good ol’ days of retail. I recommend we all learn to be self-sufficient by growing our own food. As there will be fewer and fewer chances to make money.

    1. Everything will be done by robots, and everything else will run on software. The way I see it there will only be two job categories soon. The high tech and the facilitators. The later are people with connections, the ones greasing the wheels, salespeople, etc. The rest will probably be paid a minimum wage to just stay at home. The amount will be enough for them to not revolt.

       1. I think the “Elites” have already stated what is to be done with the useless eaters and it won´t be paying them mínimum wages to stay at home…

          1. Who do you think they’ll be using to feed the tech drones they still need?
             The “obesity epidemic”=”fattening the herd”.

    2. “When robots replace people, we will all be longing for the good ol’ days of retail.”
       I’ll call it quits and an early death if I am unfortunate to still be alive when that happens.

12. I’ll always see guys in their 30s and 40s working at the mall and wonder what happened in their lives to lead them there

    1. At least they’re employed.

    2. You never know with that one. They may have a full time career and are doing some part time work for extra cash. Maybe he just lost his job and took the first thing that came along to pay the bills while he sends out the resumes. I never think negatively about anyone who is working anywhere or any job. It’s like seeing a landwhale in the gym: at least they are in the gym doing something about it.
       When I was in college I worked one year at a gas station. An older guy in his 40s would work two or three nights a week, between Monday and Thursday. He had a really good corporate job in Columbus, Ohio. He was single. He used the gas station money to pay for things like gas, car insurance, taking a broad out to dinner etc…and banked and invested 100% of every thick corporate paycheck.

13. Well at least where I live, you have to go through a series of interviews, stupid questions like “why do you want to work here?” Psychological tests and surveys, and reference checks just to make minimum wage.
    Pretty happy to find out it’s shitty as I have never had the kind of patience to put up with their hiring practices.

    1. Had an interview at Walmart last fall. They grouped us all together and had us audition for the yob. These idiots acted as this was the greatest job we will ever apply for. I only applied for night shift stocking so I wouldn’t have to talk to Walmartians
       .

       1. Lol they act like its the greatest job in the world and act surprised when I go no contact on them when I find something better.

          1. They were not going to hire me because they looked terrified at the prospect of someone who might be more intelligent. Of course I would leave once I got a better job.

       2. Ever seen that Wal-Mart documentary? Pretty much everyone they interviewed truly felt they were part of something great. And when the company told them they’d have to get something done without pay beyond end of their shift, well … they did it as they thought it’d get them ahead.
          Then after years of doing this and seeing checks shorted on regular basis, they finally connected the dots.
          What I find sad is grown adults who can’t foresee what something REALLY is. I developed these skills in high school. These Wal-Mart types are what corps desperately want. Morons who will work for nada and not question it … at-least for a few years. And when they finally do, toss em out and get the new ignorant crop.

          1. Fuck man…. there are people that get married at Walmart. Something is rotten in the USA :
             

          2. I wouldn’t doubt they start offering wedding services between the Pharmacy and ATM.
             Wal-Mart Weddings: Always low prices and expectations.

    2. And drawn out background checks for peanut jobs too. I remember meeting a guy who put in for a $9/ hour Home Depot Job. He said it took them a month … yes a month to get his background check completed.
       So between the ridiculous personality tests, background check and amount of time they take to respond on potential interest post application submitted, it could be 6-7 weeks to get hired, 8-9 weeks to get first check, when putting in for a minimum wage job. What a Joke!
       The absolute icing on the cake is how minimum wage jobs or slightly above min wage are now advertising “competitive wages!” Several months ago I popped into a BK in NH. They had “competitive wages” advertised. So out of curiosity, I asked what the wage was. It was $.10 sense above min.

    3. And don’t forget the “Where do you see yourself in 5 years time?” question.

       1. “And don’t forget the “Where do you see yourself in 5 years time?” ”
          Yeah, as if Walmart is a real job.

    4. Home Depot makes you sit at a special computer to answer lots of questions. And they’ll never call you either.
       I remember applying for a job at UPS. My one blonde friend who was pursuing her PhD in psychology was upset that I had a college degree, yet I was going after blue collar jobs. It was almost as if she didnt want to be my friend anymore because of that.

       1. Oh yeah I can see that, I thought it might have just been where I lived( Seattle area) but women definitely seem to look down on blue collar types.

14. I worked retail seasonally in high school (one summer at a grocer) and in college (one Christmas/New Year at a GameStop) then after college to Wal-Mart (in less than two years I had been promoted once, raised five times, and selected for assistant manager training). I left asap. I could already feel that I was losing something valuable of myself as a man. (You want entitled, spoiled customers with no social aptitude and corporate indoctrination on full blast try working either place or somewhere equivalent).
    Now I have a career, have built a bank account, purchased a car, and will completely own my house in the next three years, but for awhile the job market was absolutely hopeless for me. Sometimes, you have to do a job that is horrid, that can suck away your soul and identity, because that is what there is aside from living off the state, but that doesn’t mean you can’t flourish even in that retarded environment. I guarantee that it takes a lot of incompetence on an employee’s part now to rile me. I take pride in the fact that I always worked and never took welfare. And maintaining my dignity and sense of self is much easier today as I withstood the customers and the corporate programming they attempted then. Retail can be an abyss, you can fall into the trap of stagnation, but you can also find things of value to take away from any experience, even the shittiest.

15. Holy shit, this article hit close to home since I had supermarket jobs throughout high school and college. This part especially stood out to me:
    “Particularly if you are a white male, many women and ethnic minority shoppers will look for every excuse to degrade or reprimand you with the excuse that “the customer is always right.”
    I’ve been doing my own food shopping now for about 10 years, and in that time I can’t think of one instance where I needed a manager to fix a problem. Part of it is I know how horrible working in a supermarket is so I try and be nice to any retail employee I can. But if there is a problem it’s generally not worth worrying about it, I’m more interested in getting home as quickly as possible.
    But when I was a cashier it seemed that every 3rd or 4th customer would need a manager for some reason or other. I grew up in a well-to-do area with lots of housewives married to rich doctors or lawyers, so I know that the fact that a coupon for 50 cents off not being honored wouldn’t break the bank. They just needed to be antagonistic, and above all, RIGHT. I just can’t imagine how empty and useless their lives are if the high point of their bid to have some kind of voice or power is yelling at a 16 year old kid about 10 cents (Part of me thinks it’s all projection, and these women would take out their feelings of frustration regarding their kids on myself).
    75% of the customer base during the day was easily made up of these hausfraus so it made my job that much more difficult. The path of least resistance was a concept that was completely foreign to these women, and it seemed the entire check out process was nothing more than a giant shit test and jumping through hoops. Ironically, I was one of the better cashiers at the store, yet I received more verbal abused on a daily basis than I had before or since.
    My best friend and I both worked this same store, and we can’t tell if we were just whiny bitches back then or if working in this store was the worst fucking thing ever. Tons of other people we know from the store also agree with us. To put it in perspective – My best friend is a cop who faces abuse on a daily basis and recently had to deal with some riots in response to police brutality. And he still thinks working retail was the more draining job.

    1. I respect what you’re saying, but I’m one of those complainers. If it’s a dime, sure I’ll let it slide but I’m no doctor and if I circled an ad to get a buck off of soda on sale then I want that buck. The way the computers do it, I often cannot see if the proper discounts apply until the “tally” button is hit at the end and the discounts flash at the end of the screen so I’m left awkwardly checking the receipt on the way out and sometimes I go to customer service and get it fixed.

    2. Just make the coupons work. You gotta key or the manager’s code. Just crunch the numbers and stuff the expired coupons under the $20’s. Basically just MAKE IT WORK for her. It’s not like dealing with an armed robber at 7-11 where you just give ’em the cash drawer and offer them a 12 pack from the cooler and tell them to ”be cool”, cause they ain’t payin’ you enough to guard the national treasure my ass! Hell, just give the ‘coupon lady’ divorcee’s a free pack of breath mints with a wink and they’ll SUCK YER DICK. Man what a deal. There’s got to be some perk or benifit to pull from the shit jobmarket.

    3. I have similar retail combat stories. Thabks for sharing. My tour-of-duty in the retail army was in Westchester County New York. What do you do now?

       1. Crazy, that’s where I grew up, as well. I work freelance now. No human interaction at all except for maybe 30 minutes per day texting or emailing clients.

