My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/my-life-as-a-retail-worker-nasty-brutish-and-cheap/284332/

by jseliger • 12 years ago

123 138 12 years ago

joshreads2• 12 years ago

A lot of this is just "person who's had white-collar job for years doesn't get how difficult service jobs are", but making your already low-paid employees do unpaid overtime work is s-k-e-t-c-h-y, and actively illegal.

scarmig3• 12 years ago

True, but I'm betting more than a few HN folk qualify as a "person who's had white-collar job for years [who] doesn't get how difficult service jobs are."

I'm actually impressed that we don't (yet) have a chorus of people saying he's overpaid or that he deserves it.

acheron2• 12 years ago

The guy was a reporter who made racist jokes and comments about people he was supposed to be covering, and subsequently got fired for it. And then, surprise, no one else wanted to hire him to do reporting. [1] "deserves" is a strong word, but actions have consequences.

[1] Until now, I guess?

TheCoelacanth• 12 years ago

Wage theft is sketchy and illegal, but also extremely common.

bluedino• 12 years ago

> "person who's had white-collar job for years doesn't get how difficult service jobs are"

Or, sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day is really, really easy compared to having to actually DO something at a service job.

VLM5• 12 years ago

I believe you did not read the article, as less than one paragraph was on the topic of physical labor, and the rest of the article was about extremely toxic occasionally outright illegal employee / employer relations.

Luckily, due to the "retailapocalpse" or whatever its called, soon virtually no one will have to labor under those conditions, because there will be almost no positions like that. Not that Amazon's warehouses are some kind of workers paradise.

I worked my way thru school in retail supermarkets roughly contemporaneous with the author's youthful experiences a couple decades ago. I see things have gone somewhat downhill since then...

Domenic_S• 12 years ago

Between ages 15-21 I worked a lot of retail. I had managers who would do the "on time is late" thing, or make me clock out and then wait for 20 minutes for them to unlock the door at closing time. I knew those things weren't legal, and I'd make a stink about it. I was an exemplary worker, which I'm sure afforded me some leeway, but more importantly I was young, white, and living at home with my middle-class parents. I didn't need the job. I wanted the job of course (56k modems aren't free!) but I didn't have the fear that I or my family might starve if I talked back.

What's the solution? Mandatory severance for every job?

krstck5• 12 years ago

What's the solution? Mandatory severance for every job?

At the risk of opening a-whole-nother can of worms.... universal basic income.

pnathan3• 12 years ago

When I did retail & fast food work, I don't recall having to do unpaid work. Showing up "on the floor" at time was expected, but that was no more than stuffing my bag in the break room and going out.

That said, if I was looking at the prospect of working in these shops long-term, I'd also be seeing what I could do to unionize the shop - they are a pretty crummy environment with abhorrent pay for anyone over the age of 16 (as the author points out).

thecyborganizer• 12 years ago

That said, if I was looking at the prospect of working in these shops long-term, I'd also be seeing what I could do to unionize the shop - they are a pretty crummy environment with abhorrent pay for anyone over the age of 16 (as the author points out).

I respect your optimism, but standard practice at big retailers for anyone who even breathes word of unionization is to fire them instantly. If that doesn't do it, they close the store. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Walmart#Labor_unio...

rayiner4• 12 years ago

I accept that the market drives down the wages of service workers, but their working conditions are just outrageous to me. Automation and optimization has turned retail into a hellish job. On demand scheduling, zero tolerance policies, wage theft, etc. Its MBAs and programmers making a buck by burdening the people who are least equipped to find a job doing something else.

See also: http://www.thenation.com/article/177377/holiday-crush ("A woman from the agency hands each of us a time sheet. For the sign-in, she tells us to write 8:30. 'I know you were told to be here at 8:15,' she says, anticipating a protest that never comes, 'but that was just to make sure you got here early.'").

danielweber• 12 years ago

Thinking aloud, I wonder if there should be some sort of minimum wage for the part of your schedule you are on-demand for.

scarmig3• 12 years ago

That'd just push down wages for the parts of your schedule you're actually working, though. Minimum wages are the type of thing where if you push on one side, it incentivizes employers to extract more value by any means possible out of you.

I'm a broken record on this, but: an unconditional basic income is the answer to this situation. The only way you can make sure every job has dignity is for every person to be able to quit their job without worrying about starving or being unable to afford any housing. Once everyone is guaranteed that bare minimum, employers have to treat their employees with a basic level of respect and dignity. Otherwise they'll quit.

josephschmoe• 12 years ago

Burdening these people by making fewer of them have to do crummy, hellish work? I'm soooo sorry for eliminating work no one wants to do.

