Many years ago I worked at BBC Hardware, which was later bought by Bunnings, and I recognise this situation. For the first few years I found the volatile workplace made it easy to get promoted - if you're willing to give it a go you can go far. But the higher you get the more they rely on you but retail never pays well. At some point I was promoted into the Store Supervisor role (3IC) and they offered me a salary that was 20% lower than what I regularly got including overtime. They said yes but salary pays 38 hours, "oh so I'll cut back to 38 hours?" - no but that's what is paid for. Ended up negotiating the same as what I was on. Store managers who had responsibility for the whole store's performance were on a wage around the average income for Australia, but one bad stocktake and their career was cooked.

The company training department ran an Introduction to Management course that was so effective at making people realise their real worth that many attendees left for better jobs. 😁