16. 7. If you’re a man, you will most likely be placed in a load bearing job;
    8. In today’s department store, if you are placed in a man’s job, there may be a female manager and if there are other women about, you will be low man on hte totem pole: now matter the status of the other women;
    9. You will be working under diversity!; you come last on food chain.

17. #6 You’ll become a loser, enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E2MRlQlC4I

18. Retail positions, along with human resources, lower administrative posts and the like, are jobs that don’t produce real value, require low cognitive ability, and are specially prone to office politics, over-credentialization and large amounts of bullshit.
    It is only natural that women are attracted to such jobs, since they entail little or no responsibility, no important decisions to be taken, and require minimal initiative. Bullshit degrees like psychology and social studies are well posed for the retail and corporate world, where, with more and more useless diplomas and courses, people can use gossip and ass-kissing to advance in an environment that creates no real wealth.
    As a man, if you fall into such job, other than great desperation, you deserve your fate since you failed to fulfill one of the objectives of the male sex: create wealth. You must always strive to improve and position yourself as a person who creates value and/or solves the problems of others. Over-credentialziation won’t do that. Ignore such warnings at your own peril, otherwise you may wake up at 40 surrounded by loser office-beta-males-bee-workers, and women of course, with no real skills and no ability to market yourself into a value-generating environment. Oh and like such women and faithful beta males bee workers, you will likely be laid off before you are 45, once you become too “old” for the job market.

    1. “As a man, if you fall into such job, other than great desperation, you deserve your fate since you failed to fulfill one of the objectives of the male sex: create wealth. You must always strive to improve and position yourself as a person who creates value and/or solves the problems of others. ”
       Excellent point. This is why a 40 year old guy who works in retail is tragic, while a 40 year old female working retail is absolutely normal and acceptable.

    2. at the end of the day if you’re 50ish and you don’t have a mil in your account to be able to live off the interest, you’re a failure!

19. I agree that working retail today sucks ass.
    60 years ago one could work retail and still be able to buy a modest home and raise a couple of kids and have a wife. And it was still a job with dignity back then. Today, no longer.
    I agree with the author in that retail is okay if you do it part time while in high school or in college. But I remember working retail for a few summers, from my junior year of high school to sophmore year at college, working only part time. I believe it was my first year out of college when I heard a couple of my friends I went to high school with were in Japan teaching English. “Fuck!” I said to myself as I realized that they had a pretty nice gig. And here I was catering to over bearing priveledged house wives trying to find the perfect wicker basket.
    Thank god those days are over.
    But everytime I see a grown man over 30 working the indignity of retail (in a non management position) I look at him and I want to say to him “Dude, what the fuck happened?”
    Thank God guns are easy to illegally acquire, I would not hesitate putting the barrel of a sawed off to my head and ending it before I go back to retail.
    Retail wasn’t always such a low regarded lot in life, but today when a man is not a rich and famous billionaire he is considered a worthless piece of shit, and retail ranks right down there with giving enemas to horses.

    1. ”60 years ago” there were no walmarts. A small town had a central business district with an independent hardware store, men’s clothing store, bike shop, lawnmower service/sales, shoe store selling domestic produced shoes, flower shop, nursery/garden shop. Each of these small independent businesses were largely family run and the owners and their relatives or ‘clan’ made enough form their businesses to own houses and raise large families.
       Today with mega box stores and chains, the small independent businesses are driven under and the trade off is for every walmart planted in a small town, fifty small independent businesses go under and are replaced with a hundred minimum wage slave jobs. The former small business owners who were each on their way to becoming a self made millionaire are now on food stamps with their families subsidized, sized down or culled outright by the dark left hand of the socialist ‘services’. Tumbleweeds roll down small town main street as walmart lobbies to pass laws like the one allowing them to pump water into their meat and still legally call it ‘meat’ by weight.

       1. True. I’ll never work in retail again. But I do respect those that have no other choice. Whenever I do go shopping I’m always polite, treat them fairly, and never leave a huge mess in the dressing areas. It’s one bit of kindness I can show them.

          1. That’s nice. I worked shitty jobs too and I know how it feels when you are treated just a little bit better. You feel human, and that means a lot.

       2. Bingo.
          Ever watch that documentary on Wal-Mart? At the beginning they show that family run hardware store who knows when Wal-Mart comes in their town . . . it’s only a matter of time ’til they close.
          Listen to the guys who worked there talk. They took passion in their job, they knew what they were talking about when recommending a product or offering advice and the employer provided a good wage and recognized they were an valuable part of his business. Thus there was mutual loyalty.
          Then in comes big box stores. Drives ’em out. Now the folks who’ve replaced the mom n’ pop hardware store at Big Box are minimum wage drones who can’t answer your plumbing or electrical questions.
          And what’s really enraging is how towns give huge tax breaks for these retailers to come — to kill the mom n’ pops who were there 50 years and never once got a tax break. I lean politically right but one thing conservatives hate to acknowledge is how Corporate Welfare is a HUGE problem.
          America’s best days are loonnngggg gone.

          1. Much like the video stores dying, I don’t need as much advice from small stores on such matters as getting a car part, plumbing, or electrical. As a modern consumer, I search the web for youtube videos and advice as to how to diagnose a problem, pick a part, and install and test it.
             I also like the selection of big box stores and the web. With the small stores, they maybe have one a few choices but with big box, I can find a lot more.
             I personally don’t shop at walmart (believe it or not, I don’t like their selection) and stick with Home Depot or Advance Auto and big box specialty stores.

          2. Good Points. I would argue I’m the same way. Do own research prior to buying product. I do have to say WalMart is a God Send in some areas. For example I run a full synthetic oil which is normally around $50 for 5 quarts but WalMart sells it between $23-$26 for 5 quarts.
             I guess my overall point was the loyalty factor. With the mom n pops employees stayed for decades as employer valued them. With these big boxes, all employees are seen as easily disposable.

          3. I was watching Saturday Night Fever and the film starts out with a local paint store owner wanting Tony to consider selling paint as a career and to view other men having done that job for the past 30 years as a success.
             It was an interesting film because it touches upon some of the things modern men face today 40 years later. The girl he chose as a dance partner criticized him for a lack of ambition. While Tony was dancing the night away into his mid-20’s and getting laid and worrying about how to spend his paycheck on a new polyester dance shirt, she was going to school to get into a management office job and escape the working class Italian ghetto. The end of the film has her talking with Tony “as a friend” because she had no interest in him as a romantic partner.
             What I liked about the film was how the emerging career woman was portrayed as a (truly) likable woman. She didn’t want to settle for being married to someone like Tony (in his current state) and who can blame her? Tony was a loser who hung out with other losers. Unwilling to wait for a moderately successful beta male, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She at least didn’t resort to victim feminism and demand special accommodations. The other working class girls of the region seemed to have reasonable expectations of the men either as potential husbands or even one-night stands. Later on, as women “broke the glass ceiling” and became more established, this “nice career woman” vibe shattered as they lost touch with their working class roots.
             Anyways, the mom and pop store you refer to often hired locals while many small businesses that the left whines about being shut down are full of illegals working under the table while engaging in identity fraud and illegal tax refund claims. Times have certainly changed.

       3. ” Tumbleweeds roll down small town main street as walmart lobbies to pass laws”
          Or more accurrately Walmart simply purchases the laws with bribes.
          I like your analysis of what happens when a huge chain comes to town. I for one am a capitalist, but at times things can out of hand. Not sure what the answer is

20. The one belief in the Republican ideology that does make sense to me is:
    “If you are poor, then you are either lazy or extremely stupid”
    This may offend a few but it’s safe to say that each and every person who is happy with a career in retail can relate to that.
    http://www.oppinon.com

    1. “If you are poor you may have been extremely screwed over”.
       Cinder Ella

       1. “If you are born poor, it’s not your fault. However if you die poor, it is completely your fault!”
          -Bill Gates

          1. It’s always easy when you have money to forget how one or two shit storms can leave you in the poor house.

          2. Whoever you are cinder ella, you sure seem to have a defeatist attitude. Do what suits you! Ciao….

          3. Please read my above posting.

          4. Bill Gates came from a wealthy family to begin with. No rags to riches story.

          5. You have my permission to whine!

          6. k. thanks.

