i know i’m not saying anything new, or revolutionary, but can we talk about how severely undervalued service industry people are, please? because i have very strong feelings about it.
I spent six years in retail, about half of that in management, and before i was in retail, there was another two years as general customer service/reception type work.
The store i worked - then later managed at - sold men’s and women’s fashion forward clothing. it’s a chain, and our demographic serves people between 20-50+, I’d say. We’ve got business clothes, casual clothes, going out clothes. All your general wardrobe options. By the time I left, i could look at a man’s shoulders and estimate his jacket size, and my accuracy was using within one size. i could do the same for a pair of women’s dress pants.
i learned so many things working retail. i wasn’t shy, per say, when i started, but i i have that general Millennial Existential Anxiety that can make taking to strangers difficult. i’m still reserved in private/social gatherings, cause that’s just my personality type, but professionally? i can walk into a room and make friends with every person in it, or at least, smile, make a good impression, and hold a conversation.
working in the service industry 100% strengthened my social skills.
other important things the service industry taught me:
quick thinking
problem solving
prioritizing tasks
multitasking
awareness of multiple things happening at once
delegating tasks (once i was in management)
conflict resolution (again, in management)
and once i was in management, one of the things i excelled at was training. i’m great at explaining things to associates, and helping them grow, and i really enjoyed that.
my all time favorite associate, started with us when she was 18. timid, timid, quiet little thing. she’s been with us two years (pretty sure she’s still there) and over those two years, watching her grow into a confident employee, able to slowly take on more responsibility, and not be intimidated by random problems that rose up, and have great interactions with customers, is probably my single greatest memory of working there.
(i may or may not have left her a letter when i left, stating such, because i am a proud mama bird manager)
and that’s not even getting into the human interaction side of the service industry.
over the years, i’ve helped people find outfits for:
job interviews
prom
funerals
first dates
graduation
grad school interviews
turning 50, and anxious about it
and all of that required connection with the customer. it required empathy, and time, and listening. And at the end of it, knowing i’d given those customers a good interaction, and had some small positive impact on their day, that they could walk into their interview feeling just a little more confident, was very satisfying.
there is honor in service
okay, so what’s the problem?
the problem, dear readers who have made it this far (thank you) is that for every one of those awesome customers, and positive experiences, there are customers who treat you like trash, who make you feel ashamed for what you do, and they have absolutely no right to.
once i was a manager, i basically didn’t care if customers shat all over me, because that was part of my job, technically, and i had the power to tell them to shove it, and i was making about twice as much money as my associates (which is a whole other can of stupid worms).
but when customers shat on my associates? oh, it made me so mad. that favorite associate i mentioned up above? every single manager, from the SM, to the Co-manager (me), to our two sales leads, was absolutely ready to throw down with customers if they were so much as mean to her.
so here, i guess, is the overall thesis of my post. customers should not have the right to make service industry people feel like shit for working in the service industry.
there is honor in service
there should be zero shame in saying, yes, i’m an associate at “x store”, I’m a waitress over at “y restuarant”, i manage a mcdonalds. I work in housekeeping at “z hotel”.
there is honor in service
on the flip side of it, companies need to stop treating their employees as disposable, replaceable, cutouts. we need to stop seeing service industry jobs as transient, temporary jobs. maybe some people just want to sell clothes for a living, and find satisfaction from that. and that’s fine. they should be able to make a living at that.
i just get very frustrated, because i feel like service industry people get shit on from both ends--the customers, and the company they work for. and both need to change. society needs to stop seeing service work as somehow lesser, or that is means you somehow failed, and had to settle. and companies need to start investing in their employees, and treating them like actual people, with actual skills, and actual lives that matter.
Every time I read a particularly dirty fic I just-
“ripperoni in pepperonis Jin”
“ripperoni in pepperonis Ragna”
“T'was nice knowing you Ky”
“Bye Jin, you lived as you died covered in your Nii-san.”
“Rest in Jin, Ragna it was nice knowing you”
