Student A

A-Level sample

Research Based Essay

Infographic Link: https://magic.piktochart.com/output/5422415-1-flip-flip-sale

Stress Affecting Workers in Retail

Working in retail may not be as easy as most people like to think it is. Working at

Old Navy for a year now, I have learned that I have a love-hate relationship with working

in retail. Currently, many employees at my store have expressed the same opinion that I

have. A majority of employees love their employee discount and the co-workers they

work with the most. While we hate those “customers from hell” that make us want to pull

our hair out. Being overly polite and having a fake smile towards that difficult customer

is a skill I have mastered. Of course on the outside I look fine, but on the inside difficult

customers do stress me out. Stress is a major factor that affects me while I’m at work.

Working at Macomb Mall, stress factors coming from the customers, environment, and

the managers negatively affect my mood and how well I work. I measured this by observ-

ing/recalling any situations I have dealt with myself and a personal interview with one of

my co-workers.

The customers that my co-workers and I at Old Navy deal with affect our moods

every day. Difficult customers can range from one extreme to another. They can affect

the whole store’s environment or just affect one worker. For example, on a Friday in

March I observed, a family of five was walking through the store. It was a Mom, Dad,

two kids, and a baby. The baby was crying/screaming for about forty-five minutes while

they walked through the store. Then I had to ring up their $500 transaction and they had

me separate everything by size. By the time I was through I was in a bad mood, had a

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headache, and was ready to go home. This example shows that the environment was af-

fecting my ability to get my job done and how my mood had altered. While this family

was shopping through the store, one of the managers kept moving from opposite sides of

the store where the crying was somewhat bearable. There was almost a universal sigh of

relief when I was through cashing them out and they walked out the store demonstrating

that these stress factors do affect employees. Additionally, many customers I waited on

prior to and after they left made comments on how irritating the crying was.

During the holidays is when working in this discourse community is the most

stressful. The holiday season brings in customers that have to buy Christmas presents and

some that aren’t too particularly happy about it. With everyone shopping, that of course

means long lines at the register. In this discourse community, when I was working during

the holiday season, a customer that was already in line called the store to see if we could

get any more cashiers because the line was “too” long. At that time, we had four cashiers

and more were coming in soon. After this call happened, I was in disbelief and so were

my other co-workers. Knowing that it was the holiday season I figured most customers

would already be prepared for longer lines than normal, but I was wrong. After this hap-

pened, I felt the need to try to ring up people even faster than I already was to try to avoid

any more ridiculous situations. The holidays put an immense amount of stress on my co-

workers and me. Working busy days everyday and dealing with unpleasant customers

just makes it worse. The long strenuous days during the holidays are expected, but people

that are not in this discourse community might overlook the $1 flip-flop day sale that is in

June.

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Another day in this discourse community that was stressful was the $1 flip-flop

day sale. During the $1 flip-flop sale I worked from 1PM-10PM and it was a mentally ex-

hausting day. Being on my feet for nine hours and the constant flow of customers coming

in to get the flip-flops was physically draining as well. Talking to customers’ non-stop all

day caused my throat to hurt from talking so much and my body was sore from standing

for a majority of the day. Donald K. Beckley, in Identifying Problems of Human Rela-

tions in Retailing, claims that the difficult physical requirements affect how employees

handle situations at different times of the day. Beckley supports this by stating, “The

physical requirements of retailing present special problems because of the constant con-

tact with customers…Subjects that could be handled conversationally quite readily at

10:00 AM sometimes present areas of bitter argument at 5:00 PM,” (Beckley 53). This

statement is true because I definitely was physically affected by working and I was more

stressed with customers towards the end of my shift than at the beginning. To further ex-

plain, at the beginning of my shift I was ready to work and had better interactions with

the customers. While towards the end of my shift I did not make the extra effort with cus-

tomers because at that point I was exhausted and was ready to go home. Making the extra

effort with customers becomes more stressful as the shift goes on because I often men-

tally lose patience with customers, but I cannot express that I feel that way.

Another aspect of retail that can be complicated and very stressful to customers

and employees is our stores policies about returns, purchases, etc. For example, when

people make a purchase with a credit card, I am required by corporate policy to check for

a card and I.D to make sure they match. Sometimes customers are using their spouses,

parents, or friends card and the cardholder is not with them to justify the purchase. The

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customer then has to use a different form of payment to make their purchase. This hap-

pens quite often and some customers leave the store very angry because they didn’t have

another way to pay. It’s very stressful being handed back a bag filled with sometimes

$300 worth of clothes to re-fold/re-hang and put back out onto the floor.

Certain policies we have are constantly changing as well. For example, in the past

we were only supposed to take online returns in store up to 30 days but now we can take

online returns within 45 days of the purchase. However, customers still bring in some that

have passed that time allowance. I often have to tell people that have to ship it back them-

selves and most get very irritated. This is stressful because I wish I could take the returns,

but I can’t because of policy. To further support my claim, Beckley states,

“Compared with other markets, retail market is characterized by a high degree of

mobility and instability…many of decisions made in retail are made when prob-

lems arise…these decisions can be formalized as store policy and improvements

are desirable,” (Beckley 53).