Unemployment isn't an engineer or an MBA's fault. It's the fault of shareholders, executives and congressmen: they're the ones hoarding the money at the top. I guarantee you, if the money went to the engineers, we'd have 98% employment right now and the jobs would be a whole lot more interesting than retail. Heck, we'd have to start using graphical user interfaces for stores because we wouldn't be able to find enough people to work retail!

rayiner4• 12 years ago

Service jobs aren't inherently crummy. What makes it crummy are the software systems that let managers schedule people on variable, on-demand schedules, and policies that micro-manage bathroom breaks and the like. There's an entire industry focused on getting additional tenths of a percent out of service workers.

Papa John's founder said it'd cost something like $0.50 extra per pizza to offer his employees health insurance. I'm not even talking about a luxury like health insurance. What would it cost to let employees take a few extra sick days or be able to plan on when they'll work or the occasional unplanned bathroom break? http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1djlt0/pregnant_tmobil...

tptacek• 12 years ago

I don't understand this comment at all. I don't even know where to start.

munificent• 12 years ago

Burdening these people by making fewer of them have to do crummy, hellish work?

Unless your software is giving those people something better to do you're lying to yourself if you think you've made things better for them. As miserable as these jobs are, they're still better than no job at all.

Of course, I'm not saying it's your responsibility to solve that problem. When you automate someone's job away, the person who benefits is the employer, not the (ex-) employee.

dllthomas2• 12 years ago

Unemployment wasn't what was at issue. It was the structuring of particular jobs in ways that are particularly unpleasant for those who remain simply because it lets you cut one more job.

This isn't the fault of all MBAs or all engineers, but it's quite arguably the fault of the particular engineers who built the tools to manage that way and certainly the particular MBAs who chose to deploy those tools in a way that makes people miserable.

cobrausn4• 12 years ago

My first job was retail, and I worked it for about four years total, including during college and after service in the Navy. At the time I had skills that translated into being valuable enough to not work in retail that didn't involve a lot of risk (police, security, etc), so it seemed about the best option.

I don't think I quite experienced anything like this, but sometimes it was close. If I felt like a replaceable cog, it's because I was, and I was a replaceable cog in a machine already operating on razor thin margins, which means I had to be a good cog. The funny thing was that due to my Navy experience, I didn't perceive it as all that bad, though the pay was pretty miserable even at two dollars above minimum wage.

I'll say this - working retail was very motivating. I knew I didn't want to do that forever. But I don't know what the 'solution' is as applied to everybody, but I know the solution for me was to finish college and make myself valuable.

pnathan3• 12 years ago

My impression is that retail has gotten worse over the last 20 years.

cobrausn4• 12 years ago

My last retail job was a decade ago, but yeah, I'm getting the same impression. I think it is because the margins are getting even smaller thanks to a variety of factors (the prevalence of online shopping being the biggest influence, IMHO).

VLM5• 12 years ago

Socioeconomic separation of the consumer class from the servant class. As discussed in the article, humans shop there and buy $25 socks for their $300 shoes, but a thirty-something part time minimum wage no benefits homeless dude is not part of that class.

krstck5• 12 years ago

It definitely has, and I think the slide has accelerated within the last 5-10 years.

maxerickson2• 12 years ago

I'd like to see harder numbers on the hourly value the store gets from the employees. As a for instance, Dick's Sporting Goods has a per employee operating income of about $15,000. That isn't an amazingly solid number, but it's enough to say they have quite a bit of cash moving around after they pay wages.

alistairSH• 12 years ago

"I guess [you] don’t care about hard work or loyalty." -- Stretch

That's ripe. Pay your employees a low wage, treat them like shit, and then expect loyalty? Gimme a break. Loyalty is a two-way street and I don't see any reciprocation from corporate America (in this case, or in general).

bequanna3• 12 years ago

When a job is low skill, they have a huge pool of labor they can draw from. There really isn't any need to treat employees well, since there are so many applicants.

I think it is fairly simple. The more in-demand your skills are, the better you can expect to treated by your employer because you have options.

Is this 'right'? I don't know. But it seems to be how things work.

pnathan3• 12 years ago

That's the point of closed shops & unions, right? To limit the pool of labor contractually to force better working conditions...

