Working in retail may be fun when you are a teenager or a college student because most often, you work for the experience and extra money. You don’t really need to worry about paying rent or buying food. But if you need to do that, you realize that it is not that easy to support yourself with a retail job and after a while, you start to feel it taking a toll on your mental health.
Many people have realized that they don’t need to work if they don’t get paid enough and search for jobs elsewhere, leaving various stores short-staffed. TikToker jessiemaymarie is actually waiting for the retail decline because of how the system works and how nothing is being done to improve it.
More info: TikTok
Someone showed how empty a shopping mall was in the middle of the day on a weekend and this woman thinks that retail is declining
Image credits: JJBers
JessieMay Reed is a 29-year-old mom and fashion lover who likes to share her thoughts on sensitive topics in our society and her video talking about how retail workers are underpaid got quite a lot of views in comparison to the other ones.
As she revealed to Bored Panda, the woman has been in the retail business for 10 years but is now pursuing a career in Education. Her love for fashion is reflected in the fact that she attended Columbia College Chicago and received her bachelor's degree in Fashion Business.
The viral video on her TikTok video starts with a stitch with WhatsNextKicks' footage of a completely empty mall on a Saturday at 4pm when it’s supposed to be the busiest. It is implied that not a lot of stores are working in the mall because of a staff shortage, and the camera stops on signs hanging on the shop windows, supporting the theory.
Image credits: @jessiemaymarie
JessieMay comments on the video saying that she is waiting for the decline of retail because there are so many problems with the culture of retail work. One of the biggest problems is that the jobs don’t pay a livable wage, but they require speed at the tasks the employee does and to be always available to come into work. The stores often change up the schedules, which doesn’t allow you to plan anything in your personal life.
And many of the positions are part-time which doesn't allow people to earn but allow stores to save money or they don't give enough hours even if you are technically hired as a full-time employee, "They don't want to hire, they want to save enough money for themselves so they give current employees more tasks that's not even in their job description. Because businesses aren't making their numbers, they have to 'save money' so they cut hours. You can be 'full time' with part time hours."
This sounds like exploitation to JessieMay and she noticed that people have realized they deserved more during the pandemic, so now stores are experiencing a retail worker shortage and, as the woman put it, begging them to work. However, nobody wants to because they are not getting what they want in return.
She explains that less people want to work in retail because of the low wages
Image credits: @jessiemaymarie
Because of that JessieMay is waiting for a change and explained in more detail what she meant by saying 'decline of retail', "I am looking forward to more people leaving the industry and for more businesses to suffer due to the poor treatment employees receives. Not only the poor treatment but the horrible pay and benefits. If retail stores don't store changing their ways as in the training of abusive managers and giving those more money then, yes, it will get worse."
Even though the woman talks about retail workers because it was relevant to the video she reacted to, she explains that all workers in various industries deserve to be paid more, to be able to live off of their wages and be treated fairly.
But not only that: the schedules are always hectic, you never know when you may get called in and managers require more than one person can handle
Image credits: @jessiemaymarie
According to the US Chamber of Commerce, aside from the wholesale and retail trade industry, which is experiencing the biggest labor force shortage, the transportation, health care and social assistance, accommodation, and food sectors also have very high numbers of job openings and not enough unemployed people who could fill those positions.
While it is not always the wages that chase off people and it may be that there are actually no specialists for some of those positions, the US Chamber of Commerce noted that the food service and hospitality industries are struggling to retain workers, meaning they quit a lot. They link this problem to those jobs having lower wages as “in more stable, higher-paying industries, the number of employees quitting has been lower.”
Image credits: @jessiemaymarie
She feels that people are being exploited at such jobs and the pandemic only gave them a final push to quit
Image credits: @jessiemaymarie
Because of the pandemic, many retail workers had to leave their jobs because of lockdown and to protect their health. Even though that made their financial situation very unstable, people were forced to look for other jobs and the experience made some of them realize they don’t need to deal with rude customers all day knowing their company isn’t providing them with any benefits to compensate for their hard work.
JessieMay has her own thoughts about how the pandemic made people change their view about their jobs and realise how toxic they were, "Before the pandemic all we wanted to do is to survive and make money. Bills and rent are due every month and our families need us everyday. These companies start out great during the interview process, hire us then treat us like saints during training, they even go as far as giving us pizza for our hard work. Then when the pandemic happened, most of us gotten laid off, our positions were no longer needed so they get rid of us."
It kind of backfired because now there are more vacant job positions than there are unemployed people. According to the US Labor Department’s June report, there are 10.7 million job openings and 5.7 million people who are unemployed. Before the pandemic, it was always the reverse: there were more unemployed people than available jobs and now, for every unemployed person, there are about 2 job openings.
Image credits: @jessiemaymarie
You can listen to Jessie May's explanation why she thinks retail is declining in the video below
At this point JessieMay feels that the American dream was built off of lies, "We were told to work hard no matter what so we can obtain the American dream. It was built off of capitalist lies because these companies want to take so much of our time we can't even enjoy the American dream."
But it seems that the job market is changing, people are understanding their worth and businesses need to adapt to attract new employees. Do you think that JessieMay is right and the decline of retail is near? Have you noticed that malls have started to become emptier? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
People in the comments agreed that retail workers aren't treated as humans and the industry is taking advantage of people who need jobs
