Retail is a hard industry to work in. Long days, hours on your feet, working extra hours on your shift some days just to get jobs done, a list of many tasks to get done (some of which need to be done at the same time), staff shortages for any number of reason and so on. This is all before the customer demand even comes into play.

Retail is a very high demand sector thats whole empire lives solely on the customer and their satisfaction in their purchase. Retail jobs make it all about “the customer is right and they should get exactly what they’re asking for in a timely, efficient and positive manner” even when the retail worker is being disrespected left right and centre.

Fashion retail, especially FAST fashion retail is gruelling. You deal with big shipments, stock delays, sellouts faster than you can react to and pressure to fulfil more demands than you have hands.

One example from personal experience and seeing it happen more times than thought would happen, is I myself have had abuse from customers over not being able to have a product out of a window display right then and there. The reason could be for a number of things; time of day the request came in (some companies work on a bases of during opening hours no one’s to go into displays), the item could already be on hold for another customer or even that the member of staff in question is not trained in the handling of displays and cannot assist on that particular request. Yet the need and want for the product is usually higher than the respect level of realisation that the staff member should be granted, that they are human also and deserves some acknowledgement and respect in their attempt to explain or assist in another way.

Fashion retail (and every other sector of retail) makes billions every year and it can be seen all over with recent price hike ups in products that are usually regular items brought back in each season, each year that haven’t changed prices in years and suddenly they’ve gone up a fair bit. This action would make you think that would mean better conditions and pay for employees. Not the case. Many employees haven’t had a decent pay rise in some time, some may have gotten one if they were of a certain age in line with a companies policy or something and the Governments actions on pay, and some don’t even get a look in at times (some companies play on if an employee is on salary they are already getting paid the best they deserve and this covers pay rises, even if that means it’s been their same salary each year for some years).

It’s time to see decent pay rises for all of the retail sector. Everyone deserves a right to live comfortably and without fear of roaring costs crippling them to defeated places.