
My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap - jseliger
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/my-life-as-a-retail-worker-nasty-brutish-and-cheap/284332/
======
krstck
It seems to me that working retail has gotten a lot worse since the recession.
I worked retail after high school before deciding to go to college, and then
worked the same job on summers home from school. What was interesting was that
between when I started that job in 2005 and when I left for the final time in
2010, my coworkers went from being mostly high school and college kids to all
sorts of folks of varying ages and backgrounds. That was the most telling sign
of the recession to me. I strolled in to pick up my job where I'd left off in
2010 and I remember every single day people asking for job applications. I had
thoughts like, why would _you_ want to work _here_? This is a job for kids!
But we even had a PhD biologist for a while.

Conditions have been deteriorating for a while now. Extended hours on
holidays, terrible scheduling, and peculiar "performance measurement" tools.
At my particular store, they adopted a system of tracking how many
transactions a cashier performed per hour and then penalizing them when those
transactions exceeded a certain number. The thought was that if a cashier rang
up so many customers an hour, then some of them had had to _wait in line_ and
the cashier was at fault for not calling backup. (What backup? And what if
they were just a really fast cashier?) Another was the obsession with
collecting customers' email addresses. Cashiers were expected to collect so
many email addresses a day or week or whatever or be _threatened with losing
their job_.

My silly, between school semesters little retail gig had become very stressful
towards the end because of the obsession with these metrics and a general
attitude of "I could fire you today and have someone cheaper by tomorrow".

~~~
mox1
I'd like to point out that this story takes place in one of the highest cost
of living areas in the country. $10 / hour goes a lot further in Kansas than
it does D.C.

I think a lot of people could live OK in the Midwest on $10 / hour.

I wish more people would move away from the super high cost of living areas
(California, New England, ...etc) and "vote with their feet" so to speak. If
10% of the populations of Cali and Massachusetts moved inward, I think that
would drive house prices down and wages up. All the rich people are still
around to buy stuff and no poor people left to work retail.

~~~
w1ntermute
> I wish more people would move away from the super high cost of living areas
> (California, New England, ...etc) and "vote with their feet" so to speak.

This is (and has been) happening for years now. Poorer people are reverse-
migrating from the denser parts of the country to the Sun Belt.

And it's a problem. The high cost of living in many of the "desirable" parts
of the country is artificially created by government regulation of housing (as
well as other markets, thanks to the propensity of densely populated
municipalities to be run by liberals). But with the services sector growing,
it makes more sense for poorer people to live near the wealthy people (who are
going to be in the desirable parts of the country), since those are the people
who can and will buy services. It's very different from, say, manufacturing,
which is far more location-independent.

I firmly believe the problem of high cost of living can be solved through more
sensible housing policies and efficient public transit (among other things).
See this (quite short, at 64 pages) book for more details:
[http://www.amazon.com/The-Rent-Too-Damn-High-
ebook/dp/B0078X...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Rent-Too-Damn-High-
ebook/dp/B0078XGJXO)

It's the services sector that is and will continue to be the most difficult to
replace with outsourcing and automation (see Moravec's paradox:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec's_paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec's_paradox)).
It only makes sense that we try to create as many jobs as possible in this
area. By lowering housing and transportation (and other) costs for people in
the service industry, they can offer their services at a lower cost, allowing
more people to purchase those services, which will drive down unemployment.

~~~
sliverstorm
The crux of your argument is unconvincing. Service jobs have to be near the
wealthy? What kind of myopia is that? Un-wealthy people go out to eat and get
their car repaired just as much as Richie Rich.

Yes, if nobody but tech workers come to San Francisco, the city will collapse.
But that doesn't mean _everybody else_ has to live there too. It's also awful
presumptuous to say, "Well I'm wealthy, this is where I want to live. You are
poor, you don't get a choice, live near me"

~~~
w1ntermute
> The crux of your argument is unconvincing. Service jobs have to be near the
> wealthy? What kind of myopia is that?