    2. This country is going to hell in a handbasket because both parties are out to get men from either side: For the left, it’s the welfare mother/feminist patriarchy. For the right, it’s about squeezing beta men economically to make the alphas rich(er).
       The “American Dream” is laden with traps to snare otherwise intelligent, hard-working men who exhibit the slightest amount of carelessness: Marry the wrong woman. Have sex with the wrong woman (who decides out of the blue to just file a false rape claim against you and destroy our life and career), buy a home in 2007 at the height of the real estate bubble. Buy a home now.
       All that said, in general, even in the states it’s possible to acquire wealth by merely being frugal and exercising some modicum of enterprise. Get a certification as an electrician or plumber and you can make $80 an hour. Open up a small garage and same deal. These careers actually make a lot of working class men rich. At the same time, if you have a PhD in Computer Science from MIT, good luck. Microsoft hires PhD’s from Mumbai at $30 an hour.

       1. “At the same time, if you have a PhD in Computer Science from MIT, good luck. Microsoft hires PhD’s from Mumbai at $30 an hour.”
          Bull Shit. Fucking fairy tales. Microsoft can suck my dick.
          http://www.hrg.net/job-listing/?category_id=4
          http://www.hrg.net/job-listing/?category_id=3

          1. There’s a reason why the media is bashing TRUMP for his remarks and endless focus on not hurting feelings of illegals. Corporations are desperate for cheap labor in every industry. And perhaps Trump really is the outside agent who would put end to it. Thus they’re trying to destroy him.
             Is it not mind boggling to see what’s occurring on TV? Illegals are of more importance than … CITIZENS in this election cycle.

          2. Honestly man, I don’t have a TV so no idea what’s going on. Only what’s filtering towards me through the alternate media…

          3. I watched the Miss America pageant last night on Reelz network. NBC had dropped Trump’s pageant out of retaliation for his remarks. Even FOX wouldn’t carry Trump’s pageant!
             Corporate sponsorship for the pageant was sparse. They REALLY like that cheap labor or they’re too worried about catching flak from everyone else for falling out of line.
             Funny thing about the pageant is how PC it’s become over the years. EVERY contestant was a career woman with many top finishers ball-busting lawyers. None of them talked about becoming a mother and wife. They were like asexual fembots from Austin Powers.
             I’ve disagreed with Trump in the past on a lot of things, but he’s at least shaking up the status quo and THAT is worth gold. He’s double the top leader in the field right now in the polls as well as everyone’s second choice if their candidate doesn’t place.
             He also exposes the weakness of the other opponents amnesty positions as well. Even if the establishment got rid of him tomorrow, he’s exposed the remaining field as a bunch of second rate Democrats. It’s either Trump or Hillary in 2016.

       2. Funny you mentioned the 2007 real estate bubble as it can be predicted decades in advance. All it takes is a little bit of financial knowledge and everything seems clearer. In fact, 2008 was the best time to buy.
          http://oppinon.com/2015/07/11/how-to-predict-the-next-housing-bubble/

          1. No, the best time to buy would have been 2001.

          2. That’s an interesting take. How so? I would like to see your point your view.

    3. It’s outdated to be blunt. It’s along the lines of O’Reilly who thinks the world is as it was when he was beginning and if one simply does what he did now, they’ll make it. (LOL)
       I too used to think the poor were lazy or stupid. It seems if one had decent head on shoulder and a work ethic they could do well. Consider years ago there were plenty of manufacturing jobs. I knew a low intellect guy from Pittsburgh who was raking it in because he worked hard in steel mills.
       But that opportunity is GONE. What I see now are many people who are intelligent and have work ethic struggling to make ends meet as everything has become low wage work. If one wants to gain a technical skill now to get ahead, they must in-debt themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars. Here’s another example. I had an uncle who became an anesthesiologist post college in early 80’s. He walked out with only $1,500 in debt and makes $150,000 annually.
       I’ve got a friend who just finished PA school and is in over $150K debt.
       Sorry to sound like a liberal but the opportunity to get ahead solely on hard work is not really there anymore.

       1. What you’re saying is true my friend. The only piece of miscommunication we seem to have is that we perceive the word intelligence in two different ways. I am guessing you assume intelligence to be academic intelligence or something relating to a certain trade or profession. Though important, that does not guarantee you success.
          I also agree that hard work alone does not mean you will be successful. Instead, hard work is the bare minimum you ought to have in order to set yourself on the path to riches. What’s even more important is financial intelligence, worldliness, opportunism and a lot of street smarts. Look at Mayweather for example. The guy can barely read. Yet, he is the richest athlete ever. He is highly intelligent, just in a way that isn’t obvious to many who end up hating on him.
          The first step is to know that we are controlled by a system. Understand the system, know how it works and use it to your advantage.

          1. No. I assume intelligence as one who can carry on conversation about many subjects, picks new things up quickly, knows how to engage in face to face communication, good written skills, etc. Hardly the narrow academic type.
             But the person I described today struggles too as the whole modern hiring thing has gone online where software pulls out key words to pick or toss resumes. A person I describe would fare totally well in the days of knocking on doors. But knocking on doors is thing of past too. I’ve heard countless stories where those who do it now are told to “go online” and borderline have cops called on them.

          2. Being in the recruiting industry myself, i could not agree with you more. The keyword intensiveness i see in the resume searches that occur in today’s world are mind boggling. So much so that even though i place candidates on a regular basis, i am not able to find my two best candidates a job.
             The truth is ever since the death of the industrial age and the birth of the information age in 1989, working a 9-5 job isn’t exactly a good prospect anymore. You either become self-employed, start your own business or start investing full-time.

21. Fast Food is worst place to work at to support yourself. You have to work really hard for low pay. Customers always right and if some customers don’t want you around the manager would rather just get a pay check then pay you.

    1. There’s this great line in “Coming to America” where the servant says “I’ve been assigned to mopping the floors but I’m next in line to work fries and THEN the money will come pouring in!”

       1. That was fuckin brilliant! I found the youtube clip:
          

22. I don’t know anyone who purposely sets out to make a career in retail.
    However … given the state of economy since 2009, I’ve seen plenty of intelligent people that had no choice but a retail job in order to get pay check.
    My parents put me in private education from the get-go. When it was time for high school, they pushed me to attend a private high school that was 35 miles away from my home. When graduating, I could see the difference between myself and those who went to the crummy public high school in my hometown. The folks who graduated Top 10 from my school were very well rounded and got into great schools. Including some of the top business schools in the country.
    We graduated college in 2008 and that’s when the economy tanked. I literally watched kids who graduated from top business colleges forced to take bagging jobs at grocery stores.
    I struggle to think intelligent people really get stuck in retail by choice. Now a days, those in hiring positions really have 0 clue what it’s like as they’ve never faced unemployment or gap in their resume. I envision when one who is intelligent but presently working retail (with goal of it only being short term) submits application/ resume, these hiring cunts quickly over look them as they think one working in retail lacks ambition. Thus, I can see how people get “stuck” in retail.

    1. When I was young I put down my retail experience on my professional resume and found what you just said is true: It’s poison. From that point on, I explained gaps in my experience by claiming to have gone on world trip jaunts to blow off youthful steam. They’d rather have a middle class brat getting drunk at Oktoberfest than someone slaving away to show his work ethic.

       1. During my summer breaks in high school and college I ran my own hardscaping business. Hardscaping is custom construction of stone walkways, patios and retaining walls.
          I made mistake of thinking this on my resume would indicate I had a strong work ethic. It proved toxic to me as it demonstrated I was independent.
          Here’s what I’ve learned: employers want mind numb drones. People in hiring roles don’t know what it’s like now a days nor care. They treat brilliant individuals with period of unemployment courtesy of 2008 meltdown — and taking retail jobs to survive — as lazy, unmotivated bums.
          Anyone who thinks it’ll get better is a fool. Employers learned in 08 they could get more for a lot less. And beside technology replacing jobs, there is an undeniable push to get immigrants here so corporations can get even cheaper labor.
          Welcome to the Globalized Economy.

          1. I get where you’re coming from. When I was hard lucked looking for money after an ER visit I had to make some quick cash, so I started putting in job apps. Being that I haven’t had a regular job in several years (I’m a work from home illustrator) I had big gaps in my employment history. I had to dumb down my resume in order to get hired for a position.

          2. “Anyone who thinks it’ll get better is a fool. Employers learned in 08 they could get more for a lot less. And beside technology replacing jobs, there is an undeniable push to get immigrants here so corporations can get even cheaper labor.
             Welcome to the Globalized Economy”
             Well said good sir.

