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Four Things Working Four Years In Retail Has Taught Me About People
Dark truths from inside the machine.
How an introverted creative with a chronic distaste for anything that so much as resembles an authority figure, a grating sales script or an externally-imposed structure ended up working four years in mainstream retail is a mystery I’ve yet to solve.
All I’m sure about is that the answer is to be found somewhere between the sheer overhead of leading a passable lifestyle in London, and doubting myself and whether I had the cajones to handle the uncertainty that comes with standing entirely on your own two, self-employed legs. I may write a different post about my thoughts on all of this at some point, once they’ve crystallised.
What I can speak to with certainty — now that I’ve left my retail job and have no plans of looking back — are the unexpected things I’ve learned during my four-year stint as a (part-time) retail worker.
One. There are three kinds of people
Working on four different counters for four years has lead me to the conclusion that there are only three kinds of people in the world. I base this on the following observation.
When accidentally brushing against a shelf and making something fall to the floor, people seem to only…
