 what's up everyone take down here welcome back to another video as you guys know i used to work retail and i absolutely hated it that's why i decided to leave but today i decided to share with you my pros and cons of working retail let's get right into this so working retail does have its ups and downs and at the end of the day i just had a lot more cons where i worked than pros so that's why i decided to leave so i might be a little bit one-sided for this i might be addressing the cons a little bit more but i'm going to start off with the pros because working retail there is some pros to the jobs so let's just get started so up first the first pro is certain holidays the stores are closed and holidays that are have the store open you usually have shorter shifts so if the store is open on a certain holiday like canada day or fourth of july normally the store would be open but it'd be a shorter shift and you'd be working less hours than a normal day so instead of eight hours you might work six hours or something along those lines now on holidays that are closed the huge pro for that was for example christmas easter and thanksgiving if the retail store you work at is closed you're able to enjoy the day with your family and you're able to just enjoy the day off and that for me was a huge benefit where i used to work because where i work now of course i'm working new years christmas i'm working every holiday because it's a 24 seven operation but i enjoy working the holidays now so if you don't like working the holidays working retail that is an advantage because certain holidays they're closed or shorter hours the next pro is depending on where you work you might get discounts where i worked the discounts i think if i remember correctly were like 15 maybe 20 off and basically that just covered the taxes and stuff like that we didn't get much more than that now if the sale if the item was on sale already we would only get about five percent off so it didn't really make much of a difference it just again cover the taxes so we didn't get much of a discount but i did hear of other people that work other retail jobs they get a little bit more of a discount where i worked we would get something that would be called profit sharing so every year based on your performance you would get money that be put away in your profit sharing and you can use that money if you were to get married or buy a house or buy a vehicle that is expensive the longer you work your profit sharing goes up and once you leave that job you get that money and that's something that i had at my last job but it was more of a hassle when i left but definitely the discounts were okay it just covered the taxes for me next pro was knowing when items will be on sale because i worked retail normally we not only would get the flyers in advance but if i seen a product that was interested in and something that i wanted to purchase in the future i could simply look it up on the computer and go into the back end of the computer and see when it was going to be on sale in the future and at what price it was going to be on sale so if it's something that i really wanted all i had to do was look it up on the computer to see when it's going to be on sale and just wait for it to come on sale on top of that if i knew when it was going to be on sale some stores will have a two weeks before or two weeks after sale so i would be able to check to see if it was recently on sale and also get it for that price if it was in that two week range which was always awesome to do you just had to wait to see when things were going to be on sale and not purchase it at that time and the next thing is steady shifts now this is not all retail jobs this was mostly where i worked so there was two shifts for full timers you would have either your eight to five or you'd have eleven to eight because the store is only open from eight in the morning till eight at night so eight to five or eleven to eight part timers would get maybe 10 o'clock till two o'clock and then four o'clock till eight o'clock on average but normally you would know those would be the shifts that you would work you're not going to have odd shifts and come in at odd times you kind of had steady shifts and you know when you start and finish at all times now for the cons of working retail which as you guys know for me they outweighed the pros because at the end of the day i ended up leaving because i absolutely hated retail so up first is no job security now for where i worked at least it didn't matter if you were there for one year or if you were there for 10 15 or 20 years they could lay you off at the seasons where they weren't given that many hours because it's kind of dead in the store the store's not making money they could lay you off at any time and for me having no job security made no sense and that is one thing that resulted in me leaving for me personally i was at one point full time 40 hours a week and then out of the blue during the busiest time of the season which was november and december for retail of course for the holidays they're always working on boosting their sales and stuff like that they ended up cutting my hours down to about 15 hours a week and they stayed at that for six months until i ended up quitting for absolutely no reason so with retail there is at times no job security and i know that firsthand the next con was working minimum wage i was working minimum wage absolutely hated it based on the fact that i felt like i had more potential i could be making more money working at a different industry and for me working retail was not worth minimum wage due to the job itself there is a little bit high demand some retail jobs as the employee the more sales you generate the company's making more money but yet you're still making a minimum wage that's why that's the biggest thing i hated about working retail is you're making minimum wage while the company is making a lot of money off of your sales next was dealing with rude customers i fortunately live in a small town so a lot of my customers were regulars a lot of my customers were awesome to work with they were awesome they came in they never gave me problems but we also live really close to a highway and since i've worked automotive we'd have a lot of people that would break down and come in that would demand stuff right away and that's just not how i worked and that's not how our store works so we'd have a lot of rude customers a lot of times and i'm the type of person when i work to retail that if you're going to be rude to me i'm just not going to help you plain and simple if you're going to come with me yelling and screaming and demanding stuff i'm just going to take my sweet ass time and i'm just going to handle it as calmly as i can and as professionally as i can but i'm not going to give into rude customers i've never been like that the next thing is a heavy workload this was more so whenever i was getting my hours cut because i would be in for shorter shifts but i'd be told that i have to do just as much work as i did if i was there for an eight hour shift in a four hour shift but on top of that i'd have to do my manager's work and stuff like that so i was getting less hours but i was even more stressed out because when i was at work i was just constantly doing stuff over and over and running around the store and as somebody that's only four hours i'm going to be there for four hours doing the work of one i would be there for eight hours plus my manager's work it's a lot of work honestly it is exhausting that's why i hated it and another con would be getting treated poorly by management like i said i would not only have to do a lot of my manager's work whenever i would also have to do my work but my manager in automotive didn't do anything he didn't know anything about automotive he was very clueless and also the owner as well because like i said already they cut my hours from 40 hours week full time to 15 hours a week so that was with no reason so work in retail you will butt heads with your managers most of the time and you get treated unfairly a lot of the time customers complain and usually the management will take the customer's side on things even if you had no control over the situation there's no possible way you could have helped the customer managers a lot of times don't care now thankfully where i worked i was close to some of the managers just not the ones that were in my departments i was friends with one of the cashier managers i was friends with the sports department manager he was pretty cool as well and of course my department my supervisor is pretty cool i call her my supervisor but she wasn't actually but she's been there long enough that she should have had that role but some of the other managers they just like to demand things like to put the push you around and order you around which i understand you're working that that is what the manager's job is to do is to manage you but do it in a respectful manner is the way i've always seen it if you're going to treat me poorly why should i treat you with respect when i'm not being respected at work so these were for me the pros and cons of working retail and for me i think the cons outweigh the pros because number one having no job security not knowing if when come january if you're going to get laid off or not number two working minimum wage for me absolutely sucked i absolutely hated it and i felt like i could be making more money than i was working retail uh deal with rude customers was neither hero there i could deal with the rude customers but some customers were just really hard to deal with having a lot to do whenever you're working retail there's always something to do even when it's dead you have different sections to redo and stuff like that and management treating you poorly i i do not i do not work like that if you're going to treat me like crap at work i'm not going to treat you very nicely either so hope you guys enjoyed this video comment down below what your pros and cons are at working your job or working retail i'd like to see what you guys think on this but i know there is probably a few things that i missed and i'm probably one-sided when it comes to cons because i ended up quitting my job because i hated it but let me know what you guys think down below i'm going to leave this video here please take care peace