VLM5• 12 years ago

"There really isn't any need to treat employees well"

All you have to do is sell your soul and abandon your own humanity. Cheap, right? You can learn a lot about someone, or a culture, by seeing how they treat those less fortunate.

eli_gottlieb3• 12 years ago

Then why is this Mr. "Stretch" citing virtue ethics as justification? He should just come out and admit that he's invoking Might Makes Right.

gyom• 12 years ago

It also sounds like a canned response from Stretch who probably uses that to justify why he himself works there.

mateo411• 12 years ago

"I guess we are going to end this on a petty note." -- Me in an alternate universe

danso• 12 years ago

I kind of did a double take at this:

Even though I was living rent-free in a guest bedroom, my every-other-Thursday paycheck couldn’t help me climb out of my hole, particularly after the state took half my pre-tax, $300 weekly salary for child support payments.
* got the opportunity to leave Sporting Goods Inc. for a temporary job as a communications director for a Capitol Hill nonprofit, a gig that paid twice as much per week as I’d earn in a month at the store. That salary still didn’t come close to my Politico paycheck, though it was a step in the right direction.*

- 300 * 52 = 15,600 annually

- 15,600 * 4 * 2 ("twice as much per week as one month") = 124,800

- "That salary still didn’t come close to my Politico paycheck"

So, at least $150K or even $200+K? Gah-damn! I know big beltway journalists get a decent salary, but Politico is a relative newcomer (though profitable and growing).

bhauer• 12 years ago

twice as much per week as I’d earn in a month at the store

300 = retail pay per month.

300 * 2 = 600, which is twice the retail pay.

600 * 4 = 2,400, multiplying by four weeks to account for new job earning twice as much per week as per month in retail.

2,400 * 12 = 28,800, which is an estimate for the annual pay at his new job.

Politico most certainly pays more than that.

streptomycin• 12 years ago

300 = retail pay per month.

That's pay per week, not pay per month. So multiply everything by 4.

morgante3• 12 years ago

300 = retail pay per month.

No, that was his pay per week. His monthly pay in retail was $1200.

rayiner4• 12 years ago

He made $300 per week retail, or about $1330 per month. Twice as much as that is $2,660 per week = $140k per year.

morgante3• 12 years ago

I'm not surprised that a journalist managing an 80-person team was paid $200k+.

What I am surprised by is how he ever ended up working retail with a salary like that. I'd expect him to have saved up enough to last a year or two of low expenses.

quasse• 12 years ago

Seriously, I'm just consistently shocked at how many people making huge amounts of money don't even manage to put away $20k or so to survive if needed. Additionally, no one seems to be able to stomach cutting costs until they're already homeless and on the street. Every time I see one of these stories, it seems like the person tries to hold on to the exact standard of living they're at up until the moment they can't pay rent and are on the streets.

I make $15k annually as a student right now and I still have managed to save up enough that I could live for 3 or 4 months if I lost my job. It would just be a matter of being very careful with my spending.

LordIllidan• 12 years ago

Recent divorce and child support payments

nerfhammer• 12 years ago

journalism has a power-law income distribution where most earn nothing but a tiny few at the top can earn 7 figures or more. Well-known bylines are supposed to bring the audience and not just crank out anonymous content.

nicholas732• 12 years ago

What happened to everyone's math skills here?

$300 * 2 * 52 = $31,200.

ojbyrne• 12 years ago

"... a gig that paid twice as much per week as I'd earn in a month at the store."

So 300 * 2 * 4 *52 = $124,800.

agumonkey• 12 years ago

I'm still surprised how close to my last job this is. The do everything, get nothing [1]. Same mindset about being robbed by employees. The worst part there, to me, was the absurdity of it. You have to be on 100% ~24/7 even when there's nothing to do. But you're certainly not allowed to change things in any way to simplify or increase productivity. Something any programmer will cringe at to death. This is something very different from other jobs like mcdonalds where the rush impose high productivity constraints meaning things are already quite optimized. No time's wasted: you're active and for some valuable reason. Helps a lot.

[1] optional bonus: being slightly mocked by less educated people that will then ask you for hints about things they don't understand. Of course, I helped. Slave genes.

krstck5• 12 years ago

It seems to me that working retail has gotten a lot worse since the recession. I worked retail after high school before deciding to go to college, and then worked the same job on summers home from school. What was interesting was that between when I started that job in 2005 and when I left for the final time in 2010, my coworkers went from being mostly high school and college kids to all sorts of folks of varying ages and backgrounds. That was the most telling sign of the recession to me. I strolled in to pick up my job where I'd left off in 2010 and I remember every single day people asking for job applications. I had thoughts like, why would you want to work here? This is a job for kids! But we even had a PhD biologist for a while.

