Slavery.

Oh retail, how you make me hate humanity. I'd like to look into the employment background of people who become serial killers because I bet a large percentage of them have worked in a shop. Or maybe just the shop I work in. Bloody hell.

The thing is, as a customer walking around doing a nice spot of shopping whether it be for yourself or for gifts or for whatever reason, you completely forget that those poor minions with the lanyards round their neck are REAL LIFE ACTUAL HUMAN BEINGS. There are so many things I've been asked to do in my nearing half a year of working at a high street store that no one really expects a member of staff that they can actually see have to do. I know I thought lots of things were done in the factories or warehouses or wherever the hell our stock comes from. But no. It is we poor things on minimum wage running around doing everything that wasn't mentioned in the job description.

Today I spent 3 hours writing out and stapling "NOW £4!" labels onto the existing labels of hundreds of items of clothes. Previous to that I spent an hour going through every item of clothing in a section of the store to make sure they had security tags on. I've stuck sale stickers on clothes, I've held the limbs of mannequins as they're dressed and re-dressed, I've refilled air humidifier units with buckets of water. These are all tiny aspects of why I hate working in retail as much as I do. I won't even mention the types of people I'm working with. Let's just say; it doesn't take too many brain cells to work a stapler. One colleague still managed to staple her own hand today though.

One thing that is keeping me going at the moment, is how quick the turn around has been in terms of my "life plan" this year. In March I was at drama school. Between April and September I was sitting at home all day every day earning no money, wasting all my time, but really quite enjoying it. Now I have two jobs, I'm starting to realise there are things I want to achieve and I'm trying to work on achieving them. Things are going in the right direction somewhere, even if I am stuck in a dead-end job for now. But this is a stop gap. I'm not someone who's life ambition is to be the manager of a high street store and I know that now. Not that I ever thought I was, but there is a thick black, permanent marker style line through that one now. Who'd have thought my love of playing on toy tills when I was little would turn into a reality and be something I resented.

Some aspects of the job are okay. As I said, it's PISS EASY. Tiring at times, because it's so fucking dull, but there's always a trusty energy drink to help with that. So for now, it'll do. But only for now.

 

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