Actually, what's myopic is this:

> Un-wealthy people go out to eat and get their car repaired just as much as
> Richie Rich.

People who aren't wealthy don't eat out as much and don't spend nearly as much
when they go out to eat. They buy food that has smaller margins and expect
less in the way of service, meaning lower wages for the workers.

And of course service jobs have to be near the wealthy. When it doesn't matter
where a worker is located, that job gets outsourced. Location-dependent jobs
are the ones that are least likely to disappear in the future (or to have
disappeared already).

> It's also awful presumptuous to say, "Well I'm wealthy, this is where I want
> to live. You are poor, you don't get a choice, live near me"

It's no more presumptuous than Henry Ford was when he expected workers to move
to Detroit to work in the booming automotive industry, rather than setting up
a bunch of small factories all across America so he could accommodate them.
Moreover, in this case, such a policy would help to keep workers from _having_
to move (to the Sun Belt, or another low-cost-of-living locale) away from
their families and communities in the first place.

You can dream all you want of a utopia where people can live in the middle of
nowhere and have their ideal job. But that isn't going to make it a reality.

~~~
sliverstorm
_People who aren 't wealthy don't eat out as much and don't spend nearly as
much when they go out to eat._

My apologies, I didn't mean they spend the exact same $$$. Poor choice in
wording on my part. My point is being poor doesn't mean your car never needs a
mechanic.

 _And of course service jobs have to be near the wealthy. When it doesn 't
matter where a worker is located, that job gets outsourced._

Non sequitur. Plenty of un-outsourceable jobs exist serving people who are not
wealthy.

 _You can dream all you want of a utopia where people can live in the middle
of nowhere and have their ideal job. But that isn 't going to make it a
reality._

Where do I speak of dream jobs? I'm just saying it's awfully self-centered to
think that the poor exist to serve the wealthy.

~~~
w1ntermute
> My point is being poor doesn't mean your car never needs a mechanic.

I know poor people who are decent at basic car maintenance (once again, the
sorts of things where you get high margins). I also know wealthy people who
are car enthusiasts, but they wouldn't want to get their hands dirty, so
they'd rather pay someone to do it for them. You're speaking in absolutes when
the market relies on relative differences.

This particular point isn't too significant though, since ideally, most poor
people wouldn't need to own a car (they would use public transit instead).

> Non sequitur. Plenty of un-outsourceable jobs exist serving people who are
> not wealthy.

Non sequitur. The goal is to optimize new job creation. The service industry
is one of the fastest growing in America, so it makes sense to harness that.

> Where do I speak of dream jobs? I'm just saying it's awfully self-centered
> to think that the poor exist to serve the wealthy.

And I'm just saying that worrying about whether the poor can have their dream
job (where they don't have to serve the wealthy) is something you can worry
about when chronic unemployment hasn't been dragging down the economy for the
last several years.

------
rayiner
I accept that the market drives down the wages of service workers, but their
working conditions are just outrageous to me. Automation and optimization has
turned retail into a hellish job. On demand scheduling, zero tolerance
policies, wage theft, etc. Its MBAs and programmers making a buck by burdening
the people who are least equipped to find a job doing something else.

See also: [http://www.thenation.com/article/177377/holiday-
crush](http://www.thenation.com/article/177377/holiday-crush) ("A woman from
the agency hands each of us a time sheet. For the sign-in, she tells us to
write 8:30. 'I know you were told to be here at 8:15,' she says, anticipating
a protest that never comes, 'but that was just to make sure you got here
early.'").

~~~
josephschmoe
Burdening these people by making fewer of them have to do crummy, hellish
work? I'm soooo sorry for eliminating work no one wants to do.

Unemployment isn't an engineer or an MBA's fault. It's the fault of
shareholders, executives and congressmen: they're the ones hoarding the money
at the top. I guarantee you, if the money went to the engineers, we'd have 98%
employment right now and the jobs would be a whole lot more interesting than
retail. Heck, we'd have to start using graphical user interfaces for stores
because we wouldn't be able to find enough people to work retail!

