Do you look down on 30+ year olds who work in retail?

That sort of job is really only for students, immigrants or part timers. Doing it for more than a year....well may aswell give up and hit the roads. Doing min wage 9-5 really gains you absolutely nothing you piss away 40 hours a week and lose most of it in tax, you dont meet interesting people only 3rd worlders/chavs and dullards and certainly its not good for meeting men/women.

lol most '3rd worlders' working there are doing so as students
you are very narrow minded

Reply 161

username1494226

19

Original post by ScienceFantatic

Really....

Yes really. What is so hard to understand about that? I think it is stupid for young people to borrow tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers money to burn on worthless liberal arts degrees. Liberal arts including english, history, law and any other similar type of degree. Does that mean I undervalue professions that benefit from those? No, certainly not. What I mean is that TOO MANY people are studying for those degrees because they have nothing better to do.

Reply 162

username927016

20

Not at all! :smile:

I don't really judge people on the job they have anyway. If they're good at it & happy then well done to them, they provide an important service to us all!

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 163

Retired_Messiah

21

I look down on most of them.

They're usually shorter than me....

Reply 164

Matrix123

18

Original post by Multitalented me

Not at all! :smile:

I don't really judge people on the job they have anyway. If they're good at it & happy then well done to them, they provide an important service to us all!

Posted from TSR Mobile

Not at all.

If you mean minimum-wage, menial jobs then no, but I do pity them. It's a tedious job that in the future will be automated. It offers little fulfilment and poor money, simply because they were unfortunate enough not to have received a good education. Someone's got to do it at the moment, but you still feel pity.

Reply 167

cambio wechsel

20

Original post by macromicro

If you mean minimum-wage, menial jobs then no, but I do pity them. It's a tedious job that in the future will be automated. It offers little fulfilment and poor money, simply because they were unfortunate enough not to have received a good education. Someone's got to do it at the moment, but you still feel pity.

the man in your avatar persuaded half the Cambridge philosophy cohort into the Hartley's jam factory and himself worked of choice as an elementary school teacher and hospital porter. Given my druthers I'd work in the municipal parks department.

Reply 168

macromicro

17

Original post by cambio wechsel

the man in your avatar persuaded half the Cambridge philosophy cohort into the Hartley's jam factory and himself worked of choice as an elementary school teacher and hospital porter. Given my druthers I'd work in the municipal parks department.

A side-effect of genius I suppose - it tends to drain one's sanity. I do like his reply to his sister's disbelief in telling her of his plans for teacher training:

"You remind me of someone who is looking through a closed window and cannot explain to himself the strange movements of a passer-by. He doesn’t know what kind of a storm is raging outside and that this person is perhaps only with great effort keeping himself on his feet."

Reply 169

PlanLife

I don't 'look down on them and I'm grateful when they help me

I do think they haven't progressed very far in life in terms of career but this is normal

I do also think that they are perhaps more likely to have more primitive mannerisms, (social) traits and outlooks as to have an entry level services job at 30+ would make me wonder if you have looked at or had the time and resources to look at the bigger picture and grand scheme of how life and society works.

I'd be more likely to judge them if they were 40+ than if they were 30+ because 30+ is relatively young and they still would have time to assess their life up to this point and try to progress further.

Reply 170

Rakas21

21

Original post by macromicro

If you mean minimum-wage, menial jobs then no, but I do pity them. It's a tedious job that in the future will be automated. It offers little fulfilment and poor money, simply because they were unfortunate enough not to have received a good education. Someone's got to do it at the moment, but you still feel pity.

Cashiers will be automated however i'm not sure how a robot is going to explain the various merits of printers to customers and then sell the attachments which is where the real money is and that's assuming you can have a robot correctly putting products on shelves in a manner that looks attractive to customers.

Original post by PlanLife

I don't 'look down on them and I'm grateful when they help me

I do think they haven't progressed very far in life in terms of career but this is normal

I do also think that they are perhaps more likely to have more primitive mannerisms, (social) traits and outlooks as to have an entry level services job at 30+ would make me wonder if you have looked at or had the time and resources to look at the bigger picture and grand scheme of how life and society works.

I'd be more likely to judge them if they were 40+ than if they were 30+ because 30+ is relatively young and they still would have time to assess their life up to this point and try to progress further.

It comes down to a combination of circumstance and initiative i think.

I had to back into retail at 26 post-university and chose to stay because i've actually found that i liked the particular company, the people i work with and generally the job. While i have aims and objectives within that role and therefore won't still be on the lowest rung at age 30, it's very possible that people through little fault of their own can still end there. Plus having done call center work i can also tell you that many of those roles required far less brain power.

