Anyone her ever worked in retail? Any horror stories?

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I hate them! I've had two, one at a drugstore and another at an electronic good store.
I got the drugstore job at 16, and as I was quite naive I got alot of bullying from my manager. This was before I was diagnosed.

She used to keep the key to the bathroom on her belt, if I needed the bathroom I had to ask her, and she was always on the shop floor talking to customers, so it was embarrassing.

She'd sometimes make me wait ten to fifteen minutes before giving me the key.

She made me get her lunch for her on my half hour lunch break, by the time I had got her lunch and waited in the que to get it for her, I only had ten minutes for my own lunch.

She was incompetent as well, forgetting to order carrier bags and such, and I had to deal with alot of customer complaints due to her negligence, and as a result I used to have panic attacks every morning before work.

She could see I was painfully shy and anxious and constantly belittled me in front of customers.

At £1.50 an hour it didn't seem worth the stress and bullying and I eventually quit.

Do any of you have experience working in retail? Any nasty manager stories?

I worked at Mcdonalds and got confused. Boss:Take the trash out at 11AM Me:Ok Next Day 11AM:Boss:WHAT ARE YOU DOING! Me:Taking out the trash. Boss: NO GO DO X JOB!! !! Boss people:Make sure the ketchup jar is full. Me: Ok During Rush Hour Lunch I take the jar into the back to fill it OWNER:WHAT ARE YOU DOING STOP DOING THAT GET OUT THERE AND CLEAN!! !! !! I would literally go to the bathroom squalling my eyes out!! ! Sometimes for oner 30min!! ! (4 hour job BTW Part time!!) Only lasted 3 months since I had a surgery coming up the boss was a jerk and getting to me.

Oh god he sounds awful! I hope karma comes along and bites him in the goolies! That would have completely confused me as well, he's telling you to do something, but then yelling at you for doing it? I'm happy for you that you left. He'll probably be working there for the rest of his life though, take pity on him

I once worked at a kfc, my problem wasn't so much a mean boss but being the only one who worked like I was supposed to while all the other employees goofed off and did little, along with odors that I was strongly adverse to. But at least I know what the secret marinade is for kfc chicken: Blood and vile putrid rankness in a plastic bag.

note to self: do not ever eat at KFC again, even if it is the last place to get food after the apocalypse

This is the truth I always get sick when I eat there. And seriously if you were to look up the definition for the term "miasma" it would also be a very apt description of the conditions I saw inside the room the raw chicken was kept.

I never had to deal with miasma anywhere I worked but I have had plenty of retail jobs.

One time I was working for Our Price music after a night of heavy drinking. I nearly threw up all over the counter but managed to get half way up the stairs to the staff room out of the view of the custies before dropping the inevitable load. The smell was unbearable for weeks after as I did a really half ass job of cleaning up.

I enjoy retail. Didn't like banks or restaurants so much. . . .

I worked at a retail store, I liked it. My boss was an older black lady, and she was a fine manager. I sold baby toys and guns, sporting goods. Some strange people come in to buy guns. One guy looked mildly retarted or something. He wore camo everything, even camo sneakers, a camo hat, and a camo pen in his pocket. He bought a small rifle and said it was for groundhogs. He said they were tasty too.

I hated asking everyone for their address and zip code, even though they didn't have to give it out, it was just to send them junk mail, which I often explained to them. They would get very defensive.

I enjoyed assembling the display models for bikes and electric jeeps for kids, which I would ride around in the back room.

Food service is the worst, I worked in a deli once and was fired for not smiling enough. I didn't mind getting fired, these were just summer jobs. I got fired alot. Now I work for a major fortune 500 company, and make four or five times as much.

I've worked in retail for most of my life. I just can't believe how incredibly rude customers can be! I also detest whiny people who think throwing a temper tantrum will get me to want to assist them. It's a complete turn off!

The thing I hated about retail was the occasional rude customer. The Christmas shopping season is the worst, especially since I was often working in both the toy and seasonal departments during a busy time. The toy department was the worst as you had to dodge unruly kids on Heelies, and once an aisle was clean, there were toys on the floor again.

I can't stand retail. I've done a few jobs. I just don't *get* people, it seems to bring out the worst in my Aspergers. They tell you to do something, so you do it, then you get told off. They would make me do lots of heavy lifting in my last retail job, and it was always "Look busy"... uhh, what? So I'd look busy and they'd tell me I was looking TOO busy! Ugh. I won't go into all the stories I could tell, but yeah. Not fun. I hated it with a passion, it just made me feel like an incompetent ret*d. Never again.