~~~
rayiner
Service jobs aren't inherently crummy. What makes it crummy are the software
systems that let managers schedule people on variable, on-demand schedules,
and policies that micro-manage bathroom breaks and the like. There's an entire
industry focused on getting additional tenths of a percent out of service
workers.

Papa John's founder said it'd cost something like $0.50 extra per pizza to
offer his employees health insurance. I'm not even talking about a luxury like
health insurance. What would it cost to let employees take a few extra sick
days or be able to plan on when they'll work or the occasional unplanned
bathroom break?
[http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1djlt0/pregnant_tmobil...](http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1djlt0/pregnant_tmobile_employee_forced_to_take_vacation/)

~~~
nickff
> _" What makes it crummy are the software systems that let managers schedule
> people on variable, on-demand schedules, and policies that micro-manage
> bathroom breaks and the like. There's an entire industry focused on getting
> additional tenths of a percent out of service workers."_

The problem that you see here could also be characterized as a lack of demand
for the labor services of the employees. Perhaps we should attempt to find
more, new productive activities for low-skill workers.

------
alistairSH
"I guess [you] don’t care about hard work or loyalty." \-- Stretch

That's ripe. Pay your employees a low wage, treat them like shit, and then
expect loyalty? Gimme a break. Loyalty is a two-way street and I don't see any
reciprocation from corporate America (in this case, or in general).

~~~
bequanna
When a job is low skill, they have a huge pool of labor they can draw from.
There really isn't any need to treat employees well, since there are so many
applicants.

I think it is fairly simple. The more in-demand your skills are, the better
you can expect to treated by your employer because you have options.

Is this 'right'? I don't know. But it seems to be how things work.

~~~
VLM
"There really isn't any need to treat employees well"

All you have to do is sell your soul and abandon your own humanity. Cheap,
right? You can learn a lot about someone, or a culture, by seeing how they
treat those less fortunate.

~~~
bequanna
I didn't say I agree with that statement. But it certainly seems to reflect
reality.

I personally believe that low-skill/pay workers should be treated better in
this country. The important question is: How do we accomplish this? Mandates
like higher min. wage? Or, societal pressures of some sort? It doesn't appear
that (most) corporations will treat employees better out of the goodness of
their heart.

------
hershel
Sweden offers a nice solution to this: responsible unions.

In Sweden there are 2 unions, One for white collar workers and one for blue
collar employees. The salary rates/hikes are industry wide.They are usually
determined by the competitive part of the economy - the export sector and than
applied to everybody.

The unions understand their role as protectors of employees, but on the other
hand, understand the need for Sweden to remain competitive and the huge
responsibility put on them by representing so many people without hurting the
economy. So they come with reasonable demands.

All this is supported by the Swedish mentality of fairness, which makes
employees happy just taking their fair share.

~~~
dx4100
I'd say this is easier in a society like Sweden, with a homogeneous culture
and relatively small population.

~~~
richardjordan
I think the reason it's easier in Sweden is the key cultural value of
fairness. America is more of a "mine" society, where everyone cares about
what's "mine" and lacks an ability to self-moderate based on what's fair or
right.

~~~
primitivesuave
I wouldn't generalize here since there are people in every society who are
above petty desires for material gain. It's just that in the US, we have
significantly more wealth-addicts than any other country, and it leads to a
bad perception of the nation as a whole.

Another thing about self-moderation: my consulting firm gets an occasional
contract at a public school. I know it sounds terrible to say this, but if
these kids are the future of the US, I want to move somewhere else. I went to
public school myself, and the value system that the kids subscribe to nowadays
is bloated by our celebration of people who make immense amounts of money.
There's also this fucked up sense of entitlement, an addiction to social
media, and a lack of desire to explore anything beyond the assigned
schoolwork.

~~~
brianpgordon
> I know it sounds terrible to say this, but if these kids are the future of
> the US, I want to move somewhere else.