          3. Yeah. Any gap and HR twats act like you were incarcerated for being a perv.

          5. Now if you don’t want a job and want to stay on unemployment take some speed first before an interview
             

          6. After my last experience in retail those 3 weeks, I vowed never to do that again. It only made me want to push my own business harder and faster.

          7. Can confirm. Couldn’t find a job for a month and a half, shed jobs off my resume. Job in a week.

          8. Luckily I have an old boss who’s willing to help me cover the gap in mine. He’s a very nice man to do this for me.

          9. Yeah. Had to fudge a few dates on the resume.

    2. Happens to older people like myself who are told to get a “survival job”. When did Tim Horton’s become the Canada Employment Agency?

       1. I’ve seen plenty of older folks who had good careers lose job due to ’08 meltdown go through same shit. People making $60K annually now struggling for a $10/hr Job.
          I’ve watched folks who were never unemployed … but now out of work and applying day in and day out, finally get Fed Up with how they’re treated worse than a felon for being unemployed, pulling out of search all together.

          1. I have applied for over 150 jobs since February. I decided this week to stop looking.

          2. Sorry to hear. But I get it. I’ve watched some older people I know put in for work every day for the last few years get maybe one or two interviews. These were people who have no criminal record and a solid work history up until recently when economy tanked.
             Years ago I think many of us couldn’t have imagined ever giving up on job search. But now it’s become so insane you get to point where if you continue with it, you’re liable to crack up.
             I say this not to be rude, but the reality is those who lose jobs now a days will more than likely never be employed again unless it’s low wage retail. As I remarked earlier, the cunts in hiring positions have no clue what it’s like now and think a person who has been unemployed for more than 5-6 months is an unmotivated bum.

          3. Why not try to get a job teaching English in another country?

          4. “I say this not to be rude, but the reality is those who lose jobs now a days will more than likely never be employed again unless it’s low wage retail. ”
             Scary shit, but you are correct. The landscape is changing for the worse. I wish I was in my 70’s and dying so I wouldn’t have to bear witness to a rotting corpse of what was once a great nation.
             The baby boomers enjoyed the best period in America.

          5. I don’t have a degree.

          6. Scary shit is when you realize that one option is a homeless shelter.

          7. The employment landscape is changing, and yes if you are older you’re most likely going to be screwed, but younger people can embrace the kinds of “dirty” jobs such as working in a skilled trade that had been “too good for” most people in recent years.

          8. I had a friend of mine in his 50’s take his life because he was obsolete. Men his age and older are deemed useless by today’s society.

          9. There were no Boomer homeless shelters. Just flop houses on the Bowery(now an improved gentrified area)

          10. Why do you think those jobs are easy to get? Isnt everyone else trying that now too? And you may not be able to come back to the US, cause you’ll be too broke from making minimum wage in that foreign country.

23. #1 doesn’t apply to me at all, but the rest, especially #2, are totally spot-on.

24. Probably the biggest reason to avoid working in retail:
    -Getting accused of shoplifting.
    Honest to God, I cannot tell you the number of times this has happened to me. Everytime I worked at a retail store, money would go missing from the tills (most likely because of someone making a mistake or some asshole genuinely stealing) and I would always get the blame. And then the managers would get the cops involved and ask me to sign some sort of paperwork, threaten to put me on disciplinary action etc.
    Fuck that shit. Seriously, whenever someone at management threatens to give you a criminal record, walk away fast. When you get a criminal record, your life as you know it, will be fucked. Even with surveillance footage which can support your case, the manager who is some asshole, will try to make you into a scapegoat to cover their own ass. Even the fucking unions are useless in these matters.
    Fuck retail, fuck management and fuck every asshole who makes peoples lives a living hell.

    1. One of my first jobs was working at a gas station in Pennsylvania for the minimum wage of $3.65 an hour (at the time.) One of my co-workers was held responsible because the floor safe where we were supposed to drop our receipts for the night was stolen from (probably, he thinks because it was full and the bank pickup hadn’t happened) and the envelopes stolen.
       He was on the hook for $1,000.00. How many hours is that?
       Management also expected me to show up 15 minutes early to do inventory and 15 minutes late to check off on the next shift. Unpaid. Amazing.
       So let’s see: unpaid overtime (now that I know this is illegal and I could have demanded backpay after learving) along with holding employees responsible for funds that management didn’t properly secure. Such is the lot of the “Clerk’s” life.
       But not all retail gigs were bad. I got a job at JCPenny and it was actually rather fun. Customers were pretty easy to deal with in our section of the department store (sports) and there were a LOT of HOT girls working in nearby departments. We very rarely had to do anything grinding such as inventory so I just had to run checkout. Most of the time, boredom was the enemy but interesting co-workers alleviated that problem (did I mention the HOT girls?) Granted, this was 30 years ago and in a relatively rural area with few “blue state” feminist values.

       1. american women were probably the hottest in the world back in the good old 1980s.

          1. The ’80s gives me a boner.

          2. oh yeah.

          3. I loved the 80’s and look back upon them nostalgically, but it wasn’t perfect by any means. Career women were emerging and the dating culture was harsh like those shoulder pads on Joan Collins. Women were still feminine, but the man-hating culture you see today was thriving on college campuses. Working class women were still relatively untouched by the poison.
             Although this doesn’t prove anything and is a shallow way to judge an era, I think the 60’s were the best era for hot women in the states: Most women were not hippies or feminists and dressed in a feminine manner (moreso than today), had a sense of humor (yes, a sense of humor!) and wouldn’t get a man fired for telling a fart joke, and put a lot of work daily into their hair and makeup. By shallow, I mean look at the Bond girls. Watch “The spy who loved me” or Dr. No and compare her to the cold professional women of the bond films of the 80’s. I DATED those cold, professional women in the mid-80’s and they were the precursor to the monsters you see today.
             NONE of them had tattoos.
             But even then, and take this from an old timer, women in Europe were superior to women in the states. American women were better back in the 50’s and 60’s than today, but European women of the time were much more practical about sex and dating (and better than they are now)
             Let’s face it: It’s not just feminism that made modern American women suck but also the materialistic culture we live in combined with sexuality puritanism.

          4. Confirmed.

          5. It’s difficult for millennials to imagine the time so I’ll illustrate:
             During the 70’s, America was largely a depressing place. The economy stank, the USA was coming out of a war in Vietnam (much like Iraq/Afghanistan), the leftist media flooded the airways with propaganda saying the USA sucked compared to Europe, and crime was sky high as Democrats recruited new voters from the welfare underclass. The movies of the time were dark and grim: Dirty Harry, Death Wish, The Warriors, Kramer vs Kramer. Optimism when it appeared was in a far off future (star wars) but not in the present.
             Reagan came into office and turned it around and said America was the greatest country on Earth (the left found this statement to be offensive since Europe was the greatest, in their view) and the economy could be great again. Despite a short recession after he entered into office and then another one mid-term term, the rest of the decade was a job creating, pop-culture bang reflected in the music which was optimistic and masculine:
             https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRh4-czxbT0
             
             
             Even so, in the background, feminists and leftists were stepping up their takeover of college campuses. He who controls the present controls the past and he who controls both of those controls the future.

          6. I’m probably older than you old timer but I think that if I could I would go back to the 80’s. The only things I’d have to give up are cell phones, which I don’t use even though I have an iphone, and computers where the Net is just another prole wasteland today anyway and a bore. I’d just have to go back to shopping by phone instead of online and not using e-mail which I rarely use as well.
             Not really a big change in my life. In return I’d get:
             Fewer fat girls to look at to make me sick
             No tattoos
             No such thing as date rape and they never even heard it.If you were drinking with some girl and took her home that was consent.
             No one used condoms(they weren’t even on display and you had to ask for one lol) and no girl ever got knocked up and it would have been impossible to collect child support before DNA, or caught any disease.
             Cops pretty much didn’t give a damn about most things except for an occasional speeding ticket.Most cops the Boomers had were about their parent’s age and almost all were in the army or war and they just didn’t take minor things seriously or would just give a warning. Not like the pussy boys today who want to arrest someone for drinking in public or being under 18 and other minor crap.If he saw someone who looked too young drinking he’d pour it out and tell you to get your arse home, or else.
             More young girls in bars because drinking age was 18 and even that they didn’t enforce very much because there were younger ones.
             No unwed teen mothers. I guess there were some around and no one shamed them, but it was just not the thing to do and a lower class thing.
             The 80’s were Boomers at 30 and still had that Boomer attitude about things.
             No illegals around either.

