Pink Collared Jobs- Retail

In the last year I’ve held two pink colored jobs, one as a sales associate at Forever21 and one as a cupcake associate at Crumbs. I spent my entire summer last year working at the new Forever21 at Times Square. I hated it. I dread going to work. The hierarchy of workers was not effective. Sales associates had to listen to visuals, assistant managers, co-managers, managers of the floor, and then there was the manager of the store at the highest. In simpler terms, sales associates were the “bitches” of everyone else. There was no room to move up unless you have worked there for years…I worked for three months and I was more than happy to leave for school.

Adding on to the messy hierarchy, there were the nasty customers. The store was opened from 8am to 2am last summer and the busiest times were when people got off work and on weekends. After fixing a rack of clothes, a customer can easily mess it up in 10 seconds. The job was routine after routine. You come into work, stood in your section and run back clothes from runners. I worked mostly in the fitting room and at the end of the day the fitting room would have a stench of body odor. I hated it when European tweens came into the fitting room with 20 pieces of clothing and left with nothing but a pile of worn clothes on the floor. I don’t know if I would have survived if I worked more than 3 months. Lunch break was half an hour and that summer my diet was mainly McDonalds and shish kebobs. I didn’t touch McDonalds for half a year after that.