Asking for a job application

[Brojekk]

People say the same thing when they blurt out..."It's just retail, how how hard could it be?"

How quickly they learn the error of their ways after that

[Tama]

I learned the hard way too!

[fireheart]

It really really hurts when your husband says it AFTER WATCHING YOU HAVE TO QUIT YOUR LAST RETAIL JOB BECAUSE OF STRESS. Apparently the same job at a different store is now 'easy' because I no longer bitch constantly, and me being worn out is because I don't sleep enough.

That's pretty much the reason why I wound up leaving my old store. It was getting to the point where I was stressed, I was constantly tired, cranky and constantly panicking about work even when I wasn't on the clock. The fact that I wound up feeling very suicidal at one point I think was the straw that broke the camel's back.

New store does result in the odd panic attack, but not as many as my old store and in general, the supervisors are friendly enough to talk to if it gets too much.

A lot of my customers seem to recognise that working retail isn't easy as well....when I mention my old store, they often start laughing and say "well if you worked there, you can get in anywhere!"

[NateTheChops]

I still get pissed when people refer to retail as "unskilled" work.

Yes, dealing with phone shoppers while trying to help a long line of customers who all want things, some of whom can't communicate their needs in English coherent or otherwise is just child's play. Any monkey could walk in and do my job, yup, sure.

[Broomjockey]

I still get pissed when people refer to retail as "unskilled" work.

I think you misunderstand the term "skilled labour." It doesn't refer to how easy or hard a job is, it refers to if there's certain knowledge that is needed by a worker before being able to start a job, or to put it another way, something where you can't simply do "on the job training." So, yes, retail is "unskilled," simply because any reasonably normal person can do the job without having done it before or having taken courses in how to do it.

There's people being condescending about customer service positions, then there's technical terms to describe jobs. This is just one of the latter.