          7. “No such thing as date rape and they never even heard it.If you were drinking with some girl and took her home that was consent.No one used condoms and no girl ever got knocked up and it would have been impossible to collect child support before DNA, or caught any disease.”
             this highlights the fatal logic that many men on these sites seem to have. they want a good girl YET they want to be able to take home any girl for sex.
             the math doesnt add up….you can’t be doing this to a 100 girls and not expect slut behavior. this kind of attitude is what creates the sluts and whores we have today. it was a generation or two of doing this that created the STD problem, the child support problem and so on.
             back in the early 1900s and the 1800s….there were good wife worthy girls, but that was also because men werent hookers either, or if they were you went to the local whore house and you didnt infect the good population of ladies.
             this works both ways….the math doesnt allow for men to screw 100s of ladies and still maintain a good ratio of high quality wife worthy girls.
             you only want to go back to the 80s so you could enjoy the same ride that got us to where we are today, which is a rotting cesspool. few on the manosphere get that…..today is a cesspool of filth because of a 100 years of bad decisions. you cant take the philosophy of bang tons of girls, transplant it to the magical 100 years ago and not expect to create the same insane result we have today.
             the psychology of women does not allow them to have multiple partners and come out psychologically okay. the ones that had this happen were branded as sluts and became hookers. if you want a lot of partners at least be honest and just pay for sex and don’t pollute the pool of potentially good wives.
             also women shouldnt be a bar to begin with unless its at a strip club.

          8. You’re just some Jesus freak kid who can’t get laid. Having sex has nothing to do with being a good woman. It doesn’t mean she’s a whore or that she goes around fucking everyone.It’s normal for a female to want to have sex and since no one wants to get married at 20 and have a bunch of kids you really can’t expect a girl to remain a virgin forever. Only unsophisticated little sex starved boys believe in the madonna/whore thing.
             Go away little boy and go get some experience before trying to teach granny how to suck eggs. Your problem is that you’re so defective that you just can’t get a decent girl to have sex with you so you have to make up all of these silly kid rules and rationalisations about females and sex.

          9. Ah the 80’s! Before Mickey got his face messed up boxing and from bad plastic surgery.Now he has to act in Wrestler films.
             

          10. And let me add that it was homosexuals who brought you these new deadly diseases not straight people.Syphilis and gonorrhoea had been wiped out before I was born. As a med student I asked an instructor if he ever heard of a case and he said no, but then thought for a moment and said, there may be some among homosexuals. How was it wiped out? When a doctor treated syphilis he had to report it to the Health dept. who would discretely contact you and find out who you had sex with so they could be notified to get examined and treated if they had contracted it. The homos managed to get these notifications stopped cos you know it’s like an invasion of something or other.
              And for minor things like herpes, HPV etc 1/2 the people carry it and don’t even know it and only rare people have outbreaks of them. You may have contracted it at any time in your life eg. like in kindergarten with that kid who slobbered over you all the time. They used to be called cold sores and it’s nothing to be concerned about. It’s the same virus regardless of where it is on your body despite being initially in medicine divided into genital and other types.

          11. Here, here.

          12. 60s and 70s women look great in pictures and movies, very classy but yeah, that was a bit before my time. when i talk about 80s women, i’m really talking about high school girls, because that’s the age i was back then. i remember the level of feminine beauty in high school being up around what i saw in ukraine 10 years ago. lots of sweet girls too. maybe they got colder and harder as they moved up into the professional world.

          13. butt hurt I see because I spoke truth. and thanks for the kind insults good sir.

       2. “our section of the department store (sports) and there were a LOT of HOT girls working in nearby departments. ”
          The other drawback to retail is that hot chicks you meet in your work will have nothing to do with you, because you work in retail. Even though they themselves work in retail, they will consider you a 4th class citizen much like any other non millionaire.

          1. I have fond memories of that work actually and regret not having pursued a relationship with a cute girl working in women’s wear who was flirting with me. She was a real hard-working sweetheart.
             I don’t know what it’s like now, of course, but in this blue collar neighborhood not near any big “blue” city, there weren’t too many millionaires in town and these women had more practical ambitions out of men. Many were even generous (yes, GENEROUS!).
             I think what makes the women in a region bitchy is when there’s a lot of money flowing around and the women lose sight of what is achievable. I live in the metro DC region and my wife’s single friend’s are miserable even though they’re surrounded by high income men. These women don’t want to make any effort to find the best men and they have super high demands and little to offer. But in the working class neighborhood I grew up in, it was the opposite.
             Affluence and equality ruins women. Feminism is just a condiment. Like ketchup on a turd.

    2. That’s because it was the manager stealing it 😉

25. I should be entitled to a free degree in human psychology after working in direct customer service (a fuel station clerk) for the last four years…
    .
    I think there ought to be a law passed that says that ALL fresh high school graduates should spend at least 1 year in direct customer service; I think that would be beneficial.

26. I feel bad for anyone who needed this article to tell them this.

    1. it’s a lot of readers though, that should tell you something. unless you’re selling blood diamonds to millionaire’s wifes, get out of retail!

27. No kidding…there’s a reason why a reddit sub r/talesfromretail exists

28. Well, we need somewhere for the sub-100 IQs to work

29. This post is 100% accurate as I too for time worked in Retail. The long hours and Politics is enough for a person to slice their throat. I endured with dealing with irate consumers as well as staff. After a wasted four years I finally left i decided I will no longer go back to that bullshit.
    Great post!

30. The author forgot to mention one of the most important reasons: Women in the dating world will have ZERO respect for you. At least career women with professional jobs.
    I was walking around with a friend and we were scoping the local young women working at various stores and I observed to him: “If we were women, this wouldn’t be happening.” Unless the guy is a bodybuilder with low professional ambition working retail, most women are not going to respect him as marriage material.
    A feminist was once mocking me during the real estate boom that I didn’t own a house or have equity. I told her I had a huge savings account especially since I had declared bankruptcy and discharged a lot of consumer debt. She was shocked and horrified. “How could you walk out on your debts?!?!” she screamed.
    The gal who had just expressed zero respect for me when she thought I had no money now was daring to try to criticize me for using the law to retain and build wealth? If she doesn’t respect honest, but poor men (including men working in retail), what motivation is there for men to be good betas?

    1. “Women in the dating world will have ZERO respect for you. At least career women with professional jobs.”
       The feeling should be mutual, meaning that men prefer to date down anyway, and “career women with professional jobs” make lousy wives and mothers. If they were really so intelligent, they’d know that most of them were wasting their years of prime fertility and decreasing their dating pool.

       1. What makes the American paradigm so special is that even working class women often have a bad, unappreciative attitude towards men and family.
          I dated a manager for a Dennys but she had a super entitlement attitude. She told me that she wanted to quit her job after having kids even though it was a “sacrifice” but a “real man” would “step up” and provide for her. Note: She was making the “sacrifices” but the man was expected to do the “stepping up”. This meant in the event of a divorce, she had a lawyer on speed dial.
          I ran for the hills.
          There’s a reason feminism isn’t called egalitarianism. It’s just an extension of feminine chivalrous entitlement. Career women feminists want men to pay the bills while they blow their mad money at Nordstroms. Working class feminists think that men exist to financially provide for them as an entitlement and don’t deserve any gratitude for that role.
          What modern feminism is a repudiation of isn’t women having men support them but rather women being grateful to men for that role. Men shouldn’t be honored providers but rather slaves, in their eyes.

          1. Are you still 300 lbs and trying to find a hooker or is that another ‘Polish Knight’?

          2. I suppose that’s another PolishKnight. I don’t recall “trying” to find hookers. 🙂

       2. ROFL!!!!!

    2. It would depend where you had the retail job. Sure, working at Walmart in the Women’s plus size dept would peg you as a loser but being in the wedding ring dept at Tiffany’s would not.

       1. It would be neat to have some guy working at a diamond retail store report as to how women treat him and whether women starved for male attention (seeing men shower women with expensive rocks) drives them to throw themselves at the nearest decent man or… whether it makes them moody, bitter and materialistic. Considering the way the availability of other expensive goods and income in the west has made western women notoriously apathetic towards men, probably the latter.

