Which retail job deserves the most props?

[volatile]

After working in the food service industry...I'd have to say that I have the utmost respect for people in this industry. People and food seem to be a dangerous mix like gasoline and matches. I just always notice more concentration of SCs (as a worker and outside observer) in restaurants. I, personally, would never go back to food service under any circumstance. So for you who have the patience to stick with food service...I salute you.

[Sofar]

Eh, Hades Burger ain't that bad. People are pretty nice in this neighborhood. Plus it's pretty easy to keep the place in order. I can think of a dozen worse customer service jobs I could have.

Though granted food and customers seems to be a pretty potent mix.

[NightAngel]

I think they all have their ups and downs and there are SC's everywhere.
Maybe it just depends on the day?

[Pezzle]

Hate to play the self pity card but.. Retail Technician is a huge pain in the arse. Not only are you expected to take in lots of tech work with a low turnaround time, but you are expected to sell just as much as if not more than regular floor associates as well. That's big pressure, and if you can't meet both expectations you either get yelled at by a customer for not having the job done on time, or by your boss for not meeting daily dpen and vol goals.

[KaeZoo]

Personally, I have the utmost respect and sympathy for anyone who works a returns counter.

[BookstoreEscapee]

If all you do is returns, I have to agree. At the bookstore you do a bit of everything, and only the managers and head cashiers do returns (although since I was HC, even after I moved to a different lead position I still covered HC when they were in a pinch). So it kind of spreads the SCs around.

I did food service for 4 years in college but it was a campus place at a small school so we didn't deal much with the general public (usually only if students had people visiting or a big game or other event was going on). I have major respect for people who deal with food and customers. I wouldn't want to do it now.

If you deal with small children on a regular basis you get major props too.

[UncleImpy]

Im probably biased, but I'd have to put my vote in for any retail company's technical support staff.

Not only do you have to deal with a UC/SC, but you have to be able to calm them down enough to explain a technical problem/issue/explanation in simple enough terms that they will understand...and then hope they dont try the tack of 'thats too complicated, cant you just fix it?' like we have some sort of magic wand that 'poof', done. Yes ma'am, I can instantly fix all the problems you caused by clicking on all of those banner ads that installed three million pieces of spyware on your machine and now have it running at a crawl, and yes, of course, its my fault

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I'm also biased here, but I don't care.

Working backroom is about the most stressful, underappreciated job in any retail store. That's because everything starts in the backroom; therefore you get pushed more than anybody else. Trucks have to be unloaded and filled, and the excess freight has to be neatly put away so it can be retrieved later.

And at every step of the process you have time limits and deadlines that have to be met, and if you don't meet them the managers will demand to know why. Additionally, we are almost always short-staffed (not currently; we do have a full crew now that we are working early mornings, but when we were on overnights we sometimes had only 2 or 3 people to fill and backstock 1200-1500-piece trucks, so naturally we did not finish on time.)

That said, I also pity the cashier and service desk people, because they have to deal with all the entitlement-minded SCs.

[TNT]

If you consider working in a cable TV call center as "retail," I can't of many other jobs where customers take things quite so seriously. Maybe the medical fields...

The hardest part of it all is that every customer's got a story... it's rarely enough to say, "Such-and-such a service is out." It's always "such-and-such a service is out and this is going to ruin my life because..."

And then there's people who call and say, "I'm trying to set up four computers and a Vonage phone system to your internet, and I think I messed it up. Keep in mind, all I know about computers is that I've got a blinky box, another blinky box, another smaller blinky box, a box that lights up and box that keeps stuff."

[CherryB]

I think one of the most stressful has to be working in a bar or anywhere booze is served.

Come to think of it, being a flight attendant-yea that would suck. 150 people already pissed off because this flight sat on the ground for 3 hours and they are wedged in like sardines, you are at 30,000 feet so there is no tossing them out the door and now 6 of em are shit faced. There's your winner folks.

[Seshat]

I second flight attendant, and add long-haul train/ship attendant to it.


All three have, in addition to their basic retail-ish roles,

* the duty and necessity to handle medical emergencies in situations where there is (or may be) no medical help available until the next airport/station/dock.

* the duty to handle physical security of the vehicle and passengers in situations where there is (or may be) no police assistance until the next stop.

* the need to be the one who keeps the passengers as safe as possible in an emergency or crash.

Flight attendants have helped my husband through a not-really-a-heart-attack when it happened in the air. (He's fine, but it must have been horrible for the attendants).

My husband still tells the story of the guy who was caught smoking in the loo of an LAX-Auckland-Melbourne plane: another situation where flight attendants were the ones who had to deal. Find the fire, deal with the fire, oh it's a stupid passenger, deal with the stupid passenger. Hope he doesn't get violent.

Noone in my family, thankfully, has yet been involved in an emergency or crash situation, but if you watch National Geographic channel's 'Air Crash Investigation', well, I've gained a lot of respect for flight attendants (and pilots!) since I started watching that.



There are a lot of other retail and customer service positions where you have to deal with serious stuff, but everyone else has, at least in theory, access to the emergency services. And the emergency services have access to each other, and the full equipment for the job. (I've never seen a plane with a fully equipped ER!)