> fucked up sense of entitlement, an addiction to social media, and a lack of
> desire to explore anything beyond the assigned schoolwork.

Has it occurred to you that since _your_ generation is responsible for the
profoundly sad state of our economy, educational system, and justice system,
you don't have much room to criticize Generation Y?

~~~
primitivesuave
That's a strange argument.

I'm a person. I didn't cause economic or education downturns, and my firm
actually does the opposite - we create jobs in education and improve core
standards. This is a classic situation of critic meets the generalist.

------
cobrausn
My first job was retail, and I worked it for about four years total, including
during college and after service in the Navy. At the time I had skills that
translated into being valuable enough to not work in retail that didn't
involve a lot of risk (police, security, etc), so it seemed about the best
option.

I don't think I quite experienced anything like this, but sometimes it was
close. If I felt like a replaceable cog, it's because I was, and I was a
replaceable cog in a machine already operating on razor thin margins, which
means I had to be a _good_ cog. The funny thing was that due to my Navy
experience, I didn't perceive it as all that bad, though the pay was pretty
miserable even at two dollars above minimum wage.

I'll say this - working retail was very motivating. I knew I didn't want to do
that forever. But I don't know what the 'solution' is as applied to everybody,
but I know the solution for me was to finish college and make myself valuable.

~~~
pnathan
My impression is that retail has gotten worse over the last 20 years.

~~~
VLM
Socioeconomic separation of the consumer class from the servant class. As
discussed in the article, humans shop there and buy $25 socks for their $300
shoes, but a thirty-something part time minimum wage no benefits homeless dude
is not part of that class.

------
nilkn
And this is why I desperately save money. Even though I've only been out of
college for less than a year and I know my parents would graciously take me
back in for as long as necessary should something catastrophic happen to my
career, I'm paranoid about depending so much on a job for my livelihood.

My admittedly very lofty goal is to reach a point in my mid-30s where I don't
_need_ a job. By no means do I plan on actually retiring at that point, but I
want the peace of mind knowing that my career could end and I could lead a
humble, comfortable-enough life without working, probably in the midwest.

~~~
pilom
I feel the exact same way. Yesterday there were a bunch of questions about
what happens to middle age programmers and those were depressing too. The
answer for me (and sounds like you too) absolutely has been to save as much as
possible and be able to "never need to work again" as fast as possible. I'll
probably be mid-30s at that point too and I'll feel much much better about my
life knowing that I don't need a job to survive.

------
danso
I kind of did a double take at this:

> _Even though I was living rent-free in a guest bedroom, my every-other-
> Thursday paycheck couldn’t help me climb out of my hole, particularly after
> the state took half my pre-tax, $300 weekly salary for child support
> payments._

> * got the opportunity to leave Sporting Goods Inc. for a temporary job as a
> communications director for a Capitol Hill nonprofit, a gig that paid twice
> as much per week as I’d earn in a month at the store. That salary still
> didn’t come close to my Politico paycheck, though it was a step in the right
> direction.*

\- 300 * 52 = 15,600 annually

\- 15,600 * 4 * 2 ("twice as much per week as one month") = 124,800

\- _" That salary still didn’t come close to my Politico paycheck"_

So, at least $150K or even $200+K? Gah- _damn_! I know big beltway journalists
get a decent salary, but Politico is a relative newcomer (though profitable
and growing).

~~~
bhauer
> _twice as much per week as I’d earn in a month at the store_

300 = retail pay per month.

300 * 2 = 600, which is twice the retail pay.

600 * 4 = 2,400, multiplying by four weeks to account for new job earning
twice as much per week as per month in retail.

2,400 * 12 = 28,800, which is an estimate for the annual pay at his new job.

Politico most certainly pays more than that.

~~~
streptomycin
_300 = retail pay per month._

That's pay per week, not pay per month. So multiply everything by 4.

