Can I Do Anything Else for You?

In her latest essay, Daisy invites you to listen to the real heartbeat of fashion: its staff on the shop floor.

Trigger warning: sexual assualt.

“I work in a shop.”

And the room goes quiet. Everyone else in the circle has already shared their office jobs, high-paying creative endeavours, and exciting high-profile clients. Then I share my retail job, and people avert their eyes, as if trying to save me from embarrassment before the subject is quickly changed. 

But when did essential work like fashion retail become the utterly-looked-down-upon, lowest rung of the fashion industry?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, it was quickly asserted that those of us out in the firing line, serving customers day in and day out, were ‘essential workers’. However, those hollow words of affirmation faded away pretty quickly. Soon, videos of retail workers having coffees thrown in their faces, or abuse screamed at them after asking customers to wait outside, were going viral online.

But retail workers are a huge part of the fashion industry, and an important part too. We are the final frontier of any brand or product actually making in to the wardrobes of our customers. We are helping mums find the confidence to buy a dress, we are upselling the more expensive accessories that brands rely on selling, providing the brand awareness and customer service that customers will come to associate with a brand forever more. 

“But when did essential work like fashion retail become the utterly-looked-down-upon, lowest rung of the fashion industry?”

The role of a retail assistant or style advisor, visually merchandising clothing to look as good in real life as they do on the models and creating a brand world in store, is just as important as the social media manager replying to comments and sharing captivating content, or the stylist making the pieces look good in photos, or the buyer deciding which items should make it into the shops… yet the connotations of the words ‘sales assistant,’ as they echo around a party or networking event, are comparatively so much worse. 

And aside from feeling excluded from our own industry, we endure some of the most appalling working conditions out there, with our suffering taken for granted — despite the physical and verbal assault that we experience every single day. 

A simple call-out on my Instagram story sent evidence flooding into my inbox.

“I used to work in the big Topshop flagship [on] Oxford Circus. It was so awful, we spent a lot of time in the basement processing stock — so three floors underground with no air con, no natural light, no air flow… There was mould coming down from the ceiling and a big smelly wet patch on one wall that a guy came down to mop up once a day… There were no seats down their either, it was exhausting. And in an eight-hour day, we were meant to only get a 30-minute lunch break, barely [enough] time to get up to the cold, rat-infested lounge area or across Oxford Street for a sandwich before we were due back on the floor. It was exhausting and depressing.” — Anon

“I hated it. I can’t really remember [any] specific experiences from customers [because] they were mainly assholes, just like messy and rude and stuff. Meeting friends or other work colleagues, they always looked at you badly when you said you worked in retail, as if it’s the lowest of the low. Bosses never stood up for us; they always caved to the customer even if they were being an asshole, or when the person who was abusing and following me would come to my work, nobody cared. I just had to stay on the floor and see them. I didn’t get toilet breaks or lunch breaks ever, really and always [had] to work holidays and [dangerously] late hours that [had] me travelling home scared in the dark.” — Scarlet R.

“One shop I worked at just after being sexually assaulted, I had to travel all the way from East London to West to work there, and the shop didn’t close till 22:30 so it was usually about midnight when I got home. I was living in a bit of a rough area; a few times I’m pretty sure men would try to follow me home from the bus stop. After my assault I was just so scared every time I went home I almost couldn’t bear it — I asked management a few times if I could please switch to morning shifts, or spread my shifts to avoid having to travel at this time. Most of the other staff lived locally so I thought it would be okay. But they never changed anything and I kept having to travel home in fear that I would get assaulted again — because of some minimum wage retail job I hated.” — Anon

“Someone once threw a shoe in my direction (that narrowly missed me) because I was too busy serving 6 other customers.” — Keva T

“Retail work is so undervalued. We stand on our feet all day, smiling and chatting with customers no matter what is going on in our personal lives. I’ve smiled through a day in a shop through break-ups, deaths and personal illness. Even a day where you are exhausted is painful because you have to be so on it, and so cheery — there’s no room to be human. So often customers get pissed off if a sales assistant is a bit quiet, a bit snappy, a bit off — and yes, we try not to be, we know service is our job, but we’re also human beings and the difficulty of retail work is constantly overlooked.” — Anon

“I once worked Boxing Day and a customer came in saying, ‘oh, why are you here on Boxing Day?’ – because you’re here!” — Anon

“I think a lot of the time, retail managers don’t really know how to manage you. Or maybe don’t care. I’ve had so many fashion retail jobs where we’re understaffed, we have no resources in the shop, there’s no running water, no toilet, nowhere to sit down during the day… we have so few team members that we can’t call in sick and people on minimum wage, which is literally not enough to live on, are being leant on to pick up extra hours, responsibilities and stresses for no more raise in pay. Then we get shit if the sales aren’t great or we get bad customer feedback, we take the fall. But how can we work well when we’re all exhausted and hungry and undervalued, we don’t have the equipment we need and everything is a struggle? I don’t think customers get that when they get pissed off about not getting served straight away. We are all doing a million things and trying our best.” — Anon

“Customers for some reason don’t see us as people. They think it’s OK to take things out on us and trauma dump on us and mistreat us, as if it’s part of our job description. I have women saying triggering things about their bodies or commenting on mine in the fitting room, men trying to put pressure on me to change item prices or cut deals for them, people shouting at me if I don’t have all the answers they want and sometimes they even get physical when we enforce the rules that [is] our job to enforce. It’s wild.” — Anon

“I had to wear these shoes from the brand I worked for. They cut my feet up, literally and blood leaking out the top of my shoes and making marks on the shop floor, but [I] wasn’t allowed to change out of them.” — Anon

“When I quit, the owner of the whole chain of stores somehow got my private number and started texting me really passive-aggressive questions asking why I was leaving and what was wrong — I could tell she was trying to reject my resignation and persuade me to stay so I ignored her. But what kind of behaviour is that!” — Anon

There were many more stories like these.

Retail workers are constantly looked down upon by the fashion industry, as if all the essential retail skills — being personable, good at selling, marketing, visual merchandising, building relationships, managing stock, etc — are easy to master and not at all valuable. As if it is a job to be ashamed of. We’re also looked down upon by customers, who often see us as a resource centre, a little bot they can dump on when they come into our place of work. But God forbid we let any of our personal life or emotions seep into the day. 

Personally, I think it all boils down to a class issue. Retail is not seen as a high-value job. It’s seen as a working class position — ergo, not a position worth being proud of. And with the appalling lack of financial support, liveable wages, workers’ rights enforcement or any kind of unionization, there’s not much we can do to push for better treatment. People in retail are smart, cultured and hard-working, just the same as everyone else in the industry. Just because we haven’t been blessed with a high-income, or with influencer status thanks to our thousand-pound wardrobes and famous friends, it does not mean that we are not a valuable part of our industry, and our economy.

“Retail is not seen as a high-value job. It’s seen as a working class position — ergo, not a position worth being proud of.”

And it doesn’t mean that some of us don’t love our jobs. Yes, some people are in retail because they have to be, but some people genuinely love helping others and talking to new people every single day.

We give our energy, personality, skills, and ungodly hours of our time to ungrateful customers and judgmental industry peers. Yet, we still find ourselves asking “can I do anything else for you?” a million times a day.

credits

words — daisy riley

design — karina so.