Worked food and retail for years. Still have stress dreams about it.
this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2025
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Everyone is like "everyone should be made to do retail/service work like it's national service" and while I get the vibe I just think it would make customers WORSE if they knew their wageslaves weren't allowed to quit on the spot lmao. Instead workers should form self-defence committees to batter the kneecaps of anyone who so much as tries to do the thing with the cash to "make giving change easier".
what's the thing with the cash
It would also make the most unpleasant and entitled customers even worse, since they would have the attitude of "when I was in that job, I wasn't lazy like these awful workers!"
I worked retail for 6 months when I was younger. About 2 years later an agency gave me a retail job, i went there for half a day, walked out and never returned. Fuck that.
Their admin fucked up and continued paying me for 13 weeks. I got away with never mentioning it lmao
Group interviews are a humiliation ritual and I think they should be illegal. I know they weren't mentioned but it is the trauma I first think of when I remember the service industry
Same thing in tech. Even tho I still do data analysis type shit, its for a homelessness nonprofit and im not doing demo sessions for software companies
Feels good to never go back.
synthesis; level 1 tech support / retail sales assistant
I'd probably go back tbh because my brain is broken in the way that I like solving computer problems
Yep
I've held several jobs in retail and service and they've all been painfully awful
Like drive me to the verge of suicide awful
I made it into data entry and everything is so much better
Fucking wackadoo that I get paid more now than when I was actually doing stuff
What do I need to get a data entry job, other then luck? I already do a tiny bit at my current job so I could put it on my resume but its very much a side part of the job.
Lying will get you 60% of the way there
I took some information science courses in college, so that became an "accredited training program" and wham-o, I started getting interviews
The other 40% is confidence, as in, selling the lie to their face
I used to do night shift product stocking. Store was open, but very few customers and they were all chill. One even taught me how to use the key duplicator machine so I could make theirs since nobody had done that. I wouldn't realistically go back because I've advanced a lot further in my career elsewhere, but I do think about it in an Office Space kind of way. Instead of working construction, I'm just putting stuff on shelves. Mostly because my office job feels just as pointless and I don't like the client base I help on the daily. Take me back to claiming dibs on the toy aisle that got fucked up by kids every day and so provided an endless source of work away from other employees and managers. Zen mode while picking up Bop-Its and cool plastic swords.
Where I live they don't do that during the night anymore. The workers have to restock the shelves while the store is crowded and customers are trying to buy things
Oh they definitely did that too, but day workers got paid less yet had to deal with more since they would constantly need to interact with people or dodge customers (me every time I'm at the store now). Not enough people want to work like 10 pm to 6 am the next day though. Other than that, we were just expected to stock more shit more quickly since nobody was really bothering us.
EDIT: Honestly, night shift is super sick if it doesn't kill your social life. I also worked at a hotel during night shift where I basically played emulators on my phone unless someone showed up to check in or ask for something in the middle of the night.
Me hating the butcher job I have now but stressed out that they're retaliating for me calling out on Christmas Eve to spend it with my girlfriend and her family in a town two hours away by cutting my hours down to two days a week
Back in 2021 I got out of the grocery industry and swore I'd never go back
now I'm so desperate to leave again I'm looking at goddamn Wal-Mart and Target and cashier positions and looking at other grocery stores that are at least closer and aren't small business tyranny bullshit so at least there's a corporate HR to complain to
Also super funny that after I got fired from that car dealership chain the person who weaponized the HR process against me due to a personal dislike also got fired as did the office manager who handed me the termination notice and tried to block my unemployment and then more recently the CEO got shitcanned for fucking up their entire business model and wasting money on idiotic ideas and causing massive brain drain by firing all the good people lmao
Same thing working in restaurants. Same fucking thing.
If they fucking paid me a decent wage id be okay with it! I like making food dammit! I enjoy bei g socially productive on a noticeable way! Making people happy is cool and good! Just let me afford fucking rent!
Even working at McDonald's (which pays okay here) was mostly okay except for the asshole regional manager who gets his kicks yelling at teenagers and threatening to fire everyone over minor issues. Even feeding people that rubbish is a mostly satisfying job to have. It's a great objection to the whole "you think you would be an artist after the revolution but really you would be sweeping streets" thing. Bud, if my street sweeping job gave me economic security and the hours were reasonable I would be over the moon! Imagine having a job keeping your neighbourhood clean, where you can just listen to podcasts or music or some shit, and it pays you enough to be financially secure and leaves you enough time to yourself that you can still have hobbies and a social life. Would be great! I could keep volunteering at the herbarium and other enviro science projects, play d&d with my mates once a fortnight - heaven. (Of course in the immediate aftermath of an actual revolution - especially if the overall world order is still capitalist - things would not be so cruisy! But the core conceit really isn't the blighted hellscape people imply it is.)
Mate of mine works as a systems administrator for a private/public joint enterprise thing (can't remember the specific terminology) that provides drinking water in the region and that seems super fulfilling.
Hospitality is hell