------
joshreads
A lot of this is just "person who's had white-collar job for years doesn't get
how difficult service jobs are", but making your already low-paid employees do
unpaid overtime work is s-k-e-t-c-h-y, and actively illegal.

~~~
Domenic_S
Between ages 15-21 I worked a lot of retail. I had managers who would do the
"on time is late" thing, or make me clock out and then wait for 20 minutes for
them to unlock the door at closing time. I knew those things weren't legal,
and I'd make a stink about it. I was an exemplary worker, which I'm sure
afforded me some leeway, but more importantly I was young, white, and living
at home with my middle-class parents. I didn't _need_ the job. I _wanted_ the
job of course (56k modems aren't free!) but I didn't have the fear that I or
my family might starve if I talked back.

What's the solution? Mandatory severance for every job?

~~~
krstck
> What's the solution? Mandatory severance for every job?

At the risk of opening a-whole-nother can of worms.... universal basic income.

------
vijayr
_I guess [you] don’t care about hard work or loyalty._

Wow, just wow - humiliating him by checking his bag every day, making him do
extra work (after work hours) for free, restricting him to less than 30 hours
so the store doesn't have to give him benefits .... Even after all this, the
author seemed to have worked hard. _All of this_ is _still_ not enough.

Incredible.

------
agumonkey
I'm still surprised how close to my last job this is. The do everything, get
nothing [1]. Same mindset about being robbed by employees. The worst part
there, to me, was the absurdity of it. You have to be on 100% ~24/7 even when
there's nothing to do. But you're certainly not allowed to change things in
any way to simplify or increase productivity. Something any programmer will
cringe at to death. This is something very different from other jobs like
mcdonalds where the rush impose high productivity constraints meaning things
are already quite optimized. No time's wasted: you're active and for some
valuable reason. Helps a lot.

[1] optional bonus: being slightly mocked by less educated people that will
then ask you for hints about things they don't understand. Of course, I
helped. Slave genes.

------
ufmace
What struck me as really odd about his job was the obsession with anti-theft
measures. How big is is this store that they have enough to hire a full-time
loss prevention officer? I've never heard of any retail store giving employees
bag-checks and pat-downs every time they entered and left the building either.
It's been a long time since I've worked any job like that, but I've never
heard of anything like that. From everything I've read, most major retailers
have little to no protection against employee theft. Is the neighborhood
they're in that bad that they have to go to these extremes, or is the
owner/manager just nuts about this issue for some reason?

~~~
valar_m
Bag checks are fairly common, usually occurring at ends of shift or closing.
Pat downs are less so, mostly because it's generally not a good idea to
require employees to touch each other.

Retail internal theft really is a serious problem, though. According to the
National Retail Security Survey at UF, it costs retailers (read: consumers)
$14.9 billion annually [1].

What you may find surprising is that most major retailers do, in fact, have
quite extensive controls in place to prevent and detect internal theft --
exception reporting, inventory tracking, etc. That these massive losses still
occur should give you an idea of how complex the problem is.

The reason the store requires two employees to take out the trash has nothing
to do with watching for thieves or "armed intruders." It's actually a simple
and surprisingly effective deterrent to internal theft. Diverting merchandise
through non-public exits is a common theft strategy.

Also, Ike was not "fired because [he] got a promotion." He was fired for lying
on his job application about a previous conviction for theft. Ike's conviction
strongly suggests a tendency to act dishonestly, which is further reinforced
by his attempt to cover it up when applying for the job. This is precisely the
type of individual that the background check is intended to screen.

Lastly, the author says it happened when Ike was a teenager, so it could only
have happened when Ike was either 18 or 19. Juvenile court records are not
available to background check services.

[1] [http://investors.tyco.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=112348&p=irol-
news...](http://investors.tyco.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=112348&p=irol-
newsArticle&ID=229725&highlight)

~~~
ufmace
I have heard that, for most retailers, most of their losses are due to
internal theft. Hence lots of video cameras, and background checks to a degree
that seem a little absurd, plus loss prevention investigations, record
keeping, and lots of internal audits. What really sounds odd are the bag
checks and pat-downs. Pat-downs especially, at least partly since they seem
likely to lead to sexual harassment suits. I can't think of a solid legal
reason not to do bag checks, but it sounds so demeaning and pointless, unless
you work somewhere where tens of thousands in inventory could legitimately be
snuck out through somebody's backpack. If you're selling diamonds or gold
jewelry, I could see it, but sporting goods? What are they supposedly stealing
that can be snuck out in a backpack and will lead to a meaningful loss before
somebody figures it out?

