As many people know, I was recently liberated from my long-term employment at a well-known international retailer. The details of this are a boring story, but suffice it to say that there isn’t a single person who knows the details, friends or ex-coworkers, or even people that I didn’t even get along with, that thinks I got a fair shake. I spent ten years with this company, starting in the state of Ohio in a store location, then branching out to a traveling position which took me all over the country setting up new stores, remodeling older ones, and training employees throughout the company, and finally ending up here in Utah back in a brand-new store location, working hard to make my department and my store successful. For my troubles, I was unceremoniously dumped without so much as a goodbye or a thanks for giving them a decade of my life. Today I received a small, yet frustrating surprise… a big wonderful twisting of the long, curved, bloody knife that’s been embedded in my back for the last four weeks. Let me explain a few things first though.
Now, ten years is a long time in retail. In that decade, I saw so many people come and go in so many ways. The turnover rate in that industry is absolutely hideous, and no one is exempt. Everyone from the lowliest part-timer to district managers, vice-presidents, and even presidents come in and go out with surprising regularity. The nature of retail is so volatile and sketchy that you never really know from one day to the next what’s going to happen. Sure, you can speculate, but you tend to be wrong more often than not. For me to survive ten years in that environment is quite the achievement. It’s actually something I’m proud of in a lot of ways.
You may ask why I spent so long working in retail. After all, isn’t that for starving college kids and just-out-of-school teenagers looking for their first jobs? Don’t retail people make minimum wage and curse themselves daily for filling out that damn application in the first place? Do you have a vast collection of plastic name tags and khaki-styled pants? How could an intelligent, college-educated person subject themselves to the torture of retail for an entire decade? Shouldn’t you be dead or in jail for shooting the place up by now?
Well, most of those are valid points. I’d say a majority of the people that work on a store level are young adults, or even outright kids. The average age is probably about twenty, give or take, and for many of them, it is their first or one of their first jobs. Retail is easy to get into, and it offers a lot of promises if you stick it out. Sadly, a vast majority (and by vast, I literally mean over 90%) don’t stick it out, and those that do realize that those promises will eventually be broken.
As for that other stuff, well, I do actually have a pretty good stash of old name tags, and I do own probably about 10 pairs of khaki pants. I’ve never actually fantasized about shooting the place up, but I’ll admit that if I were to have had, say, some sort of cool super powers, like electromagnetism, it would have potentially served me well in a number of occasions. I never worked for minimum wage though, and I actually made pretty good money at my level. The benefits were fantastic (ten years had its advantages), and there were perks, like a healthy employee discount and a good social experience.
Lest you think I’m actually advocating retail however, know that it wasn’t all fun and games. The biggest problem with retail is that it promises lots of things but doesn’t deliver. Do a search for your favorite retailer and you’ll undoubtedly come up with all kinds of articles and posts about how this person got screwed and that person got screwed and so forth. You’ll get some positive responses as well, but it only takes one negative experience to balloon out of proportion, and the whole thing collapses. Retail is hell on Earth, and you don’t have to look any farther than Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) in order to know that. It’s a day of absolute misery for employees and customers alike.
I stayed in retail for selfish reasons and stupid reasons. After a point, I made pretty good money. Money isn’t a huge driving force for me personally, but like anyone, I have to eat and have a place to live. I also have expensive hobbies, so good money was definitely a positive. As I mentioned, the benefits were good as well, so I didn’t have to worry too much about medical expenses killing me. Mostly though, it was my life. It was routine, it was normal. After so long, you get to a point where you just sort of cruise on autopilot. You don’t have to think about work, you just sorta know it’s there and you go. Like eating a meal that you don’t particularly hate or like, it’s just sustaining. You know what to expect, you know how it tastes, you know the routine and the outcome, and you just let it happen. A little effort is required here and there, but nothing too spectacular. You just drone on, day after day in sort of a numb capacity. It becomes who you are and how you define yourself. You stop thinking about it.
This is so unhealthy. You should never, never let a job you don’t care for define your life. If you love what you do, say if you’re a musician or an artist or whatever, and you are lucky enough to make a living from that, then that’s a different story. I’m not a retailer though. That’s what I did, not what I am. My existence became about going to work, getting my 
paycheck, then getting some sleep so I could go back to work again the next day. That’s no way to live.
A parting shot
So today I’m looking at my finances and I discover that I’ve received a paycheck from my former employer. Now, It’s been four and a half weeks since my liberation, and they’ve already paid me for my vacation hours and whatnot, so I’m a little surprised. I logged on to my direct deposit account, and low and behold, I see this:
This is an actual screen grab of my paycheck. I’ve taken the liberty to blacken out the sensitive stuff, but I highlighted some things to prove my point.
Firstly, I know that I have no argument in this case. I know that this is all perfectly legal and I have no recourse. I’m simply posting this because IT SUCKS. It’s a perfect example of why so many people can never get ahead, and that there are certain rules and laws in effect for no reason other than to make life harder.
As you can see, during my last dying gasp with the company I managed to accrue 4.62 extra hours of vacation time beyond what they paid me after termination, at a rate of 16.15 per hour. This equates to $74.63 in taxable earnings. However, they’ve deducted $56.61 in pre-tax dollars for my health plan. This is all well and good, except that my health plan was discontinued last month. As of January 31st, I was no longer covered by my health care plan. What does this mean? Exactly. I just paid $56.61 for nothing. Gone. Vanished into thin air, never to be seen again. I get absolutely no benefit from that $56.61 at all. Nothing. That money was stolen from me.
I know this is an automatic process. Still, it feels like they screwed me. It feels like a knife in my back. It’s not enough to take away my livelihood and my means of supporting myself, no… You have to dangle a tiny carrot in front of my face, and then snatch it away at the last second while laughing gleefully at my expense. I get $16 of my original $75. A pittance. Somewhere, the retails gods are rolling on the floor in a fit of laughter and spite. I can just hear them now. Fat bastards.
Happier even though
I don’t regret my time in retail. It’s given me invaluable experience in dealing with people, it’s given me a skill set that can prove handy in other aspects of my life, and it’s given me some friends that I’ve come to know over the years. It’s also given me some money that I was able to invest and live off for the time being until I find a new job. Still, what did I trade for that time? What did I give up to get these things? Was it worth it? Was the price too high? It’s hard to say right now. I can say this though, I’m happier without it. The job I mean. It was eating me from the inside out, and controlling my life in a way that I didn’t like. It was like a cancer growing and stealing away precious time. You should work to live, not live to work. Life comes first, job comes later. Notice I didn’t say second… I said later. These things I’ve had lots of time to ponder over the last few weeks, and in the end I have to admit, I’m happier now. I have more control over my life, and I don’t miss the old job one bit.
Now it’s time to move on and find my path.
Here’s to the future.
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