At least I made my way up to only having to work every other weekend.
"The customer is always right." No. The customer is always stupid. You don't work here, you don't know how the business is run, you don't know our truck schedule or our team member schedule, and you SURE AS HELL do not know how big our backroom is (pro tip: about a quarter as big as you imagine it). You don't know anything. You can guess, but if an employee tells you you're wrong ... you probably are.
Our fake niceness we have to put on display for you nearly kills us. True story. Look here's the cold hard facts: we want you to come into the store, spend your money, and then we want you to go home. We don't really like you, and we don't care about your kids or your dog or your cat or whatever you try and chit chat with us about. To be honest, if everyone were just naturally pleasant this wouldn't be such a big deal. We'd all speak our niceties and then go about our day. HOWEVER everyone (especially lately, thanks 45) tends to naturally be a douchebag and the fact that we have to play nice in the face of it burns our insides like acid. I bet y'all would be a whole lot nicer to us if we had the power to look you in the face and call you stupid and/or an asshole. Instead, we have to pretend that you are THE MOST important person in all the world, and that your piddly little problem is THE WORST HOW COULD WE which emboldens you to treat us like trash. Jerks.
We never have enough people or enough hours in a day to get everything done, put everything on the shelf, make everything neat. It's always the goal but we always fall short, unless it's super slow. Patience goes a long way. Having to wait on an employee to go into that magical backroom that has all the things apparently to fetch your specific thing that was not on the shelf will not make the sky fall down in your world. Promise.
People call in a lot in retail. Maybe more than office jobs? I wouldn't know I've never had one. Look, retail ain't easy, and we expect everyone to WANT to work 40 hours a week and be super happy about it even though the chances of finding such a unicorn are slim. Working with the public exposes you to germs and you get sick, or life happens and makes getting to work hard, or sometimes you just want a damn day off to do fun things or nothing at all. So people call in. No one ever prepares for that because why would they? Everyone wants to work all the hours all the time! It will always throw us for a loop and it will always make wait times longer (especially at checkout), and trust me, if we could grow magical fairy cashiers in our magical never-ending backroom we would. But we can't. So maybe have a little dignity and keep all the marbles in instead of flinging them in the air at the mere thought of waiting in line for a few minutes.
No you cannot get a better discount than we employees get for that tiny scratch on the underside of the thing, where no one will ever see it. Either take what we offer you or don't buy it.
This IS a real job. And it's a lot harder than yours. So take your "get a real job" snide remarks and shove it up your backside until you bleed.
Do I dream about having another job? Of course I do. I was an English major. I am a walking cliché. However, I can't complain about what I do. I like the people I work with, every day is different, and sometimes it's even fun. At the end of the day, it provides me with a roof over my head, food on my plate, and gas in my car, when there are so many people that can't say the same thing.
Always look for the silver linings. Always.