31. Hey Roosh, the BP ad is screwing with your site. Makes the page jump around. Drop the stupid thing.

32. I worked up to 6 years doing retail although out high school and some college. I got my first job working at a Sears when I was 16 in the men’s and shoe department. For awhile it was okay money and experience at the time. I was kind of shy so having to talk to a lot of random people and engage them in conversations was a good way for me to come out of my shell so to speak. I also got to work with a lot of pretty girls so that made me overcome my awkwardness at the time. The girl I took to my senior prom was a hot blonde that worked in the juniors department. Since it was a smaller store, I got to know everyone pretty well and had some pleasant experiences. Eventually the things the author pointed out started to emerge. Too long of hours, micro managing female managers, under appreciated work and effort on my part. So I quit. After that I ended up working at an upscale department store for another 2 1/2 years that served me great during college. Every winter back from break I always had a job waiting for me and as many hours as I wanted.
    It wasn’t until that I worked at a GAP one winter break that all the things listed in this article took hold. I was working early morning hours in a store that was at first a traditional GAP store with men’s and women’s then converted into a Women’s only store. With that being in place, they felt that I would be better off working in the stock room as opposed to working in the front where my 6 years of experience was in. They didn’t think it would be comfortable for their women shoppers to have to talk to a male associate. The manager was this newly divorced woman that had a serious chip on her shoulder, she was constantly watching me, checking my appearance my approaches, how I interacted with the customers, and managing my every move in there. Finally one day after her nitpicking of my customer service I told her where to stuff it and I walked out.
    My last experience working in retail came in ’13 where I needed to make some extra money to pay off a hospital bill. I went back to a Sears and was put in the electronics department selling TVs. There I was put with two assholes who cursed and berated me for 3 weeks straights. All the signs that were listed were in full force at this store. Beta male managers, overbearing customers, meaningless pay and benefits, etc. I walked out after 3 weeks.
    Here are some other things you’ll encounter working in retail:
    -Violent Shoplifters and/or people trying to distract you while their friends steal from you.
    -Security that acts like they’re you’re friend (but watching you more closely than they do the customers at some times).
    -Finding used condoms in the dressing room (It’s a thrill for some couples to have sex in public places)
    -Black Fridays. I worked 4 of these as did my sister. Will never do so again.
    -Having to work with bitchy women all damn day.
    -Fake ass friendly co-associates. This counts double if you’re working in a commissioned based department like TVs and home appliances.
    -Endless bureaucracy and paperwork.
    -Terrible insurance plans (if you’re even lucky enough to get any)
    -Customer service. Sometimes the customer isn’t right.

    1. The hot blonde at your first job seems to be the only perk. I hear some companies have fraternizing rules. What you did is miles apart from one of my first jobs carrying scaffolding boards up a ladder, removing old stucco and picking up site trash. To see a hot blonde even pass by my jobsite was a rarity. Workers on the scaffolding would catcall, grab their crotches and whistle at ANY female who walked by. It could be someone’s grandmother walking by and they’d holler out ”yeah baby, cut that carpet” ”looking nice”. The pay was twice minimum wage and at least I could go into mcdonalds whistling and singing ”my job’s better than your job”. I actually did fast food once so I know what ”will work for food” really translates to, and that is working in a burger joint for burger bucks or for the occasional ‘whopper’ credit for doing insane marathon work like you were on speed.

       1. Yah she was very pretty. Far prettier than any of the girls who were at my high school. She did local beauty pageants, sent out modeling portfolios and went to auditions in Chicago for TV parts. What sucked though afterwards was that she was fired from work. Turned out her and another girl had been shoplifting and stealing money from the store for almost 4 months! If I had known that I would’ve asked her to help pay for the expensive dinner I took us to. Being that she was only 17 at the time, she was treated as a minor, got a slap on a wrist was was let off. Never heard from her again after that. I found her on facebook not too long ago and surprisingly still looked pretty good. Working retail is probably the worst place to meet women, especially the ones you work with. Occasionally a hottie will come through the department and you have a non threatening way to approach. If you game them right it can turn into an easy date. I worked with one guy that had a lot of good natural game and always had women from other departments coming over to flirt and have lunch with during their breaks.

    2. “They didn’t think it would be comfortable for their women shoppers to have to talk to a male associate”
       Well fuck… Honestly im I’d prefer to work in the back then deal with some bitches brazier questions. This does make sense. I always hated customers anyway so i always liked work that separated me from them.

33. I hear fast-food is even worse.

34. i feel like everyone should work retail or fast food job once in their life, just so they havall of these experiences.

35. Guys have to be told not to make a career out of retail? :/ Even at the tender age of twenty, I know it’s just something you do until you’re qualified for a better job. Good article though.

36. Can everyone FLAG these damn things whenever they pop up so they GO AWAY? I’m absolutely SICK of seeing them whenever I’m reading comments.

37. #1 rings true, except The Main Manager was a Male where I worked, but all the shift managers Underneath him were females,.. all of them,… and all they did was sit in the Managers office and Gossip, a few did some things, but when it came to some uncomfortable customer confrontations and undesirable/Physical work, guess who got to do those jobs, the male workers,

    1. “The Main Manager was a Male where I worked, but all the shift managers Underneath him were females,”
       His harem

       1. I often thought that lol.

38. Reatail is best suited to hiomosexual men and women with worthless degrees and/or no ambition in life.
    And don’t even get me started on the customers. I’d go back to retail but only at a higher end store and I’m not talking Macy’s or Dillard’s.
    Had my family not stressed manners and class in public I woulda had a much easier time dealing with the dregs of society.
    We had a high-end men’s clothing shop at the mall I worked at where you literally had to be wealthy (or just incredibly stupid with your money if you weren’t) to even consider buying anything: no tie for under $100, suits were rarely priced below a $1,000—-that kinda place.
    If you want to meet the white trash and other assorted scum of your area, simply go apply at your nearest JCPenney 😀

    1. Or a Sears.

       1. Definitely Sears. Fuck that place. And fuck Kenneth Marshall. Fat cunt!

39. Don’t forget, you learn to be a kiss-ass.

40. As long as there is money being exchanged retail will never go away. I’ve been stuck in sales for 10+ years. It really is terrible mostly because of the absolute fucktards out there that try and take as much as they can and give nothing in return.

41. With the high number of women in that field the chances of scoring a short term fling is pretty high

42. I remember almost losing my shit due listening to a singing fish for 8 hours straight.

    1. Hope you’re okay man.

43. What I hated about working in retail was the way they dealt with theft. Whenever we caught people stealing, we weren’t allowed to touch them. We could tell them that we caught them shoplifting, and we could tell them to come with us to the manager’s office, but they knew they could run out without being chased. But the people at the corporate headquarters always made us watch videos about theft, and reminders to be aware of shoplifters were on our paychecks and on posters in the breakroom. What’s the point of being aware of a problem if you’re prohibited from doing anything?

    1. Eh it isn’t a bad thing. Is any job worth risking your life over, especially if it is such a crappy one?

       1. Yeah. I was in a drug store and an obviously mentally ill guy stole a cheap item. The guy clerk ran after him and ended up getting the crap beat out him for a less than $5 item. I didn’t stick around for the popo to arrive.

44. I used to work retail and I can confirm it is horrific. The worst problem is the homo problem. You work with homos who try it on with you. Homos come in not to buy clothes but to try it on with you. And every chick that comes in thinks you’re a homo too. After, if you’re not gay, fuck are you working retail for?
    Also, chicks working retail are the sluttiest around. Good to know if you are practicing day-game though…

    1. you’re probably a homo then!

       1. You’re probably a fucking idiot.

    2. Where did you work?

       1. Banana Republic and Macys, among others.

45. A former co-worker of mine was of exceptionally high intelligence and only planned to work retail while in school for computer science. Following all the time and effort his had placed in his degree, he preferred to stick with the breeze of retail because he got used to it.

    Holy shit.
    This exact same thing happened to a very good friend of mine in college. He was very adept and skilled in computer engineering. I tracked him down a few years later and he was still working at a grocery store.
    I couldn’t believe it. I might try to find him again, but I do hope he moved on.

