Hypertext 2: Retail

For my second hypertext essay, I’m going to write about my experience working in the retail industry. I will focus on how retail workers are often overworked and usually underpaid. My personal experience was at Sur la Table, a store that sells high-end kitchen appliances, gadgets and miscellaneous kitchen accessories. I will discuss my time spent working at Sur la Table and how I was coerced into doing far more than I was hired to do. I will talk about my discussions with fellow employees and my relationship with my manager. I will talk about how I was treated by customers working in an upper-class neighborhood (like Los Gatos) and how it may differ from other locations. The people I worked with ranged in age from 18 to 55. One common denominator among most of them, however, was that they were forced to work more than one job. I will discuss the paradox of working at an expensive retail store that grants employee discounts to their workers, yet doesn’t pay enough to allow them to actually buy anything there.
When I was reading Shipler’s, The Working Poor, the vagueness of climbing up the pay ladder made me think about my personal experience.
“Debra had no confidence that she could move up in position and pay. Whenever she asked supervisors about the salary at their level, they’d answer vaguely, ‘It varies.’ She couldn’t get specific figures, so she had no sense of what her goal might be.” (Pg. 49)
One thing I found interesting while working at Sur La Table, is the variation in salary. The job paid per hour, but it was different for everyone that worked there. I got paid $1 more than a girl 2 years younger than me with more experience. Another male co-worker, the same age as me, with the same experience, was paid more.
The style of my hypertext essay will draw from Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed. It will be an autobiographical account of my working experience and my association with my co-workers. I have a lot of friends working in the retail industry that feel they are treated unfairly in some way.