Ike's situation is what bothers me about the current criminal justice system,
though. If you get a conviction on your record for anything moderately
serious, you're just done. He could tell the truth, and get locked out right
off the bat, or lie, and maybe get caught later. We've probably all done dumb
stuff when we were young. If you happen to get busted for something at the
wrong time, well, good luck ever getting a semi-professional job again. Years
and years of dedicated service are nothing against some dumb mistake a decade
ago.

I'll admit that I tend to think that a lot of petty thieves are doing it for
the thrills rather than desperation for survival. But what do we really expect
them to do after they get caught? Even if they do some time and learn their
lesson, it looks like they have damn few options for making a clean living, no
matter how skilled and dedicated they are. I don't have any idea how many ex-
cons are making a legit effort to live a clean life after they do their time,
but we sure don't seem to be making it easy for them. And we're surprised that
most of them go back to crime and get busted again? I'm not sure exactly how
to solve it, but it surely needs some work.

~~~
jdmichal
The problem is that whatever punishment the justice system metes is _supposed_
to be considered sufficient repayment to society for the damage caused. Yet,
these things remain on publicly-available record for the rest of your life.
The solution is to close the records to the public after the person's time is
served. There is no beneficial reason to continue their punishment beyond that
time, which is what open records effectively does.

~~~
ufmace
That would solve the employer discrimination problem, but it creates a whole
host of other problems that sound much worse. Our whole legal system rests on
the foundation of public access to everything. Anybody can find out: who has
been arrested by the police, what they've been charged with, where they're
being held, what the outcome of the arraignment and trial is, what evidence
and arguments were presented at the trial if there was one, what they were
sentenced with, where they are serving their sentence, and how much time
they've served.

You can't prevent people from knowing who's an ex-con without making all of
that stuff secret. But if all of that stuff is secret, then anyone who the
police arrest would essentially disappear. Nobody would be able to find out if
they were even arrested in the first place, much less what they've been
charged with, what the evidence is to substantiate that charge, where they're
being held and in what conditions, etc. So nothing prevents the police from
arresting anybody they feel like on no evidence, and keeping them anywhere
they want for as long as they want, because nobody would know about it in the
first place. Even the much maligned Guantanamo Bay prison isn't that secret,
and it's still widely considered an outrage. We've seen a lot of abuse of
existing law enforcement powers lately; I'm not willing to essentially give
them a massive level of new powers for the sake of giving ex-cons better
opportunities.

------
peteforde
I'm a bit late to the game on this one, but I'm a bit saddened to see no
discussion about the fact that this man assaulted his wife.

It's good that he's not hiding the conviction, but I find it hard to empathize
with someone that carries out violence against women.

His situation sucks, but he wouldn't have been in such dire straights if he
hadn't been angry enough to hit his spouse. To me, that violence is the most
urgent detail of this story.

------
nicholas73
I recently heard from someone who worked at Target that each day the managers
would lock the doors after the last customer left, and physically lock the
employees in. Nobody was allowed to leave until they were done checking for
theft. This would last 10-15 minutes, and they didn't get paid for this time.

------
OhHeyItsE
absolutely terrifying. This kind of stuff keeps me up at night.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Not to belabor the point, but could someone please attempt to explain what
rational goal is served by our society's choices to keep entire segments of
the population in conditions the well-off regard as absolutely terrifying
nightmare lives?

Controlling the people through fear doesn't sound like the "free world", you
know.