They key question beyond circumstance though is whether somebody has a plan for growth and the initiative to go for what they want. I have a colleague for example who knows his stuff but lacks any real self belief and as a result has done 8 years on the lowest rung (contrast to my former manager who started during uni aged 20 and was made manager at 27). Retail especially (and this is why i think people get a bad reputation working in it) is full of people who even if they are not thick do not have the capacity to push for that promotion or take on extra responsibility and that i think is a key distinction.

Essentially i think that retail is what you make of it. At an old job the department manager in one of the huge Curry's/PC World megastores (one of only 8 at the time) was a 25 year old who had started at 16. He was on £30k+. A manager at Pret can get near £40k. I believe that Aldi are known for good pay too. There are firms out there with whom you can progress quickly if you push yourself and get a good financial package.

Perhaps i see things as too rosy though and the norm really is to languish at the bottom for a decade. All i can say is that i'll be promoted by the end of 2017 or i'll leave for another firm (good chance of being so given that in less than a year i became the number 1 in the branch for sales and kpi's.

Reply 171

macromicro

17

Original post by Rakas21

i'm not sure how a robot is going to explain the various merits of printers to customers and then sell the attachments which is where the real money is and that's assuming you can have a robot correctly putting products on shelves in a manner that looks attractive to customers.

I wouldn't consider sales a menial role, and they tend to get commission. I was referring more to bottom-of-the-rung jobs, i.e. cashiers, cleaners, shelf-stackers, warehouse staff, etc. All of which will be fully automated at some point, helped in large part by increasing online retail sales - just look at Amazon's push for robotics.

Original post by Rakas21

Cashiers will be automated however i'm not sure how a robot is going to explain the various merits of printers to customers and then sell the attachments which is where the real money is and that's assuming you can have a robot correctly putting products on shelves in a manner that looks attractive to customers.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. I worked as a retail supervisor at uni and all the sales associates was constantly told they had to approach customers, try and link sell, push the online services etc. The amount of times I had people complain to me or my manager about being harassed was ridiculous. Remember one Sunday where this guy came over to me, noticeably annoyed, and said he'd been asked if he wanted help by 4 different people within 5 minutes.

I absolutely despise link selling. Remember visiting my parents for Christmas a few years ago and my mum wanted to get my brother a laptop as a present, I insisted on coming with her to the store to ensure she wasn't harassed to death with 100 "offers" she didn't need. Most people just want to get what they need and get out with as little interaction as possible.

I have nothing against people who work in retail, it's a very stressful job and someone has to do it, but i'd never do it again.

Reply 173

Nerry

15

no, i'm not a snob who thinks my sh-t smells better than everyone elses

at least they are working!

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 174

macromicro

17

Original post by sr90

That's not necessarily a bad thing. I worked as a retail supervisor at uni and all the sales associates was constantly told they had to approach customers, try and link sell, push the online services etc. The amount of times I had people complain to me or my manager about being harassed was ridiculous. Remember one Sunday where this guy came over to me, noticeably annoyed, and said he'd been asked if he wanted help by 4 different people within 5 minutes.

I absolutely despise link selling. Remember visiting my parents for Christmas a few years ago and my mum wanted to get my brother a laptop as a present, I insisted on coming with her to the store to ensure she wasn't harassed to death with 100 "offers" she didn't need. Most people just want to get what they need and get out with as little interaction as possible.

I have nothing against people who work in retail, it's a very stressful job and someone has to do it, but i'd never do it again.

I worked at Holland & Barett for a miserable summer after A-levels: The company rule is that you must approach a customer within 30 seconds, and you cannot ask them "Can I help you at all?" but rather "How can I help?" in order to remove their option of replying "no thanks". Of course, more often than not their reply would be: "You can't."

I got fired by mid-July.

Reply 175

Rakas21

21

Original post by sr90

That's not necessarily a bad thing. I worked as a retail supervisor at uni and all the sales associates was constantly told they had to approach customers, try and link sell, push the online services etc. The amount of times I had people complain to me or my manager about being harassed was ridiculous. Remember one Sunday where this guy came over to me, noticeably annoyed, and said he'd been asked if he wanted help by 4 different people within 5 minutes.

I absolutely despise link selling. Remember visiting my parents for Christmas a few years ago and my mum wanted to get my brother a laptop as a present, I insisted on coming with her to the store to ensure she wasn't harassed to death with 100 "offers" she didn't need. Most people just want to get what they need and get out with as little interaction as possible.

I have nothing against people who work in retail, it's a very stressful job and someone has to do it, but i'd never do it again.

I suspect that's probably down to the firms culture and poor sales tactics from staff. Instead of giving somebody 100 offers you show them three relevant products and then only get the attachments after you have sorted the primary objective by explaining for example how there's only x pages in the box, that a box rather than ream of paper is only y.

It comes down to the company for me. I've worked retail jobs that i've left almost immediately and been at others I've enjoyed.