I have worked retail for nearly two decades.

Once at a Waffle House in Florida I had a waitress that said she gets to work whatever shift she wants now because she did overnights for more than twenty years.
- overnights at a Waffle House in Florida for twenty years
  Jesus Christ I bet she saw some shit.
  
  braver than the troops
  
  They need to give her VA benefits just for that.
  
  At that point is it some shit, or all the shit?
  Woman's had to have seen things that would make the dark corners of the internet shiver
- If you do the waffle house night shift for 20 years you deserve to be retired on a full pension.
  
  And a whatever-you-like-front property

Did five years in the Starbucks mines and another year on a pizza freighter. I'll serve burgers before I fold a graphic tee. The solidarity during/after a rush forges comrades
- I think the opposite for me mostly because rushes are really bad for ND people (at least for me anyway, dont want to speak for all of us, but Ive read that this is often true). Like I worked Burger King and it was constantly hell on me mentally.
  Though I will say, I never worked the truly hellish retail jobs like Kohl's or something. My retail job experience was two years at Hollywood Video, which had its badness but was a relatively chill job other than having to push the rental subscriptions. (Also a brief stint at a nonfranchise local toy store but I hardly count that).
  Also worth noting though that the BK I worked at was a failing location with releativly few customers and even that was hell on me. I absolutely fucking hated it. It stressed me out so fucking much. Having to clean the dining room while the boss was counting down the drawer and there was only one person i kitchen and me out front. And then DING the drive through thingh goes off when im in the middle of wiping a table and it murdered my fucking head every time. Absolutely hellish environment for me.
- Second this. Making and serving food is good honest work, even if it's capitalist slop
- Yeah with commissions in the retail work I did it really pits the workers against each other. I was much happier on register shifts than floor shifts.

Working retail is 1000% easier than working food service. Especially if the food service is anything that runs at night/weekends/holidays.
You will never ever get me to work food service ever again.
- I have been physically assaulted and shot at working retail.
  It's not a competition
  
  Feel like the average retail worker does not experience that though
  Average food service is probably way more intense than average retail
  Edit: actually, I'm Canadian so the average American retail worker probably does have a way worse experience than up here, I'm so sorry💀
  
  I'm not competing, sorry if it came off that way! I mean this for me obviously, I'm comparing my experience with my experience. They're both shit but oh my god I will take going back to retail over food service, I genuinely think I would do something to myself.
  ...I did not like food service
- At least with a chunk of retail positions, you can just walk away. If you're in a kitchen... you've got nowhere to go.

Retail is a slow decent into madness

Retail is infinitely worse. At least I get to feel good about myself and what I do working in food service. Getting called chef ain't bad
- im not a chef though the people calling me that are mistaken
  
  yes chef
  
  Wish we could tag cuz yours would definitely be chef
- yea the food is overpriced (what isn't these days?) but at least i'm feeding people (for money)
  
  I feed literally hundreds of people every day. Me! That's kinda cool

- True. You work when everyone else goes out the most. Weekends and holidays, and meal times
  
  I have never had holidays off

Depends on boss and your own temperament. I've had shitty bosses as a line cook and as retail store manager - out of the two I'd pick a shitty retail boss. Shitty kitchen bosses get in your face and shit too much.
Solidarity on the line is way stronger and if bosses push too hard we can just do a line smoke break until they cool off. That was always cool

When I worked retail one time a woman, probably in her 50s, started yelling at me because we were out of something. She demanded to know my name and I told her (it's a Biblical name) and suddenly she calmed down. She thought that I was sent by God because of my name. I actually ended up being able to find a suitable replacement and she cried tears of joy. It was a package of bedsheets.
- Some folks are built different
- Your arrival was foretold in the book of pastaguini

certain departments in grocery stores combine the worst of both. with a little warehouse work tacked on as well.
- I will never understand why Deli gets payed so much less when it's so much harder
  
  My best guesses:
  You're more likely to be working more hours than you're scheduled. Sometimes you'll be staying later than your scheduled hours and other times you'll be called in to cover for somebody that didn't show up for their shift. IF you're going to get overtime pay, the boss wants your over time to cost as little as possible.
  Keeps turnover high for most of the positions.

Working in kitchens was probably the most degrading shit I’ve ever done. Couldn’t cope without cigs and alcohol, and my anxiety was still dialed up to 11 pretty much constantly. Pay was absolutely abysmal too. Bad times.

I worked at a pizza place for 3 years and couldn't last 4 months in a Ralph Lauren store.
Worse thing I remember is a guy completely out of his mind and SCREAMING at me because, his words: "how is it possible that I can't try these underwears in the fitting rooms?!!??!"
He reported me to my manager when I said he just can't due to sanitary reasons, then told me "at least you could have one pair of underwear on some sort of hanger so people can try it and it's not unsanitary because it's just one pair and nothing can spread"
Never again I will work in retail.