Conditions have been deteriorating for a while now. Extended hours on holidays, terrible scheduling, and peculiar "performance measurement" tools. At my particular store, they adopted a system of tracking how many transactions a cashier performed per hour and then penalizing them when those transactions exceeded a certain number. The thought was that if a cashier rang up so many customers an hour, then some of them had had to wait in line and the cashier was at fault for not calling backup. (What backup? And what if they were just a really fast cashier?) Another was the obsession with collecting customers' email addresses. Cashiers were expected to collect so many email addresses a day or week or whatever or be threatened with losing their job.

My silly, between school semesters little retail gig had become very stressful towards the end because of the obsession with these metrics and a general attitude of "I could fire you today and have someone cheaper by tomorrow".

fretless• 12 years ago

They probably don't have to say that stores are closing everywhere. Every week there's news about possible store closings. This week it's Staples and Safeway, last week it was Guitar Center, before, Pennys, Best Buy, Disney Store etc.

krstck5• 12 years ago

I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, shopping in a physical store location is mostly a terrible experience these days and I greatly prefer to shop online. But on the other, these big box stores have long been the providers of many a teen's summer job or somebody's second income or just something to keep someone afloat between "real" jobs, so I hate to see that source disappear.

mox12• 12 years ago

I'd like to point out that this story takes place in one of the highest cost of living areas in the country. $10 / hour goes a lot further in Kansas than it does D.C.

I think a lot of people could live OK in the Midwest on $10 / hour.

I wish more people would move away from the super high cost of living areas (California, New England, ...etc) and "vote with their feet" so to speak. If 10% of the populations of Cali and Massachusetts moved inward, I think that would drive house prices down and wages up. All the rich people are still around to buy stuff and no poor people left to work retail.

w1ntermute6• 12 years ago

I wish more people would move away from the super high cost of living areas (California, New England, ...etc) and "vote with their feet" so to speak.

This is (and has been) happening for years now. Poorer people are reverse-migrating from the denser parts of the country to the Sun Belt.

And it's a problem. The high cost of living in many of the "desirable" parts of the country is artificially created by government regulation of housing (as well as other markets, thanks to the propensity of densely populated municipalities to be run by liberals). But with the services sector growing, it makes more sense for poorer people to live near the wealthy people (who are going to be in the desirable parts of the country), since those are the people who can and will buy services. It's very different from, say, manufacturing, which is far more location-independent.

I firmly believe the problem of high cost of living can be solved through more sensible housing policies and efficient public transit (among other things). See this (quite short, at 64 pages) book for more details: http://www.amazon.com/The-Rent-Too-Damn-High-ebook/dp/B0078X...

It's the services sector that is and will continue to be the most difficult to replace with outsourcing and automation (see Moravec's paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec's_paradox). It only makes sense that we try to create as many jobs as possible in this area. By lowering housing and transportation (and other) costs for people in the service industry, they can offer their services at a lower cost, allowing more people to purchase those services, which will drive down unemployment.

jackmaney2• 12 years ago

$10 / hour goes a lot further in Kansas than it does D.C.

True.

I think a lot of people could live OK in the Midwest on $10 / hour.

Ridiculously false.

Yes, the cost of living is cheaper in the Midwest, but a lot of people seem to have the idea that it's this land lost in time where a loaf of bread still costs a nickel and where gas is 25 cents a gallon.

krstck5• 12 years ago

It's hard for people to move away from their kids. In many if not most of these cases, you'll find that that's a major reason why people don't move.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 12 years ago

OK, you go first.

Those areas are empty and emptying out because people don't want to live there.

ahoy• 12 years ago

I live in a fairly low-cost area(a mid-sized town in the coastal southeast). $10/hr would be a stretch.

ZanyProgrammer2• 12 years ago

I had the same experience at Whole Foods Palo Alto as a cashier, 2008-12. WF management can take asking about the Whole Planet foundation and shove it up their ass.

glesica• 12 years ago

I've never understood the management attitude that seeks to create such an environment, because workers just end up rebelling against it in hidden ways. I worked in retail in college for a truly terrible company. The work environment was awful and exploitative, but the company wasn't very good at things like inventory control. So, largely in response to this, the people in the stock room would literally throw probably 10% of the merchandise that came off the trucks directly into the garbage compactor. If that's good business, then there's something seriously wrong with our economic system.

pjc50• 12 years ago

It's the sort of company where the people in charge enjoy subordinating their employees, and aren't themselves subject to good metrics. They can spend their time bullying the staff at the expense of shareholders.