46. I made retail my career and it’s not so bad. There are downsides to owning your own shop – you have to either find good staff (not easy when you’re reluctant to pay more than minimum wage) or do everything yourself (which makes for long hours). The most annoying part is dealing with shoplifters. I can’t physically restrain them without risking being up on an assault charge myself and if I leave them to the police the chances of them ever being caught are slim unless I happen to know their name and address. Even if the police do manage to catch them, their ‘punishment’ will begin and end with them having to pay for the stuff they nicked. Even a repeat offender will get off with a few hours of community service. The Muslims have got one thing right – cut the fuckers’ hands off. Maybe not for a first offence, and I’d want lenience for someone who’s poverty-stricken stealing a loaf of bread to stave off starvation, but I see no reason to have mercy on delinquents who repeatedly steal just because they think they can get away with it.

    1. My wife worked at a women’s clothing store and said that she found Q-tips in the changing room which was shoplifter code (like HOBO code) for “easy place to steal from). That store had a policy that they didn’t have cameras ANYWHERE in the store (even to at least ID a shoplifter’s face while leaving or entering.)
       I don’t think you’re correct that you can’t restrain someone for shoplifting. It’s called a citizen’s arrest and probably varies from state to state. But it certainly is worth considering from a legal perspective to know the law if you’re running a business. One store in Philadelphia had a great system: The Wall of Shame. However they caught these folks, they made them pose for a Polaroid with the stuff they stole and were banned from the store.

       1. I’m in the UK, and the leftists who run the government have made the law into a criminal’s charter. A couple of stories:
          With regards to the ‘Wall of Shame’, I’ve often wanted to do something like that. I’ve wanted to put mugshots of shoplifters on my shopfront as wanted posters with a small reward for anyone who identifies them. I’ve wanted to upload CCTV footage of shoplifters for the whole internet to see. But here’s what’s stopping me: https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/cctv/
          I’m not a lawyer, nor can I afford to hire one. I don’t want to be sued by a thief for breaching their right to privacy – even if I won the case, the chances of me being able to recover my legal costs from any such litigant are slim.
          I could try to make a citizen’s arrest, but if I had to use force to do so, I would probably be charged for assault. I learnt this the hard way when a group of about a dozen adolescent males (and a couple of females) decided to smash my shop’s windows in after I refused them service on the basis that half of them are known shoplifters and the rest are loiterers and troublemakers. I grabbed a baseball bat and chased them off – though I had to take a couple of swings at them to succeed in this as they tried to attack me when I asked them to move on. I only managed to chase them about 20 metres away and they persisted in loitering so I called the police before they could do any more damage. Next thing, I’m being questioned on suspicion of assault and possession of an offensive weapon. I was only spared being charged by reaching an agreement with the vandals that I wouldn’t press charges against them for criminal damage if they didn’t press charges against me for assault. I was also helped by ‘technical difficulties’ which ‘unfortunately’ prevented me from providing the police with CCTV of the incident.
          So if I was nearly charged with assault for swinging a baseball bat in self-defence at vandals who were physically attacking me and my property, what do you think would happen if I used physical force against a non-violent shoplifter? What I usually do when someone shoplifts and refuses to return the item after I’ve told them I know they’ve got a bottle of coke stuffed in their jacket is leave the shop in an employee’s hands while I chase them (they are usually on foot, so if I can jump in my car I can usually keep up with them). I will then get their address, or at least an address of someone who is linked with them, giving a better chance of identifying them later.
          The most satisfying story was when a couple of middle-aged hags stashed a bottle of wine in one of their handbags. I let them leave without letting on that I knew what they were up to, then jumped in my car. They were in their car too so I noted their number plate and pursued at a discreet distance. After driving around for about 10 minutes, they pulled up in their driveway and got out congratulating each other on ‘a job well done’. That was when I got out of my car and said “Hello there. That will be £7 for the bottle of wine you stole, £5 petrol money, £10 for my time, and another £43 to stop me from passing my CCTV and your address and number plate on to the police. £65 to keep a clean criminal record then, please.” The looks on their faces was priceless.
          The police are bloody useless though. I once had a man in his 20s try to pay with a fake £20. He did a runner when I told him that the note was fake (though not before trying and failing to snatch the note back from me) and I got his number plate. The police tracked him down and the CPS were all set up to bring a case against him, but the case ended up being dropped because the police lost the fake note which was crucial evidence in the case against him. If the man didn’t look like a typical benefits scrounger who couldn’t afford to pay for a pot to piss in, I would have suspected that he’d slipped the coppers a bribe. But as Hanlon’s Razor says, any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

          1. Crazy how crooks have more rights than law-abiding people these days.

          2. Yikes! What a story!
             When the left preaches about how much less violent it in in Europe compared to the states, what they fail to note is that:America has a lot more violent folks from certain sections of the world (but that’s changing in Britain, as you know. My friend in Krakow saw the first homeless migrant sitting in the town square. There will be more. I suggest you view “The Warriors”, a classic film about urban crime in the states.)
             The good news is that storeowners here seem to have a right to restrain criminals and even defend themselves and if the police arrest a storeowner in that case, social media will be all over them. The left sneers with derision at “foxnews” for daring to report this stuff but usually when social media breaks out or foxnews as to some gang banger attacking a storeowner and then the police taking the gang banger’s side, it gets covered pretty fast here.
             Also, juries usually get involved and will dismiss the case after telling the DA to piss off. They are well aware of this as well.
             The left certainly tried to create the culture you describe for the states but the popularity of Dirty Harry and Death Wish films of the 70’s created a permanent public support for tough-on-crime laws that we have here. In some ways, it can go too far but it’s one of the good things about the states.
             Gang bangers think twice about this kind of stuff in rural regions since a lot of folks here pack heat and aren’t afraid to use it.

    2. No one is poverty stricken in the US where they have no food to eat. If you had no money all you would have to do is go to a welfare office and get food stamps, about $200 for someone who had nothing.And if you told them you had 0 to eat they’d give you some emergency stamps to tide you over until you application was approved.

       1. It’s the same in the UK. The ‘poorest’ in society are those on job-seeker’s allowance which is about £70 a week plus housing benefit to cover rent and various other tax exemptions/extra benefits to cover basically everything except food, utilities and clothing; unemployed parents get extra benefits to pay for stuff for their kids. I just put in that bit about wanting lenience for someone poverty-stricken who steals a loaf of bread to pre-empt any liberal SJWs saying “Well what about someone who steals food to feed his starving family? Would you want to cut his hand off too?” No, I wouldn’t; chasing after such a thief and demanding he be mutilated for his crime would be so clichéd that Dickens himself would consider such behaviour to make for an unrealistic villain.

47. I used to work as a retail. It was soul crushing. I could literally feel my soul seeping away from my body. During the break, I remember I went to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes were as dead and it was beyond pathetic. It was mentally exhausting that I even felt it in my whole body even though I didn’t lift anything heavy. It was standing around, forced to smile to customers and greet them with bullshit “hi, how are you? did you find everything you need?”
    In fact, I felt so tired that even deadlifting isn’t even comparable to a horrible retail work.

48. Ah, retail. If this isn’t proof of Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs, I don’t know what is.
    My own predilections are probably a source of some of the misery these poor, slack-jawed bastards must endure. I figure that if some place is going to enjoy the privilege of me spending my hard-earned shekels there, they should go out of their way to please me, be it the grocery store, big-box store (not to be confused with a strip club), etc. Therefore, if I say I want something a certain way, it should be done that way. I don’t make unreasonable demands, but if I ask the asshole at the deli counter to change his gloves before handling my order and he doesn’t or rolls his eyes at me, you bet your ass that I’m going to make a little project of him. It becomes my mission to break him so that he stares down at the floor in abject humiliation, forcing him to consider what a pile of shit his life is, having no choice but to suck up to someone he truly detests, realizing that his whole life will be spent riding the minimum-wage carousel with no real control over what direction it turns.

