I worked at a retail gig once and we were forced to sing a corporate song every morning and then do stretches by a maniacal mormon manager who lectured people on the dangers of coffee.
One week a news crew came into the store and shot a segment over multiple days about the new Playstation 2. The TV crew sat outside the store and asked people to sign forms and interviewed them on the spot about the PS2 - which was sold out at the time and people were waiting in line for it outside the store.
The aforementioned manager huddled us all in the backroom the night before they came and stood us in a long row like were in bootcamp. I was legit scared, I thought he had snapped. Instead he told us to “practice our smile” or something like that and then walked down the line and would pause from time to time and give criticisms/praise. When he got to me I was beaming at him like Jack in the Shining with his face through the door, he paused and then looked deep into my eyes, and said “That’s what I’m talking about!”, and then grabbed me by the shoulder like we were old pals.
That entire week I don’t think I saw any of the employees smile at all except when he was around and then it became this creepy smiley artificial atmosphere like being the actors in the Truman show. I quit later that summer and resolved never to work retail customer oriented gigs ever again. The managers in retail are the absolute bottom of the barrel worse.
I worked at a retail gig once and we were forced to sing a corporate song every morning and then do stretches by a maniacal mormon manager who lectured people on the dangers of coffee.
One week a news crew came into the store and shot a segment over multiple days about the new Playstation 2. The TV crew sat outside the store and asked people to sign forms and interviewed them on the spot about the PS2 - which was sold out at the time and people were waiting in line for it outside the store.
The aforementioned manager huddled us all in the backroom the night before they came and stood us in a long row like were in bootcamp. I was legit scared, I thought he had snapped. Instead he told us to “practice our smile” or something like that and then walked down the line and would pause from time to time and give criticisms/praise. When he got to me I was beaming at him like Jack in the Shining with his face through the door, he paused and then looked deep into my eyes, and said “That’s what I’m talking about!”, and then grabbed me by the shoulder like we were old pals.
That entire week I don’t think I saw any of the employees smile at all except when he was around and then it became this creepy smiley artificial atmosphere like being the actors in the Truman show. I quit later that summer and resolved never to work retail customer oriented gigs ever again. The managers in retail are the absolute bottom of the barrel worse.