Godspeed to you retail workers. My brand of ADHD makes foodservice chaos click with me, but simultaneously keeps me from focusing enough to ever be a chef. Coffee is my strong suit, but some of the customers (the briefest taste of retail) had me looking up the Unalive Hotline in the bathroom on particularly bad days.

I never went into retail, but my wife did and now works at a grocery. I did work sales, then Starbucks followed by a brief stint at a French cafe before moving more into academia. While both suck, I think the main takeaway for me has been that the things people do to bathrooms will haunt me for the rest of my life.

I worked at Sports Authority for a year before they imploded
Was decent going for the most part
Only problem was people thinking that I liked sports enough to follow them
The only sports I pay attention to are my beloved Green Bay Packers and even then, I'm not the sort of weirdo who pays attention to things like rosters and games and seasons

Would rather continue to live off disability than work either ever again lol. Unless I can get back into working with kids or maybe some sort of like entry level office thing I'm probably just going to keep subsisting on the government's teat. Maybe theres some other low impact thing that ND people can actually do out there. But only working with kids gets my passion and drive going anyway so.
- Would rather continue to live off disability than work either ever again lol.
  same, even though I haven't managed to get on disability yet (will find out by early next year). I am never working a dog-shit job again. I would rather be completely homeless and destitute.

Whenever I hear the ubereats/doordash/skip the dishes tablet chime go off at random restaurants I jump a little. Even when I wasn't working in food service I'd hear it go off and start thinking I had to get on that. I have a feeling that's never going to leave me
- Me when the TurboChef goes off.
- I'm pretty sure I got further radicalized just by reading the petty tyrant bullshit on the Doordarsh subreddit from customers.
  Not sure how anybody who does that job doesn't deliver every meal at high velocity directly at the customer's face.

Retail sucks ass. I always felt like food service would have to be better but I never got into it. I did a bunch of hospitality shit tho namely lifeguarding and roller coaster operation and scare acting both for a big Six Flags park and would not recommend either 😵

I've worked in both and I'd say food service is slightly worse than retail.
Customers are a nightmare in both industries, but at least my coworkers in retail were just apathetic losers like myself.
In food service, even my coworkers constantly breathed down my neck and gave me shit for pretty much everything I did.
In retail, nobody gave a shit. It was just numb pain. Food was a nightmare from every angle. Constant surveillance, Constant bickering, Constant shitflinging. I'd rather saw off my arm than serve another fucking pizza.

I preferred food service. I enjoyed keeping up with orders and it's nice to feed people.
Retail is just droning lights and pacing. It is so boring and unengaging.
- And music on a very tight loop in my case, for an entire season at a time
  
  8 straight hours of Christmas music is literally psychological torture. I still get a little bit of anxiety every time I hear a Christmas song.

this is wholly accurate

wHy ArE yOu PoStInG pOlItIcAl MeMeS aLl ThE tImE
- Please post memes about things that aren't political, like video games and Marvel movies.

Why would you continue to do that? What's in it for you, with retail?
- Honestly? Nowadays because it's really fuckin easy to do some subtle and sometimes not so subtle agitprop face to face if you're careful.
  
  That's as good of a reason as any.
  
  Can confirm. Me and another comrade would slip Communist Party leaflets everywhere at my last job (a big-box grocery store with needlessly psychotic management)
  AFAIK no one higher-up knows it was us
- I did it for 10 and would still be doing it if the upper managers didn't fuck up their budget somehow and needed to cover their asses... (and probably cause I spent the better part of 10 years insinuating that some of the upper management were a bit on the sexpesty side with an eye towards the "sweet young thangs")
  I loved the actual work, it clicked for my special kinda of broken brain, the coworkers were cool and it was a paycheck.
  
  I'm considering getting a job in retail, largely because I've never done it before. Mostly I just like something that isn't repetitive and rushed to the point of being soul-crushing. I don't understand people who can do something for decades if it doesn't float their boat and doesn't pay well.
  Don't you work in ag? Not the most glamorous thing either but one of the most interesting jobs I ever had was in that sector.

When I was in retail, someone decided to drain the main vein in the changing room. We had this asshole assistant manager and this really cool assistant manager, the asshole tried to pawn it off on her and she basically told him to go fuck himself and went home.
Worst part is we had publicly available, well labeled and clean bathrooms the person could have used, so its not like it was out of desperation. Either a mental health emergency or someone forcing their fetish onto strangers.

Having only worked retail, this thread is honestly reassuring. I've always tried to avoid food service and mainly apply for retail, but considering my preferred work style that was a huge mistake.

Haven't really worked food service but working retail (Costco) made me want to [REDACTED] myself and everyone around me

I usually close for retail, its still an easier job than being a substitute teacher. No having to typically deal children with weapons nor obvious signs of abuse that you gotta report for nothing to be done, ineffective education you just gotta nod at and get yelled at for not being a demigod fixing 200yrs of issues in one afternoon, petite bourgeois sanctimonious asshole teachers, not to mention catching 1 of every contagious disease like Nurgle's Pokemon. Still fucking sucks since there's so much fucked up stuff in other ways, its comparing Hellraiser vs A Serbian Film.