I actually kind of liked working in retail. They put me in the lawn and garden center and it was really peaceful at night when no one was around.
I also enjoyed the brief customer interactions because they were usually short enough that I could pass as a"normal" person... The questions were always "where can I find this or that" or "is this annual or perennial", so I was able to answer without my mind going blank which was very satisfying..

.. of course, no one said good bye to me when I quit..

I'm a consultant so I've had literally dozens of jobs over the last 17 years. I'm writing a book currently about consulting and there's a chapter just for crazy things that have happened to me.

I had one manager who made all his decisions with rock-paper-scissors. (you cant make this stuff up) It didn't matter who was busy or who was best suited to fix a particular bug. If you lost, you got it.

One manager I had, we called him "Zoltar, Master of all Knowledge". (obviously not his real name) Looking back, I know now that he just wanted people to quit so he could fill those spots with his own flunkies from his last job. But at the time, I had a hard time seeing that. I had been told by a previous manager that he wanted to use a rather obscure database engine for our new project because it was compatible with both windows and unix, and it was open source and had the best performance numbers. Then he left and was replaced with Zoltar. He waited until a couple hours before I was to give a presentation to the company executives to ask me about what I would talk about. I gave him list of the recommendations I was going to make. In the middle of the meeting, he picked apart all of the decisions I (and his predecessor) had made and basically made me look like an ass in front of the executives. I should have said what I thought, walked out of the meeting and quit. But I did the "right thing" and abruptly ended the presentation and preserved my job. This was his first week there. It went down hill from there.

On another occasions, I actually considered filing a sexual harassment suit against my employer. I'm male, so was the boss. He was a 60 year old former body builder. He had pictures of himself in body building competitions on his office wall, all oiled up. After a few weeks of working there, I started getting voicemail messages from him consisting entirely of him breathing heavily into the phone. I think he was just trying to intimidate me into working longer hours, but after the next incident, I began to wonder. He stood behind me while I was trying to show him what I was working on. He put his "package" on my shoulder. So I scooted forward to get away from him, and he took a step forward. So I scooted forward again, and so on. I stopped when I was trapped between my desk and his testicles. After that I started looking for a new job. I think he knew because he fired me a few days later.

My last client/job was by far the worst i've ever had. I was hired to be the expert, design their system, then train them how to implement it. What really happened was they wanted to take my design, tell me how much it sucked, replace it with their own completely ret*d design, then in a slow and agonizing manner, ask me to fix all of the holes in their design one by one, then implement the resultant mess. And it better work. Oh, and don't use any technique we're afraid of, you'll have to guess which ones. These days I've gotten very good at controlling my anger at work, to the point where most people never see it. But this time, I just couldn't. And it didn't help that the manager was the type of person that I have the most trouble with. I get along with nearly everyone these days. But I have the most trouble with managers whose weakness is my strength (technical ability) and they make up for it with bad politics and throwing people under buses. She also hated looking bad in front of her (male) employees. And I think I brought that out frequently. I should have quit at the first sign of trouble, about three weeks in, but it was a mostly work from home job so I tolerated it as best I could. Looking back, I should have quit.

All work sucks. You have to decide which types of suck are easier for you to handle.

edit: I know you asked about retail, but i thought i would tell my stories anyway. You don't have to work in retail to have a bad job.

brian

I worked in a six flags park back in the 80s (magic mountain). People used to throw tantrums when rides were closed. The worst part was working in the booth that sold entrance tickets. A "child" ticket had a height limit, not an age limit. People would show up with their really tall 11 year olds expecting a child ticket for them. They would freak out when I told them the main gate wouldn't let them in. This was all of course, my fault. I used to get in trouble for being 13 cents off on my $30,000 till. It was also disturbing when I had to confiscate people's credit cards. The card companies used to mail me $50 checks for this. But seeing how it affected people made it not worth it.

brian

I worked retail for almost seven years. Started part-time while in High School (Secondary School) then worked through University. Got promoted (demoted?) to retail supervisoral (department manager) - then all heck broke loose. I just can't seem to grasp why I'd manage a group of fifteen-year olds who aren't really there for anything else but utter gossip!

Ah well.. I left six weeks ago and now am working privately.