I’ve been around my family’s small business as long as I can remember, eating snacks with employees on break as a toddler, reading in the corner as my mom checked up on everything around the shop as a grade schooler. By the time I was in middle school, I was working on the floor, helping customers as best I could, but hearing a lot of “aren’t you a little young to be working here?”
Working retail gives you great stories. It’s fabulous for people watching. When retail is the family business, you build up years worth of strange, funny, and occasionally harrowing anecdotes. You witness charming new sides of people, and also sometimes sides to people you wish you could unsee. You witness trends rise and fall in not only shopping habits but also in social behavior. But certain elements of the retail working experience remain exactly the same. There are a handful of lessons I feel like I’ve learned and relearned every time I go back to work in my family’s shop, but the most important one is learning to take things in stride. Any shift involves expecting the unexpected, sometimes you’ll have a three-hour shift that leaves you wondering if you’ve somehow landed in another universe, and sometimes you’ll have the most mundane eight-hour shift of your life. Either way, you have to finish up the shift, so might as well let it roll over you. Here are just a few of the many ways retail has driven home this life lesson:
Sometimes you’ll say things that make no sense
And you’ll have to continue socializing for the rest of the shift as if you didn’t just tell a customer “and also with you” when they told you to have a good day. This sort of awkward interaction is commonly laughed about on the internet (I was a big fan of the “have a good shift” trend), but this doesn’t make it any less haunting when you commit the cringe interaction yourself. Still, as you have to continue to interact with customers for the rest of shift instead of going home to sit alone and consider whether you should become a hermit, it’s a good opportunity to remind yourself no one is thinking about your embarrassing moments as much you are (and if they are, you gave them a good story).
On the flip side, so many people will say and do things to you that will make you wonder if it’s their first day on earth or maybe even their first time in a store. Adults will often sit down in the middle of a crowded shop and start reading books from the display as people try to step over them. This doesn’t seem like it could possibly be comfortable. This doesn’t deter them.
People will come to you with bizarre requests.
One time a woman told me she needed to buy Beanie Babies because she was going to a birthday party for a boy who loves Mr. Bean. All I could do was smile and nod and sadly inform her that we don’t have any Beanie Babies and wish her luck in finding them. I still think about her frequently!
Children in particular will act in a way that makes you admire that they are so unrestrained by any form of social anxiety. Last summer a child sang and performed the macarena while staring intensely at me as I tried to restock baby clothes. While I didn’t know how to react in the moment, I can’t help but retroactively respect her for it.
Everyone involved in any of these weird interactions will simply have to continue going about their day.
People will say things in front of you that make you wonder if they know you can hear them.
Medical information, interpersonal family dramas, friends gossiping. Often the biggest culprits are people on the phone who seem to have forgotten that we can all hear their end of the call. But frequently it’s also when two people are the only customers in the shop, and seem to forget that that doesn’t mean they’re alone. This past summer I was manning the counter as a mother-daughter pair were perusing the shop and deep in conversation. The daughter called across the store to her mother, “you always bring this up! My ex only said he didn’t like me when I was drunk, not that he had a problem with me drinking. But that’s not why we broke up.” I didn’t catch the context for this statement. Despite it being none of my business, I had a front row seat to this conversation and lots of questions I was dying to ask. Instead, I had to just roll with it and keep working. I’m wishing her well wherever she is.
Despite people being off-putting, they are also generally well-intentioned. Often after witnessing people act oddly as they shop, I anticipate that they’re going to be unpleasant when they approach the counter. Usually they actually turn out to be perfectly lovely. In working retail I’ve learned that many people don’t have great awareness of their surroundings but that rarely equates to negative intentions. It makes it easier to let things roll over you when you give people a little bit of grace and benefit of the doubt. The people who do come in and choose to act maliciously stand out as unfortunate outliers.
A smile goes a long way in being able to take things in stride.
A lot of people are just looking for a little something to brighten their day. Smiling at people often softens their mood, but also tricks me into feeling a little better in the middle of a long shift. After seeing the effect a smile and greeting generally has on customers, I’ve been trying to smile at more people just out in the world to generally positive results. It’s a quick fix to making the world seem like a slightly more joyful place.
Ultimately, working retail has been a lesson in having to drop any pretenses at nonchalance. Clinging to an aloof exterior only makes the shift more painful for everyone involved. Laughing with my coworkers and catching up with regular customers make workdays pass faster. Accepting that things won’t go according to plan, that often I’ll feel confused or cringe in my attempts to pleasantly socialize, is a lesson that I have to learn again and again but gets easier every time. Most of the time any awkwardness can be brushed off by laughing at yourself.
A final note: Support your local businesses when you can. Local support is vital to them and you can even cultivate a community there if you’re looking for it. A friendly face is always appreciated, and you can always take solace in knowing that even if you commit some social faux pas, it probably won’t be anywhere near the weirdest interaction they’ve had that day.