People in Retail: The Newbie
The first in a series of non-serious posts about retail.
I’ve worked in retail for a long time. Partly due to my past experience, partly due to life choices, what matters is that I monetize my suffering for your entertainment.
So I’m going to look back and think about what sort of employees and customers I’ve experienced and what categories they fall into. I’ll be using a system I created because I have too much free time on my hands. This week I’m tackling The Newbie.
The Newbie Basics
If you take away nothing else from this article, know this; you can always spot a Newbie.
The shirt is always a brighter shade of color than longtime employees. Newbies also willingly approach shoppers. No one in retail longer than 3 months willingly approaches a customer; that’s just as bad as doing actual work. Disgusting. Newbies also don’t know anything. That’s not a cruel exaggeration, you as a shopper may know more than a Newbie. This is despite 2 days of home-office mandated “training” that covers nothing they’ll ever deal with in their job. How many fires have I had to know the code for? Actually like four separate times, but that’s not important.
I’ve carefully (while drinking with friends) put together (probably stole) these metrics to rate and categorize The Newbie and all the people in retail on the worker side.
Visuals
Newbies often have newer and fresher clothes than Lifers (long time employees who will die while working here). Newbies also don’t have bags under their eyes or a thousand yard stare. That’s something you earn with years of dedication to your job. You also get it after handling one customer.
Newbies still have life in their eyes and you can almost see their soul before it’s ground into a fine powder for the corporate overlords to inhale and feel the high of capitalism stuffing them until they burst. Newbies also don’t always have properly tailored pants.
Knowledge
Newbies don’t know anything. This isn’t a dig at them, they just don’t know anything. And that’s fine. They’re a metaphorical set of hands to do the menial tasks; stocking shelves, ringing up sales, fishing dead critters out of the company van engine block.
Any question a customer could pose to a Newbie will be met with one of the following replies; I don’t know, let me check the box, let me get my manager. You may as well give a Newbie three index cards to hold up for the customer while the Newbie sweats through their new shirt in panic mode. Frankly you’ve probably shopped at this store more often than the Newbie has clocked in.
Availability
Newbies have to prove themselves on the battle ground, also known as the sales floor which is also known as Hell. Chances are if you see an employee at all you’re either interacting with a Newbie or a Veteran, which is subtly different from a Lifer. The balance of “being available” but “knowing nothing” is a tough combination, but they do have access to people that do know what they’re talking about, which is the Newbie’s true strength.
This also extends to covering shifts and being available nights and holidays. Retail thrives on staff being available any time people aren’t working. Those white collar drones have to spend their money somewhere! In every job I’ve ever worked, when too many callouts hindered the staff, we called the new people first. They’re the most likely to want hours.
Newbie Evolution
Like in Pokemon, and to a lesser extent biology, people in retail evolve constantly. Like in Pokemon, and never like biology, it’s a sudden and jarring process, accompanied by loud digital music.
Newbies will evolve without knowing it, usually when the holiday rush has ended and they realize they’re still clocking in well into March. At that point they’re in a sub category of Worker; either Backbone, Slacker, or Kiss Ass. We’ll get into these categories in a later post, but most Newbies either leave to restart their Newbie journey elsewhere, or evolve into one of these Worker Types.
When trained enough, you can take your Newbie to a local Pokemon Gym, and…shoot, wrong post. Pretend I didn’t write that.
Learning!
That’s the basics of The Newbie. Keep an eye out for more People You’ll Meet in Retail because I have to keep making content or I’ll get all jittery like I drank too much coffee.