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I'm thinking I may have to jump back into retail to make ends meet. This thought sends shivers down my spine. Underpaid, overworked, and forced to deal with rude people all day and be blamed for ridiculous corporate rules? Blech.
But unfortunately, you gotta eat, right?
So people who have worked retail, were there any places where maybe the customers were nicer? Or where management was efficient and less...well...braindead?
Perhaps a company who pays more than $8 an hour?
I'm probably chasing some unicorn in this quest, but I've only worked convenience stores and bookstores (large chain bookstore). Are there different types of industries that draw different kinds of customers? Should I get into big item sales?
Basically, is there a retail job out there that doesn't suck quite so bad, because of management, or the type of customers that come in?
Non-commission based retail to me is really easy.
Big box is generally non-commission I think. Nobody is crawling all over you to help you, so it must be. Stuff like selling cars and furniture where its all commission is the pits.
The people who work at Home Depot seem really happy. Plus there's a lot of older people who work there, so they must pay at least some kind of sustainable wage.
Stuff like selling cars and furniture where its all commission is the pits.
You may feel this way, but for us that made real good money doing it, it was a lot easier than other kinds of retail sales and cashiers where the pay is so low. If you are any good at all, you will make real big money compared to most people. It is a lot easier work, than standing behind a cash register or other more common retail job. As far as working on commission, after leaving the navy in 1954, I only worked at one part time job where I taught retail business at a college part time for a salary of $14 an hour back in 1968 4 hours every evening. In today's dollars, it was a good salary. They wanted me to convert to a full day schedule that fall, but I left as the pay was too low. At the time, I was selling furniture at one of the best department stores in the nation full time. Commission is the only way to go as far as I am concerned. I always made a far above average income except for 1 month, when a flood closed the roads into and out of the area, and people were not buying furniture. Even so, I still made about 4 times minimum wage.
Goodwill here in Maine pays their cashiers $7.75 an hour. Managers make $10.00 an hour. Walmart in our town pays $8.40 to start as a cashier and you get .40 cent raises every year until you hit $14.00 an hour. Plus you get a quarterly bonus if the store does well. I work for Walmart and I like it. I got to pick my hours and never work weekends so I can stay home with my daughter while my husband works and then go to work when he gets home.
So long as you try and steer clear of a lot of massive big box stores, you should be fine. They always tend to pay the closest to minimum wage as they can. I know that's not true of ALL big box stores, but for the majority it is. I've worked in retail pretty much my entire working life, and have always stayed in smaller, more boutique-ish stores. The pay is almost always better, as are the benefits and the working environment. The last store I was in, those who were hired as just PT Sales associates started at $13/hr.
One of the first jobs I had when I came to NYC was sales at Bloomingdale's - their flagship on 59th Street. I worked at Marc by Marc Jacobs.
If there is a Bloomingdale's near you, I strongly suggest it. Here are the pros and cons:
Pros:
- $12/hour + commission (and commission added up pretty quickly)
- You can add 'Personal Shopper' to your resume, and how awesome does that sound
You literally walk around (all 9 floors!) with your client and help them find different things they need. I spent like 4 hours with this lady who was looking for clothes for their lavish vacation her and her family was going to go. Ka-ching! Hello commission!
- Two weeks of a full blown training, from cash register and technical things, to psychological "how to get into customers heads and make them buy" training, etc. They would introduce you to all of the different floors and would co-mingle you with associates from different departments so you would have 'friends' and not be a loner lol Plus, if you ever needed help selling an item in another department it was nice if you knew people who was working it
-Paid weekly
Cons:
-Uniform is all black (bleh. boring).
-Some really pretentious, stuck up, noise in the air, "I'm better than you" customers that you have to put up with in hopes that their AmEx black cards will soon reward you with great commission pay
-Paid weekly lol (this could be good/bad depending on how you budget your money)
-High turnover (most people just work there temporarily until they land their job that's closely related to their major and something they actually have a passion in)
-Working weekends/holidays (obviously)
Anyway- if they have one near you, I highly recommend working for them. It really did provide and was not $9/hour. Good luck!
The pay in Seattle and NYC is quite different than just about everywhere else.
True- but I don't think Bloomingdale's would pay that drastically different, and if you are making commission, you will still be making more than say $8/hour. I'm just saying it was a good retail position for me (and trust me I've worked crap retail stores- *cough Sears cough*). The training was paid too. So you get paid training, meet lots of people your first few weeks before they throw you with the lions lol Once you are trained, you can sell your heart out.
OP, as long as you are nice, great with people, patient, and hard working you should have no problem with pretty much any retail store. If you can find a store that offers commission, that would be my vote for you. For some reason, if I know I'm making the same hourly rate, regardless of sales, I likely won't be as enthusiastic about going to work. If I know that the money I make for the day is limitless, then I'm going to be more likely to want to work hard and be with customers. Just my $0.02...
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