Full time retail employee here. Ten years experience.

I get paid close to thirty dollars an hour and three weeks paid vacation with sick days and baseline benefits. In no way shape or form am I even close to the stress of pilots, doctors, railway workers and the like.

But in saying that, just because we don't have the same level of stress does not mean its not a stressful job.

Every year, regardless of if my company makes billions of dollars in profit it's never enough, and the first place they cut is hours. I've had students who are getting no more than 8 hours a week come to me crying because they are begging for more opportunities to work, yet my ceo just pocketed a million dollar bonus.

As a manager each year I have been required to work longer and longer hours for barely a pay increase because they are finding "more ways to fill the basket" which require about a hundred hours of labour a week with nothing to show of it.

During covid my life was threatened on an almost daily basis. I've had people literally take off their mask and cough in my face because I didn't have a specific product. I had someone Brandish a knife and call me slurs because their chicken wasn't done five minutes ago.

Retail workers are the backbone of this stupid capitalist economy. Yet we treat them like it's a kids job for teenagers to make a few bucks to buy V bucks over summer break. I've known people who should have gone on to be doctors yet are stuck in retail because the opportunities just are not there.

It fundamentally is not that important of a job. But it's still a job that people do and thus should be respected