Pros/cons of working at a retail chain store?

[Bob]

What are they?

I imagine pay is bad.  That's a biggie.

Hours may or may not be under your control.

Menail work.  But on the plus side, you probably don't have to think much.

Pro -- Work not coming home with you.


What else?

How does it work with still stdying music?

[slobone]

Pro -- your next job will seem like heaven on earth...

[Essyne]

pro - it's a chain, so at least you know you're not the only one in the world suffering . . .

con - you're not the only one in the world suffering . . .

[arensky]

What are they?

I imagine pay is bad.  That's a biggie.

Depends on the company. Some of them have great benefits. But you won't get rich.

Hours may or may not be under your control.

They will tell you they are flexible, but that means on their terms.

Menail work.  But on the plus side, you probably don't have to think much.

Pro -- Work not coming home with you.

Yes yes and yes.

What else?

Depends on what you are selling. I worked in a bookstore record department and enjoyed it. Being able to help people find music they like was fun and enjoyable. Plus I already knew the merchandise.The bad side was the "flexibility"; my boss never paid attention when I told him I had a gig, he would schedule me to work anyway. This led to a parting of the ways for arensky and the corporate world. But all in all I enjoyed the work. I was going to try an electronics store this summer but it looks like there we will be a lot of piano playing and teaching for me this summer, so I won't bother.

How does it work with still stdying music?

If they had given me the hours/days I requested in the first place, it would have been fine.

Seems to me you are a schoolteacher and/or private piano teacher, and therefore have extra time in the summer. Give it a try, you might like it! I did, and it's good to know there's an escape hatch should your musical career wash up on shore or get tiring. You won't know unless you try...   

[elspeth]

Working with the general public can be both a pro and a con! Many of them are wonderful, some of them are wierd, and some of them are downright horrible. And you'll have to deal with all of them...

If you do it, make sure you get a job with a shop that sells something you're interested in, otherwise you'll lose your mind. Particularly when it comes to sales-drive time and you have to flog something you don't believe in but you have to do it anyway or you'll lose your job.

Come work for me, Bob! You can work in an opera house, see shows for free, and as long as you don't mind working nights you can pick your shifts!

[m19834]

Oddly there was something that I really enjoyed about working in a grocery store.  I worked for three years at various positions within the store, my favorite one being managerial work.  I definitely learned a lot about dealing with people, both as customers as well as co-workers.  I realized that people are still people, no matter what type of vest they have and no matter how many pins they have on that vest.  Also, customers seem to think they are much better than you, too, just as general human beings.  That's a pretty interesting thing to deal with in that context !

But, I got some strange pleasure out of ordering stock and making signs and "facing" the shelves (basically making the shelves look organized and full).  It was fun to stock the shelves and make displays, too.  I liked sweeping and mopping the floors and putting empty boxes in the "bailer" ... I don't know why ... I just did.  And, for some reason I liked knowing where everything in the entire store was, and I liked to ask people if they needed any help finding anything and being able to take them right to it.  I don't know why !

Part of me really liked having set hours, set schedule, punching in and punching out and being paid every week.  Part of me even enjoyed wearing a uniform and a name tag !  I liked having a list of things to do for the day and being able to cross things off as they got completed.

I also really enjoyed the business and economics aspects of it, too, and feel like I learned a lot in that area from that experience.  Eventually I realized that this was not something I wanted to make a career out of, and that was mainly because I felt a calling towards music, but there are also difficult things working somewhere like that, too.  There were a lot of people there who were extremely smart and had dreams of doing other things, but had just wound up staying there and making their career there because of their life-circumstances.  I didn't want anything I was doing to be something that I was just settling for, and even though I did enjoy those things that I mentioned, it was never truly satisfying on deeper levels.

I did have other jobs, and they each had their own pros and cons, but working at the grocery store somehow stands out to me.

[ramseytheii]

Why has nobody mentioned the obvious: the discount?

Walter Ramsey

[communist]

con: your suffering

con: some people aren't suffering

con: other people make more than you