The Protestant management ethic doesn't help here - the belief that if the rank-and-file are happy, they must be getting away with something and must therefore be screwed harder.

hershel• 12 years ago

Sweden offers a nice solution to this: responsible unions.

In Sweden there are 2 unions, One for white collar workers and one for blue collar employees. The salary rates/hikes are industry wide.They are usually determined by the competitive part of the economy - the export sector and than applied to everybody.

The unions understand their role as protectors of employees, but on the other hand, understand the need for Sweden to remain competitive and the huge responsibility put on them by representing so many people without hurting the economy. So they come with reasonable demands.

All this is supported by the Swedish mentality of fairness, which makes employees happy just taking their fair share.

dx4100• 12 years ago

I'd say this is easier in a society like Sweden, with a homogeneous culture and relatively small population.

richardjordan2• 12 years ago

I think the reason it's easier in Sweden is the key cultural value of fairness. America is more of a "mine" society, where everyone cares about what's "mine" and lacks an ability to self-moderate based on what's fair or right.

sliverstorm6• 12 years ago

No kidding. Just think of all the political squabbles that would vanish overnight if the USA was, for example, 99% WASP

lotsofmangos4• 12 years ago

That seems rather simplistic and is not borne out by looking at other small homogenous cultures.

I suspect it is more to do with having a very long history of democratic and social decision making in Viking culture.

The Viking Thing was electing kings by vote a millennium ago.

nightski2• 12 years ago

I feel like this would remove all incentive.

richardjordan2• 12 years ago

Well you could trust your 'feelings' or you can look at the evidence and determine whether or not Sweden is a prosperous society with a good standard of living, competitive businesses and motivated people.

nilkn• 12 years ago

And this is why I desperately save money. Even though I've only been out of college for less than a year and I know my parents would graciously take me back in for as long as necessary should something catastrophic happen to my career, I'm paranoid about depending so much on a job for my livelihood.

My admittedly very lofty goal is to reach a point in my mid-30s where I don't need a job. By no means do I plan on actually retiring at that point, but I want the peace of mind knowing that my career could end and I could lead a humble, comfortable-enough life without working, probably in the midwest.

pilom• 12 years ago

I feel the exact same way. Yesterday there were a bunch of questions about what happens to middle age programmers and those were depressing too. The answer for me (and sounds like you too) absolutely has been to save as much as possible and be able to "never need to work again" as fast as possible. I'll probably be mid-30s at that point too and I'll feel much much better about my life knowing that I don't need a job to survive.

ufmace4• 12 years ago

What struck me as really odd about his job was the obsession with anti-theft measures. How big is is this store that they have enough to hire a full-time loss prevention officer? I've never heard of any retail store giving employees bag-checks and pat-downs every time they entered and left the building either. It's been a long time since I've worked any job like that, but I've never heard of anything like that. From everything I've read, most major retailers have little to no protection against employee theft. Is the neighborhood they're in that bad that they have to go to these extremes, or is the owner/manager just nuts about this issue for some reason?

ilaksh• 12 years ago

Doesn't surprise me. Many years ago my first job was retail security guard. One day I was assigned to a sporting goods store. I was the victim of a scam where some woman accused me of losing an expensive bag. Pretty sure the manager of the store was in on it. Another store I worked in sold baby clothes and was constantly being robbed regardless of which guard was on duty. I've heard that Target has its own crime lab. I imagine things have gotten worse since I had that job in 1998.

ZanyProgrammer2• 12 years ago

Whole Foods Palo Alto had the entire downstairs recorded, so employees couldn't steal. No bag checks when I was there though.

valar_m• 12 years ago

Bag checks are fairly common, usually occurring at ends of shift or closing. Pat downs are less so, mostly because it's generally not a good idea to require employees to touch each other.

Retail internal theft really is a serious problem, though. According to the National Retail Security Survey at UF, it costs retailers (read: consumers) $14.9 billion annually [1].

What you may find surprising is that most major retailers do, in fact, have quite extensive controls in place to prevent and detect internal theft -- exception reporting, inventory tracking, etc. That these massive losses still occur should give you an idea of how complex the problem is.

The reason the store requires two employees to take out the trash has nothing to do with watching for thieves or "armed intruders." It's actually a simple and surprisingly effective deterrent to internal theft. Diverting merchandise through non-public exits is a common theft strategy.

