Five Reasons Why You Should Work in Retail or Food Service

For any given profession, there are many reasons why someone may want or not want to work in that field. In the areas of retail and food service, there are a lot of reasons why people choose to stay away - low pay, poor hours, etc. There are some reasons why everyone should work in these areas too. These are the top five.

After working in retail, you will no longer think it's acceptable to leave clothes in a heap on the fitting room floor. You may think no one does this but I see it several times a week. We are all people, not pigs. And retail employees are not your mother. Clean up after yourself and at least try to fold or hang things.

After being in retail for a while, you will realize protesting things like return policies or coupon policies when talking with the sales associates is futile. They didn't make up these policies in the first place. And they don't usually have the authority to make exceptions.

Working in either retail or food service will make you less likely to be offended when you use a credit card and a cashier asks to see your ID or drivers license. Some customers actually are offended by this; it's not that the employee doesn't trust people. They just want to avoid breaking anti-fraud policies so their jobs aren't jeopardized. And protecting the many basically honest customers is good too.

After working in food service, you will no longer think it's appropriate to leave gross messes on a restaurant table. By this I mean: tissues you used to blow your nose, spit out gum with no wrapper of any kind, etc. Some people really do this, and trust me on this one - food service employees do not enjoy cleaning that up. After waiting tables for a while, you won't believe in the misconception that the server can be held accountable for anything that went "wrong" with your dinner. If the server was slow or unfriendly, be annoyed with them. But if the kitchen is slow, or a chef prepares your order wrong, don't take it out on the server. I've actually seen people so upset with a kitchen being backed up and preparing orders wrong that they refuse to tip the waiter (or are very stingy with their tipping). Do you realize how low the base wage for these jobs really is?