Skip To Content
  • Viral badge
  • lol badge
  • win badge

23 Secrets Retail Workers Won't Tell You

Your faith in humanity will be seriously tested.

1. Holidays are not the most wonderful time of the year.

2. You have to force yourself to smile every time you ask a customer, "Do you need any help?"

3. If you work at a clothing store the majority of your paycheck goes toward buying the store's merchandise.

4. Few things are more stressful than when a new line or collection comes in.

5. Headsets are great for gossip and shit-talking.

6. You've faked being "the manager" just to keep a bad situation from getting worse.

7. Comfortable shoes and breaks are both worth their weight in gold.

8. Even when you're not at work, you still obsessively fold, rearrange, and organize clothes.

9. It secretly drives you nuts that the manager checks your bags every time you leave the store (i.e. loss prevention).

10. You loathe the fact that most customers assume "the back" is a huge archive of unlimited items in every size, color, and variation.

11. But you secretly don't mind going back there sometimes to take a much-needed break from the action.

12. At least once a shift a customer asks or implies if you can "hook it up."

13. The break room is small, overcrowded, and almost always messy, but you definitely make the most out of your time there.

14. Co-workers are the best part of your job.

15. Every time a customer starts to write a check, you die a little inside.

16. Outside of the usual piles of clothes and hangers, you have found unspeakable messes in the fitting rooms.

17. It fills you with rage when people shoplift so openly.

18. Sometimes no customers is actually worse than too many customers.

19. The satellite radio station your store has on repeat secretly drives you insane, and you have every single song memorized.

20. Dressing a mannequin from head-to-toe is a hell of a lot harder than it looks.

21. Your spirit gets dampened when a customer approaches the register with a ton of items and a handful of coupons.

22. Your soul is secretly and thoroughly crushed when a customer undoes four hours worth of folding and setting in under 30 seconds.

23. In the end you realize everyone should work retail at least once in their lives.