Also, Ike was not "fired because [he] got a promotion." He was fired for lying on his job application about a previous conviction for theft. Ike's conviction strongly suggests a tendency to act dishonestly, which is further reinforced by his attempt to cover it up when applying for the job. This is precisely the type of individual that the background check is intended to screen.

Lastly, the author says it happened when Ike was a teenager, so it could only have happened when Ike was either 18 or 19. Juvenile court records are not available to background check services.

[1] http://investors.tyco.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=112348&p=irol-news...

brianpgordon2• 12 years ago

Ike's conviction strongly suggests a tendency to act dishonestly, which is further reinforced by his attempt to cover it up when applying for the job.

I wouldn't make it out to be such a personal moral failing. Given the job climate described in the article, I wouldn't expect him to be able to get a job by telling the truth about his conviction. If they were actually concerned about producing profit instead of covering their butts, Corporate would sweep it under the rug with the realization that he is effectively required to lie about it in order to participate in society.

ufmace4• 12 years ago

I have heard that, for most retailers, most of their losses are due to internal theft. Hence lots of video cameras, and background checks to a degree that seem a little absurd, plus loss prevention investigations, record keeping, and lots of internal audits. What really sounds odd are the bag checks and pat-downs. Pat-downs especially, at least partly since they seem likely to lead to sexual harassment suits. I can't think of a solid legal reason not to do bag checks, but it sounds so demeaning and pointless, unless you work somewhere where tens of thousands in inventory could legitimately be snuck out through somebody's backpack. If you're selling diamonds or gold jewelry, I could see it, but sporting goods? What are they supposedly stealing that can be snuck out in a backpack and will lead to a meaningful loss before somebody figures it out?

Ike's situation is what bothers me about the current criminal justice system, though. If you get a conviction on your record for anything moderately serious, you're just done. He could tell the truth, and get locked out right off the bat, or lie, and maybe get caught later. We've probably all done dumb stuff when we were young. If you happen to get busted for something at the wrong time, well, good luck ever getting a semi-professional job again. Years and years of dedicated service are nothing against some dumb mistake a decade ago.

I'll admit that I tend to think that a lot of petty thieves are doing it for the thrills rather than desperation for survival. But what do we really expect them to do after they get caught? Even if they do some time and learn their lesson, it looks like they have damn few options for making a clean living, no matter how skilled and dedicated they are. I don't have any idea how many ex-cons are making a legit effort to live a clean life after they do their time, but we sure don't seem to be making it easy for them. And we're surprised that most of them go back to crime and get busted again? I'm not sure exactly how to solve it, but it surely needs some work.

nsxwolf2• 12 years ago

Having two friends who have careers in "LP", both who have worked at a litany of stores, pretty much any chain you've heard of has a full time loss prevention officer or two.

It's probably the best paying job on the store premises.

Keep in mind their job is also to stop shoplifters in addition to "internal" theft, embezzlement, return fraud, etc.

thornz• 12 years ago

I worked at a Best Buy one summer and bag-checks as well as pat downs were mandatory any time an employee left the premises.

OhHeyItsE• 12 years ago

absolutely terrifying. This kind of stuff keeps me up at night.

eli_gottlieb3• 12 years ago

Not to belabor the point, but could someone please attempt to explain what rational goal is served by our society's choices to keep entire segments of the population in conditions the well-off regard as absolutely terrifying nightmare lives?

Controlling the people through fear doesn't sound like the "free world", you know.

vijayr2• 12 years ago

I guess [you] don’t care about hard work or loyalty.

Wow, just wow - humiliating him by checking his bag every day, making him do extra work (after work hours) for free, restricting him to less than 30 hours so the store doesn't have to give him benefits .... Even after all this, the author seemed to have worked hard. All of this is still not enough.

Incredible.

nicholas732• 12 years ago

I recently heard from someone who worked at Target that each day the managers would lock the doors after the last customer left, and physically lock the employees in. Nobody was allowed to leave until they were done checking for theft. This would last 10-15 minutes, and they didn't get paid for this time.

peteforde• 12 years ago

I'm a bit late to the game on this one, but I'm a bit saddened to see no discussion about the fact that this man assaulted his wife.

It's good that he's not hiding the conviction, but I find it hard to empathize with someone that carries out violence against women.

His situation sucks, but he wouldn't have been in such dire straights if he hadn't been angry enough to hit his spouse. To me, that violence is the most urgent detail of this story.

My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Cheap

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