    1. Lolzor

49. You’re talking about some $10 an hr kid job at Target. The men who work retail either in the men’s dept of some better store or selling cars make over $100k easily. You have to look like the product you’re selling.Upper class men who are reduced for some reason to selling cars can do well selling Mercedes because they look like someone who drives one and more importantly know the sort of people who buy them.
    Don’t worry about Personal because an owner only cares about how much you can sell not whether you’re PC.
    If you work in the men’s dept at Saks you can work yourself into assistant buyer for that dept and make $150k or even buyer for that dept and they earn $200-300K

50. this article could not be more accurate though i admit there is one part i do disagree with slightly
    “While it can be a decent gig if you are working through college and nothing else is available”
    its not even good for that…..the aforementioned 5 reasons are just 5 out of hundreds. retail is a soul sucking job. you go there to lose your soul for the small price of peanuts really. yes poor college student needs a flexiable job, i get it….but lets think about this carefully. you could very easily be that computer science guy in this article. it is way too easy….WAY WAY WAY too easy to get sucked into the cycle of false hope like you are moving up on the ladder.
    “you return home miserable and filled with vindictive thoughts, wanting nothing more than to consume some ready-to-eat food and crash.”
    this cannot be overstated enough….I worked at a grocery store for 4 long years….every night and this was in my early 20s mind you so i had actually had a lot of youthful energy….EVERY NIGHT I’d come home and be ready to die. and it wasnt just me. it was all the employees, we all went home and virtually crashed. there wasnt one of us that went home ready to conquer the world….not one of us. as many fake smiles as we put on and even the most happy of us, we would still go home and die. sure I got picked on just because i lacked the energy to fake smile….but let’s be real. we all went home to our several hour wind down rituals….crashed, and did all over again.
    it was in retrospect pathetic.
    avoid retail people….avoid it. yes someone needs to work at wal mart….but let it be that other idiot, not you….but if it must be you….mark a date on that calendar and vow to be out by then. everyone swears they will get out in a year….but we rarely do. make sure you do.
    one of the worst mistakes I’ve made is working at a grocery store for four years. I only got out because the new store manager was a woman and i refused to put up with her BS follow the book attitude. not sure how i had any balls left after 4 years, but thank God I did.

51. About jobs:
    The more you NEED a job, the more shit it is.
    As long as you know *you* are doing the company a favor by working there, you will not be crushed.
    How does this work?
    Never *NEDD* a job. Do it because you want to do it.
    Have no debt and enough money to live a minimum of 12 months without any income.
    It make a world of a difference.

52. All valid points. But, does anyone actually consider making a career out of retail?

    1. i hope the fools are not many, but then again….

53. You boys have the wrong attitude about work and about life in general which is why you’re always bitching about not getting a girl or complaining about them all being whores (sour grapes really).
    Even if you are working at some kid’s $10 an hr wage at Target in the women’s girdle or Spanx dept. you should treat that job as if you were making $100 an hr and not just mosey around waiting to run home.Despite your bullshit about Personal, people observe who are the good workers and you may be promoted but besides that you should develop a certain attitude about doing whatever you’re doing the best that you can and take pride regarsless of what you’re doing even if it is a lowly job.
    I would also advise that you find a job in the better places even if the pay is the same.Working at Walmart near the ‘hood and around the ‘people of Walmart’ and breaking up fights between a bunch of ‘hair hatted hooligans’ fighting over the last sale Nikes is not where you want to be or where you want to be in general even at a good Walmarts.You want a job in some place like Saks or Brooks Bros. where you are around civilised people who don’t bust your balls and where you are likely to meet a better class they may do you some good.
    OK, now watch some boy who worked at some ‘upscale’ mall store tell me that the customers were all assholes.lol

54. &^$
    Here’s why you’re a moron. Putin doesn’t care about the Russian economy. He cares about the “Putin Economy,” which is about lining his accounts with billions of dollars. He is the head of the
    Russian Maffia. Obama did not hurt Putin. He hurt the Russian citizens that Putin could care less about
    ——-..– http://www.WorldCareersProviders/ supertakecent/cold/marketing…

55. Im currently working at a walmart (been there for about 2.5 months now).
    3rd week in and I almost got into a fight with one of the coworkers. A lot of the coworkers are deluded fools living in their own fantasy world.

56. I’m late to the party, but I definitely think my time in retail really screwed me up. You internalize your peon status with each apology for something that isn’t your fault that you make.
    If I had a son(have daughters) I’d make sure he did something a bit less servile like landscaping or security as a high school/college gig.

57. Having worked five years in retail as a high school/university student, I’m amazed anyone would actually need to read an article to convince them not to choose it as a career. But in any case, yes to all those points above. As bonus advice, don’t go into school teaching either.

    1. 100% agree. school teachers, at least where i’m from, is a total racket of who you know and how much bs you’re willing to swallow to get in.

58. I remember I worked for a supermarket once, stacking the shelves, I only lasted a month and I had enough and told the manager to go fuck themselves, needless to say I walked out straight after that, was the best thing I ever done, now im a success I have my own business and make way more money than any supermarket job will pay.

59. Many moons ago, I was doing my college degree and my usual summer gig was with the army reserve: getting paid to play silly bugger, shoot big guns and blow shit up. . .while keeping a BMI and VO2 max at notable levels.
    .
    One year, no courses came up so I had to take retail job. Never sell shit to kids. Their shithead parents will think their brats are angels. Never take on traffic control duties at a place that sells shit to kids: you will be blamed when your $6 an hour godly presence does not control them, and you will be blamed if you raise your voice or snark at some brat who won’t follow the rules.
    .
    On the plus side is this: if you have to work retail, there are lots of young and sexy women to meet. Several years later I was in law school and had quit the army. My well-paid consulting and teaching jobs fell through and I ended up working retail again, but as retail security. Here I was at 30 years old, and during slow times at the store I could flirt with the teenagers. It was not completely creepy as the one girl I invited showed up at my housewarming with two of her teenage friends. It did get a bit awkward when someone asked them what they were studying (everyone else there was in university or a graduate program) and she had to sheepishly reply “uhm. . .grade 12”.
    .
    The economy is the way it is. A lot of people who have any sense about them will have to balance the shitty but steady wages from the service (including retail) sector against taking some risks, displaying some talent and making some real money.

60. I used to work in that toxic environment. in this case a s a warehouse worker, plus the mangina manager acted always likean asshole …modern day slavery

61. if you can’t figure this out by yourself, just quit life, right now, please…

62. I had to work retail for awhile, and it was a human zoo. But what intrigued me was the number of attractive, young girls (mostly single moms) who played so many head games and strategies to get themselves secured in the workplace. And the managers who instinctively caught on and fucked them. Now, my criticism of those guys is that they were pussies. They’d fuck a girl with the understanding that they’d have to give the girl the hours and pay she wanted. Ok. Fair’s fair. But things usually got to the point that the girls ran things in the store and caused a huge amount of problems when they paraded their favored status around. That’s where the managers were pussies. They let the girls run all over them because they were intimidated or pussy whipped. Then competent and deserving employees got abused/cheated and the company’s bottom line suffered. It didn’t have to happen that way.
    I worked there for a year and I wasn’t planning to stay anyway. But they offered me an assistant manager position and I really thought about taking it because some of those little girls were pretty hot. And I knew that they came along with the position. But I moved on when a better paycheck finally came my way.

63. Bro, I read this article when it was first posted, proceeded to get a job at Target, and proceeded to say fuck that and I quit today. EVERY point you made was spot on. Low-level bitches in “HR” and “leadership” positions that were less than useless. Also the monotony was not worth the pay. Oh, and last thing, watching the “training” videos were a complete exercise in SJW conditioning. I’m not gonna lie, seeing yay Target is for fags plastered everywhere just made my psyche unable to reconcile the meager pay with such a SJW corporation. I left and unless I’m getting paid 13+ I will never set foot into retail again. (An old couple did try to argue fucking prices too, fuck them).

64. I worked retail for three stores. The first was selling linen and NFL memorabilia at a flea market when I was 15. Just a Sunday job, but I learned the value of people skills, how to manage transactions, the value of a good night’s sleep, (some Saturdays I would party until 3 am then to come home have a bite, shower, get dressed, to have my coworker pick me up at 5 am) not to mention all the hot girls walking around with their summer attire on. Next, a small dollar store. Not too bad, only 4 employees. It was the last one that made me, with one exception, refuse to work retail, at a supermarket, where I did both stocker and cashier duties. No overtime, minimum wage, no prospects of a raise, having to deal with assholes, a long drive from home. Believe it or not the women I worked with were pretty cordial. It was the men. See, I worked with Mexican men. If there one big reason Mexico hasn’t advanced, it’s because as soon as one man who’s never had power gets it, he goes into an overdrive power trip. And that’s what happened here. So yeah, unless it’s my own little grocery store, not a fucking 7Eleven, that I’m running on my own, no more retail for me.

    1. Funny I’m hispanic and my last retail job supervisor was a white guy. Total asshole but half of the store hated him. He actually got terminated 2 weeks ago. Idk why however…

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