The Diane Rehm Show

Caitlin --
You are describing my experience completely. I too am an out of work journalist, freelanced and then to make ends meet, took a part time job at a big chain bookstore near my home. I liked my co-workers, the customers were mostly nice and I loved talking about books. Books was something I was passoniate about. The worst was the belittling management, and yes as you just said the customers who thought I was an idiot because I worked in retail. The corporate culture was depressing and yes, the management always thought we were stealing. We were responsible for making sure our cash drawer was not short at the end of our shift. But we were not allowed to know how much money was in the draw to begin with!! When I was short, even $1, I was written up.

I finally came to the conclusion that at $7.75 an hour, it just wasn't worth it.

-- Kris

Caitlin,

I am a 29 year woman who had to go back to retail when I decided to finally go back to school. Im am so thankful you are on the air right now talking about the realties of retail. As a current retail employee I come home at night sore and almost battered mentally and physically by my job. I clean, I am security, I am a cashier, and a sales person. I am scheduled for 5 hours, I usually work until the managers say its slow enough for me to leave, and I rarely get breaks. Theres alot of pressure to be good at everything. You are right the lack of respect form both management and customers is appalling. We are treated terribly by our employers because like you said, we are the bottom of the totem pole. Customers are awful, the yell and bully you into giving them what they want, they dont care whether you lose your job. I hope those terrible people hear your show today and think twice.

Great story. I wonder how many memos are going out right now to HR in retail corporations ordering them to advise managers not to hire former reporters, or people who put "writing" as a hobby on their resumes.

This just brings home how top management have created so much distance between themselves and the lower ranks of employees in the business world. Twenty years ago the average CEO earned about 30 times what the average employee earned; today the disparity is more like 340 times. This is also why the show Undercover Boss resonates so well.

I think the common thread here is working with other people, you might consider yourself a "people person" but it is just plain hard to do. Imagine working with spiteful Pancake up there, he's mostly wrong and thinks he knows everything. The best one can do is lead a responsible life so you do not have to be in desperate situation.

I can really relate to Caitlin's experience with disrespect from shoppers. I work for a retail company that is not at a mall but is a tv shopping program so most business is done through the call center where I work. The calls we deal with can be brutal. People often want something for free and when they don't get it they lash out at us as if we are not human beings. We are just a voice on the phone to them. Most people do not realize that our calls are timed and our success is dependent on keeping call times to minimum. We are told to "control" the call, yet when we try to close in a very polite way the caller will accuse us of trying to dump them. Other callers try many kinds of manipulative ways to get us to stay on the phone, maybe out of loneliness or whatever but the pressure is very intense as we can see the seconds ticking on the screen as we try to get through the call. All of our calls are monitored so we are forced to take a wide variety of abuse without losing our cool.

Bravo for this book. Ok, here's a thought... you know how some countries make their younger population serve in the military for a couple of years? Well, we should make working in retail for 2 years mandatory in this country. It would probably change the atmosphere of the cruel disrespect displayed by both management AND customers.

Sorry for the repeated post - I don't know why that happened.

I wanted to add: at almost every store meeting our Trader Joe's manager told us it wasn't "inour best intrest to unionize". He also threatened people who were caught talking about the benefits of unionizing. IF we had had a even an instore union: we wouldn't have suffered discrimination against women, people of color and people over 30; we wouldn't have had 1/2 the injuries (ripped knees, torn backs, carpal tunnel, broken bones, etc) - our store incurred the highest injury rate in the chain; and, since management has no interest in working FOR it's employees, we would have had real help when dealing with abuses by management. People routinely talk about abuses at Walmart, TJ's runs under the same type of abuses as Walmart - the only difference is the work uniform. Tshirts instead of smocks.

The way TJs employees are treated is disgusting and no one is talking about it.

The caller who described himself as having worked numerous jobs that were not pleasant, such as mucking out hogs, has moved on to a well paying white-collar job wanted to know how the discussion was more than "entertainment" I think he missed a key point of Caitlin's book. Low wages, insane hours and the basic tasks of retail are very problematic. But the bigger problem is the relentless denigration of the sales associate.
I've worked in white collar jobs; I've worked sales. I also live and work on a small farm. Weeding, hoeing, mowing and feeding animals are far more fulfilling on a regular basis than serving a meal, cup of coffee or selling makeup. My pigs aren't looking at me with disdain, discounting my intellectual or social worth they just want to be warm and dry with a big trough of food available. Give me farm animals over retail shoppers any day!

...

I was able to get my question on today but did not get a complete answer. I e-mailed that the authors story was similar to the book that came out a few years ago...."How Starbucks Changed my Life". The author was an older unemployed Madision Avenue executive that took the job for health care and survival. I went to his story line store( upper West side on Broadway) less than six months after he wrote the book and no one in the store knew anything about where he went.

I wish Miss Kelly would have told us if she ever read this book or was awaire of it for the basis of her book?

hello ,
i lost my job two years ago at general motors corp. i worked there for decades. i found it very difficult for a while to find a job. i was shocked how employers hated that i knew too much. i now work in a coffee house. this is the lowest point in my life. i'm not treat very well from the customers at all. i got called a dirty jew the other day. i was so offended it made my day. the only good thing about working in this environment is that the owners are nice. i've now learned how mean people can be.

I have worked in the retail supermarket industry since I was 16. I started bagging groceries, worked my way through college, and many levels of management and executive positions. I remember what a wonderful work environment we had with employees who had 10,15,20, and 30 year stints. Several generations of families worked for the company I did because of our fine reputation and the "way we were treated."
That all came to an end in the early 90's with a new VP of Human Resources who told the managment staff that our number one controllable expense would be payroll!
I saw a company that put more and more work on less and less people. Productivity was the key word, not customer service, cleanliness, good pricing all that had been staples previously. I watched people work UNPAID overtime, because they could not get the job done in 40 hours and were afraid of losing their jobs if they complained.
I watched benefits slashed, fulltime jobs eliminated or hours cut to 28 or 32 hours per week. Pension plan raided for current and future retirees.
I watched a once proud company fall apart in 10 short years. Now it is a distant memory for employees and the community it served.
Retail in America today.

Thanks for this show. With all the current hysteria about deficit reduction, it's important to remember the plight of those that have been and continue to be badly damaged by the economic crisis of 2008. As a follow up, it would be interesting to hear a show analyzing what potential impacts the various deficit reduction programs will have on both the currently unemployed and the unemployment rate overall. Further, since there is currently a great deal of slack in the economy, it would be interesting to have an analysis of what the long term pluses and minuses of cutting the budget now are versus the pluses and minuses of waiting until the economy is stronger before embarking on an austerity program.