I’ve been working in retail for almost three years now. I’ve jumped through multiple different departments from kids clothes, to kids shoes, to womens clothes, and to womens shoes. I’ve had a lot of great, not-so-great, and very interesting interactions with customers, so I’d like to give you some basic not-so-great realties about working in retail. Take into consideration that everyone who works in retail has different experiences, but these general ones are ones you’ll most likely experience should you work in retail.
1. Picky (Indecisive) Customers
Everyone is a little picky or indecisive at some point, but when you work on commission, your time is valuable. Some people don’t realize that unfortunately. This leaves you stuck with one customer for the longest time trying to hardest to be as patient as possible.
2. Destroyed Sales Floors
Let’s face it. Every time you shop, you’re guilty of this, too. Once you find something you like, you push through the fixture to find what you need leaving behind a mess that you know you’re not going to fix. Sadly, in retail, you gotta be the one to fix it. And you’ll be cleaning and selling simultaneously even if you cleaned the majority of the floor for the longest time. In five minutes, it can go from beautiful to ugly real quick.
3. Try On and Go Customers
Where I work now, I get a lot of customers that just come to try stuff on and leave. And when you work on commission, that customer is your responsibility whether they buy something or not. So they will grab whatever they want, try on everything (or nothing at all), and you have to clean it up even if it means they buy one thing (or like I said, nothing).
4. Returns Galore
If you work commission, your sales are important. However, not everyone keeps whatever you sell them. So you could be selling like crazy and making a lot but as soon as you check your numbers, that progress could disappear if your returns catch up to you. Most of the time it could be really difficult to turn those around, too. Especially on a slow day, you’re bound to be stuck with a huge amount of returns and small amount of sales if you managed to catch up just a little bit.
Working in retail can be tough, but when you really take the time to help a customer and maintain a good level of patience it can be a great experience. People tend to be really grateful when you help them find exactly what they want especially when they’ve been struggling to find that one thing they really need. Yeah, the stuff I listed does suck, but retail does have its perks. So stay tuned for another article about the perks of retail ;)