As millions hunt for deals and fill their carts on Black Friday and during this holiday season, remember and honor the people who make it possible.
Black Friday. Used under CC2.0.
When I was in middle school, my grandma took a part-time job at the mall’s gift-wrapping counter. She showed me how she tied the big, beautiful glittery gold bows and the fancy way she’d been taught to fold the corners on the red plaid wrapping paper. I just about died at how pretty it all was.
Imagine a job where you get to make things look so lovely, bringing such cheer! I was dazzled by it and could see myself someday sitting at that counter, surrounded by colorful ribbons and papers.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I overheard my grandma on the phone with her sister, describing her new job as “an absolute living hell.”
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I’ve learned a bit more about work and working since then.
On Black Friday, news outlets cover the crowds — the people camped out in front of Best Buy or lined up at the local mall. They interview a few customers who will tell their tales of survival and if they witnessed any fist fights. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times report on how big a boom or bust this holiday shopping season will be for Amazon and Target and Peloton.
But behind it all are workers. Workers like my grandmother, wearing reindeer headbands and jingle bells ringing up the purchases, workers wearing back braces to stock the shelves.
The way we talk, though, its as if the workers are barely there. However, for over 16 million of us, retail is how we make our living. “Making a living” is just a turn of phrase: The average retail worker makes somewhere around $16 per hour, barely enough to rent a place, have a car, and put gas in it.
My friend Artie remembers working at the mall in Concord during the holidays. “I drove five minutes from my house to the mall and would give myself an hour and a half to find parking before my shift,” Artie told me. One day, the lot was so full, their shift was about to start, and Artie still hadn’t found a parking spot. So their assistant manager came out, found a spot, and stood in it until Artie could get over there. A shopper pulled up, and the assistant manager explained that she was holding the spot for an employee. “I don’t care,” said the man, “If you don’t move, I’m going to run you over.” AND HE DID. He actually pushed his car into that woman.
Imagine thinking you can shop without employees! Laura from Greenville shares a similar story. “One time I was cashiering at Harris Teeter, I was loudly scolded by a customer for working instead of being in church on Easter Sunday,” she says. “Good sir, had I been in church, you wouldn’t be able to purchase your pack of bacon that you forgot for the baked beans.”
Cashiers and salespeople, stockers and pickers, warehouse clerks and inventory specialists suffer plenty of indignities – “the customer’s always right” mantra has claimed many souls. But the real injustice and erasure of retail workers is at the corporate and shareholder level, where wages are set, and bottom-line decisions are made by the top.
My neighbor, who works at Food Lion, keeps getting sent home so she doesn’t cross the hours threshold where the company would have to provide benefits. “It’s ridiculous,” she says. “It leaves it so I can’t plan my week, can’t plan my budget, and can’t get ahead.”
Corporate profits are nearing all-time highs while wages are closing in on an all-time low. There has been a resurgence in Americans’ understanding that it really is us versus these big corporations – something that was gospel to our ancestors in the coal fields and textile mills. However, despite being the largest private sector employer, less than 6% of retail workers are unionized.
But are consumers, those of us out and about doing our holiday shopping, actually seeing retail workers? Many of us have worked in retail. We interact with retail workers daily. But still, we overlook them.
Culturally, we venerate the farmer, though most of us will set foot on a farm once a year to pick some strawberries, getting them the rest of the year from Aldi’s. The television shows we watch are about doctors, detectives, and lawyers, though these professions are much rarer and farther from our lives than the dad rounding up carts in the Roses’ parking lot.
I think it’s high time we pay some respect to retail workers—not just as we push our carts through the store, but in the ways we expect these companies to treat them. These are real jobs and real people; they deserve real wages, real benefits, and real rights. This holiday season, stay on the worker’s side.
This was originally posted on the Substack Working Class Storytelling.