To further explain Beckley’s statement, he claims that store policies are put in place when

problems arise and its in state to prevent those problems. In my example, this would be

that Old Navy extended the online return policy so people had more time to make their

returns. He also expresses that policy is always changing which can frustrate customers

and employees. The constant changing of policy is stressful because sometimes employ-

ees forget about the new policies and tell them about the old ones, which can complicate

situations at the register. Additionally, customers act as if the employees control policy,

but we don’t. Our job is to follow the corporate policy and to make sure customers abide

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by it. This can become stressful because customers often express their anger towards me

if they don’t particularly like a certain policy that we have.

At Old Navy, most of the employees that work there are between the ages of 16-

24 with an exception of the managers and a few other employees. I often have customers

giving me a hard time or basically calling me stupid without saying it because of how

young I am. Some customers automatically assume because I’m younger I don’t know

what I’m doing which is very frustrating since I have been working there for a year now

and have been exposed to all sorts of situations when ringing up customers. Noticing that

this only occurs at times when I’m waiting on older customers was very thought provok-

ing. Karolina Wagar and Lars-Johan Lindqvist, in The Role of the Customer Contact Per-

son’s Age in Service Encounters, measured this problem in their study. Wagar and

Lindqvist concluded in their study that older customers prefer older employees to

younger employees in retail (Wagar and Lindqvist 509). I’ve had situations to where I

turned the computer monitor towards the customer so they could see everything I was

seeing and they still questioned me about why things were discounted in a certain way.

Eventually I had to call I manager up and of course they respected what the manager said

because they were older. This often happens when I call a manager up and they tell the

customer the same exact thing I did, but the customers respect the manager more than

me. It’s so stressful because I know I’m doing my job right, but I’m automatically put in

the wrong because of my age. This affects my mood and my ability to get my work done

because I can’t do my job the best I can if customers don’t take me seriously.

With the area that Macomb Mall is located at, many fights or violent interactions

occur at the mall. For example, during the summer in this discourse community there was

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a fight right outside of Old Navy and it was stressful to my co-workers, the customers,

and me. I was working the register at the time and tried to wait on the customers to the

best of my ability trying to calm my nerves and theirs. Security quickly showed up and

broke up the fight and the circle of people surrounding it. When customers in the store

become angry it’s very overwhelming and it’s hard to hide my emotions about what I’m

really feeling. In Richard S. Gallagher’s book, The Customer Service Survival Kit: What

to Say to Defuse Even the Worst Customer Situations, he explains different ways to han-

dle those tricky situations with customers. Gallagher supports this by stating, “When a

customer uses anger against you, it is one of the most uncomfortable experiences you will

ever encounter in serving the public,” (Gallagher). For example, on Sundays we close at 6

PM and a customer came in at 6:02 PM and we told them that we’re sorry, but we’re

closed. The customer became enraged because someone they were with continued to

walk into the store and we had to call security. The customer used vulgar language and

called the manager that was working explicit names even though the customers had a

child with them. Eventually security escorted them out and everything was back to nor-

mal. When these types of situations occur it’s difficult to not become stressed out because

sometimes our safety is potentially at risk. My co-workers and myself don’t know what

extremes the customers we wait on will go to if something happens that they don’t like.

Dealing with customers like the ones described above is like stepping on eggshells be-

cause you don’t know how they’re going to react to certain things.

Another aspect of working in this discourse community that can affect my stress

levels are the managers that work at Old Navy. Every manager has a different personality

with different expectations for the employees. The managers set the goals that we have to

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meet for the shifts we work. The managers that work there affect my mood because some

are more easy-going than others. To further illustrate this my co-worker Emily Trudell

states, “Yes, managers play a huge roll in our performance. When the managers have ter-

rible attitudes it affects us all and how we communicate with one another and the cus-

tomers,” (Trudell). Certain managers stress myself and my co-workers out more than oth-

ers and affect how well I work that day.

The stress factors that come from customers, the environment of the store, and the

managers do affect my co-workers and myself at Old Navy. With every customer that

walks in, a new situation has to be dealt with the best customer service we can provide.

The customers can affect the environment of the store, which often plays a major role on

the moods of fellow co-workers and myself while working through the day. The environ-

ment is also affected by the holiday season and crazy sales that bring out the worst in cus-

tomers, which makes for a grueling day at work. The policies that Old Navy has in place

make certain transactions problematic because they can be complicated at times. Being

younger is another challenge that I have to overcome with not being taken seriously by

certain customers. The extreme situations that can occur at work can also be very stress-

ful to deal with day in and out. My managers also can affect my mood and how well I do

my work. My co-workers can agree with me on a majority of these points that I have

made that can make the days stressful at work. Overall, working in this discourse com-

munity has its stressful moments like every job does, but it’s a learning experience that

I’m grateful to be a part of.

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Works Cited

Beckley, Donald K. “Identifying Problems Of Human Relations In Retailing.” Journal Of

Marketing 20.1 (1955): 51-53. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 9

Mar. 2015.

Wägar, Karolina, and Lars-Johan Lindqvist. “The Role of the Customer Contact Person’s

Age in Service Encounters.” The Journal of Services Marketing 24.7 (2010): 509-

17. ProQuest. Web. 3 Mar. 2015.

Gallagher, Richard S. The Customer Service Survival Kit: What to Say to Defuse Even

the Worst Customer Situations. N.p.: American Management Association, 2013.

Print.

Trudell, Emily. Personal Interview. 23 March 2015.