From the mid-18th century to the end of World War II, it was a common practice among developed European nations to require two years of military service from all male citizens. It wasn’t just enlisting, it wasn’t signing forms and it certainly wasn’t voluntary. If I had my way, we would set up a similar practice in the United States — only with retail.
My system wouldn’t require two years, necessarily. It wouldn’t even really have to be full time — the retail requirement could be fulfilled concurrently during high school or college. I’m not out to bolster the U.S. economy with a surge of workers, and it’s not just because I want more people to feel the part-time pain that I feel. It’s just that the world would be a much better place if we all had to work in customer service.
Working in retail is a remarkable life experience, and people who miss out on it are so ridiculously lucky. You can always tell when you have a client on your hands who has never worked retail. They are the people who think that “”shrink”” is just an unfortunate consequence of putting wool in the dryer. For those of you who actually fall into this category: Burn in hell — shrink is a code word for shoplifting, and can be either internal (employees) or external (customers). They are the customers who apparently don’t fold clothing in their own homes, who knock over a shelf display and don’t even glance at the mess they’ve made, who ask if you work there when you’re helping another client, in uniform, with a headset, name tag and a labeled box of merchandise. They are the customers whose mission in life is to make you insanely miserable.
We’d all be more polite if we all had to work retail. A universally essential — and extremely annoying — part of training for any retail job is etiquette. Training videos are inundated with people who look like their sole source of nutrition is Valium and Aderol. In retail, motivational posters are like wallpaper, lining every square foot of the back rooms. They even tape little catch phrases to the phone, usually with an accompanying reminder to smile. Brainwashing, perhaps, but definitely an improvement over the extreme lack of common courtesy that engulfs modern society. It’d be great if everywhere you went, people were constantly greeting you, asking if you needed help and thanking you (regardless of whether or not they made a purchase, because you want their store experience to be a positive one).
We’d all be able to bullshit. Veterans of retail all grimace at the phrase, “”suggestive selling.”” Doubtless derived from the fruits of a multitude of management brainstorming, the alliterative phrase really translates into “”force a product on the customers without them knowing it.”” Employers will give you these impossibly ridiculous threats disguised as questions, like “”Did you know that 80 percent of customers will leave the sales floor after two to four minutes if they are not greeted within 20 to 30 seconds of their arrival?”” or “”Did you know that 85 percent of customers come into a store with something specific in mind even if they say that they’re ‘just looking’?””
In other words: Smile, dammit. Sell your soul if it means generating a sale. But it’s a valuable skill, learning how to bullshit. Paper-writing, pressing parents for cash and breaking up come to mind. And honestly, we’d all be better people if we’d just learn that no matter how bad your day is, you still have to smile, greet people and manipulate all you can to get what it is you really want. We’d all be a lot better at acronyms. Acronyms seem to be an integral part of large-scale retail stores. An entirely plausible sentence could be, “”Would you consult your CSM about the IBC of getting the BBV ready for the MFSR?”” (Translation: Your manager will kick your ass if you don’t get that stuff out like she told you.) And then there are all the ways to talk about profits without letting the customer know, like “”We need to work on increasing our ADS so that the SPH can reflect the highest AT possible.”” (Average Dollar Sale, Sales Per Hour and Average Transaction, respectively.) A society that is better at acronyms is clearly advancing.
Retail isn’t just a way of earning money, it’s a method of dealing with the world. People who have never worked with people, people who have never been paid for subservience, people who have never had to live every working day in closed-toed shoes are basically useless citizens.
The reason behind enforced service throughout Europe was to have massive amounts of military might. Those kinds of policies allowed European armies to mobilize immediately, to defend themselves in an instant and to make their citizens better citizens.
Mandatory retail would have similar benefits. We’d all manage to conform to some level of basic politeness, complete with eye contact and friendly body language. Thanks to tons of safety videos and posters showing safety do’s and don’ts, we’d certainly be more safe. Most importantly, if everyone worked in retail, we’d all get along. Years of collective suffering could mold us into a cohesively empathetic society. And if not, we’d all be able to fake it with remarkable ease.