You know what. I’ll say it. I liked working in retail. For me, most days going to work meant an opportunity to play dress up with guests, engage with the broad spectrum of the human condition, and get people to spend their money–or even better, their partners’ money. I found simple pleasure in having fashion shows in the dressing room or overhearing my co-worker responding to one asking if “Does this outfit look like it would make my boyfriend (redacted) me in the woods?”
I consider my first retail job at Lulu-lemon’s competitor a formative experience that provided valuable customer service experience and transformed how I viewed the world around me. The 22-25 hour weeks I worked over a few months resulted in a gradual awakening that made me privy to the idea that what I conceptually knew about the retail environment and its workers was admittedly incomplete, as was my understanding of class and economic dynamics. It turns out many people who work retail aren’t bored high school or university students but people with families to support. And the idea that hard work pays off with more money? That's funny. I left Athl*ta with a further understanding of the capitalist hellscape we’re all chained to and how being a worker in a retail environment provides a valuable experience that yields a window into just how dystopian and hellish the whole system and the interactions produced can really be.
Athl*ta has an interesting targeted customer base. The brand’s focus on women over the age of 30 is admirable. However, it also has some unique implications. Ages 30+ are prime time for “Karen” behavior as those are the ages where there typically seems to be a disconnect on how to treat anyone in customer service due to years of cultural adherence to the “customer is always right” mentality. The store’s high price point surely did not help. As expected, rather expensive stores tend to have a recurring customer base with the ability to purchase multiple pairs of $100 polyester-spandex pants or over $60 for biker shorts you could buy from Old Navy (another GAP INC brand) for $20 or under.
Still, most of us couldn’t afford to buy the $119 hoodies or multiple articles of pricey athleisure wear without the 50% (30% sale, 70% “damaged”) employee discount.
Needless to say, I processed many returns, troubleshot many customer service issues, and delegated any brewing meltdowns after failed attempts to return 5-year-old items to my manager. Although most guests were sweet, more than a few were sour. I quickly realized through guest interactions that many of them did not perceive my coworkers and me as being within proximity to their socio-economic status. Many guests operated under the assumption that because we worked in retail, we must be irrevocably financially down bad or an uneducated have-not by comparison. All of which often manifested in their surprise after finding out that many of us (Black and other women of color) attended notable or high-ranking university institutions or were pursuing additional degrees. Still, most of us couldn’t afford to buy the $119 hoodies or multiple articles of pricey athleisure wear without the 50% (30% sale, 70% “damaged”) employee discount. While it remained easy to identify the wealth gap between many of the guests and me, the realization that they also had a perception of us as retail workers shifted how I conceptualized my socio-economic status - specifically my identity as a worker. Admittedly it felt slightly eerie to have my role and experience observed, evaluated, and labeled as something that doesn’t align with my perception of myself and my coworkers as workers; almost a bit dehumanizing at times. It's one thing to poke at the disconnectedness of the well-off and wealthy, but that sentiment transformed into something when I realized exactly what many of them thought of the people whose services they relied upon.
One day while sitting in the lone cold gray metal chair in the small makeshift break room corner of the stockroom for my 15-minute break, I finally came to terms with the bleak reality of what it is to be in the workforce. No matter how hard I worked or how much time and effort I put into the job, I would not get paid more. As one of their top sellers, I’d made them money and lots of it. We all did. However, how much more did I get? Not a red cent. The gradual realization of this hailed from the numerous non-financial incentives for credit-card sign-ups, from anything to an extra 5-10 minutes of breaktime, lunch, or rewards points. A coworker and also a close friend of mine had made a $4000 sale. Her reward from management? A “good job” and an invitation to choose one item from a corporate-issued box of snacks. She quit shortly after.
My friend could quit her job without having to worry about financial ramifications. Like most of my coworkers and I, she was a university-aged student with little to no financial responsibilities. To us, the $10.50 an hour meant money to fund our silly little consumer habits. I worked to buy cute clothes, not to feed mouths. Yet some of our coworkers had children, families, and bills to pay, which I found unfortunate given that retail associate jobs like the one I had are not designed to support people financially. There's no city in America where one can live sustainably and comfortably under $15,000 a year (which is around what an Athl*ta associate could make yearly since there are no full-time positions other than management). However, despite hailing from various economic backgrounds, I realized our identity as workers by proxy align us to support a common cause and better treatment for all of us. Now am I saying working at Athl*ta made me go full hammer and sickle? No. Yet it did force me, a relatively sheltered person of moderate economic means, to deconstruct how I conceptualized economic class distinction and my identity as a worker. TL;DR I developed an awareness of my socio-economic class standing in relation to those around me. I was not economically disadvantaged and didn't use my $10.50 an hour to feed multiple mouths or as supplementary income. Nor could I sustainably afford any of the store's items at full price without the help of our admittedly generous employee discount (yes, most of my paycheck went right back to the store).
All in all, I enjoyed my job. Yet those three months served as a formative learning experience that gave me a first-hand understanding of what it means to be a worker. No matter how nauseating and revelatory that realization seemed to me when it occurred, I eventually grasped that my experiences were part of a collective. Thus providing comfort in knowing that it wasn’t just me falling victim to these circumstances but nearly everyone. God, it's brutal out here. But it doesn’t have to be. I, as a worker, was not inherently subservient to my superiors or the business's patrons. Even though our interactions may be transactional, corporations should not compromise our fair treatment and compensation, nor should they be under debate.
