Last job killed my love of IT, management beat it out of me. Wonderful company, demotivated by my manager from the first week. Couldn’t be a nicer guy, smartest tech I’ve ever met, Peter Principled his was into management.
Never been paid that much, took about every Friday off on PTO, total WFH, can’t say what my benefits cost but it wasn’t $100/mo. in total. My last job was half the pay and benefits, was so much happier. I think of that every time I read a comment about why companies need to pay more to satisfy us. Everyone should have a look at this. Had ALL that at my penultimate job, NONE at the most recent.
I feel so weird, especially at this time of life with a solid resume, interviewing for PT work at Lowe’s. Thinking I’ll be happier than a pig in shit spending 4 hours a day, just walking around helping people, doing what ever bullshit I’m asked to do. Looking to see how it goes, see if there are ways to work myself up to FT, better schedule, supervisor, whatever.
Thought about “retiring” to work in a hardware store to keep busy and fit, but not for a decade+. Excepting my credit card bills, and what my wife sends home to the Philippines, she makes enough to cover everything. Won’t take much to take the edge off.
I love hardware and tools and plants, about everything they sell. Hoping to learn a lot as well. Helping people is really satisfying to me, and I’m excellent at handling customers. LOL, I’m best with the angry ones, sometimes get them apologizing. :)
Need a sanity check, am I losing it!? Been through the worst depression of my life the past few years, hoping this will break me back into a normal state of mind.
EDIT: Got the job! Holy shit, the assistant manager is just like me! Dropped out of tech to take a minimum wage job at Lowe’s 8 years ago, now he’s at $90K. We’ve even done much of the same work in the IT space. “I did DSL for Bellsouth when it was new!” “Yep, did my time as a cable internet guy.”
Seems to be a lot of space and opportunity to move up. I’m going to knock this out the fucking park!
BONUS: Clerk at the shady gas station overhead me telling my neighbor about quitting IT and getting hired today. Guy ask me what I did in IT, gave him a run down. “Yeah. I was a web dev for 20-years, couldn’t take staring at a screen any more.”
My story is literally the opposite. Working at places like Lowes and the shitty coworkers and management was my drive to finish school and get a better job.
Every job can suck because of people who suck. Retail is definitely NOT better. I ain’t saying it’s worse, but it ain’t better.
I had a similar arc, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about going back.
I worked retail for two years post highschool. Looking at my coworkers, some of whom were in their 40s/50s and still at pretty low level positions, made me go to community college and then a four year school.
14 years later working on software (dev, highly engaged/invested PO, now PM) and I either have a more clear-eyed worldview or a my company is starting to fall apart. I’m very over our command and control leadership that’s been touting the next new framework only to continue to command and control in that framework and then claim “that framework was actually bad, this new framework is good”. The battling between teams building basically the same things, but for their niches of the world, “how I want it” coming every which was as opposed to thinking about what we should be solving, everything being the top priority, actions mattering more than results, etc. Layer in process debt that goes back to the 1950s and technical debt going back to the 1980s. I know younger companies don’t have the later two problems, but from lurking in dev related communities for years everything else seems pretty common.
At my retail job the worst I had to deal with was the occasional grouchy customer, which just meant calling a manager to deal with it if I couldn’t. We’re doing the best we can to stash away money. We’ve started doing math to say, “we might have to work longer in total, but if we were to take lower paying jobs at <age> this is what our finances would look like”.
Controversial but when it actually IS essentially just “for spending money” part time work, is retail that bad? You have the psychological benefits of seeing new people, having consistent relationships, helping others, physical activity, a routine, and anything else that working may bring to your social calendar. Oh and waaaay less responsibility and pressure.
Cause it is essentially working for mental health reasons instead of financial. It is a lot easier to walk away then as soon as mental health is compromised!
I think the people hating on retail haven’t developed people skills because they’re young or simply can’t. I can flip an angry customer around in a few minutes, have them eating out of my hand.
The secret sauce? Treat like as what they are, a human being coming to you for help, not pain-in-the-ass customer #43 for the day. Even the ones that start out angry quickly catch on that you’re on their side and doing your damnedest to help. If you’re fake, they can smell it.
People skills might be part of the equation, but that also applies to IT/dev work too - especially if you find yourself in any kind of lead (tech and/or managerial) position.
I think hesitancy you’re seeing comes down to earnings potential and the fact that our society tends to look down on “low skill” work, especially retail.
I’m glad you have that particular skill, but it absolutely has very little to do with irate customers. That’s more like what makes it a shitty day at the job vs having a shitty job.
Also idk how much variety of people you have had to meet in your career but I venture to guess they are all generally the same socioeconomic backgrounds, education, etc. When you work with the public it is different, the pool is larger and more random, you may learn new ways people can be fucking weird.
If you’re financially stable enough to actually throw hands with that one customer (who will show up in your life eventually), then yeah, I can understand that.