Friends who say they "easy" jobs

[sheworkshardforthemoney]

3 separate friends have said to me this week that they want b and m/ supermarket jobs.

I have never worked in retail but do work as (low paid) manager in a position to hire staff at minimum wage positions (skills needed)

AIBU to think these friends are disrespectful to think that they could easily do these jobs/ be hired?

I think tbh they were just saying it in a half hearted way. But I've heard it before from friends with careers in management/ finance/ HR.
They think minimum wage jobs are easy work/ easy to get and stress free!

If they applied for a vacancy with me they wouldn't get hired! I look for CV's with job history where I know they've had to 'graft' turn in everyday and perform. It's bloody hard work!!

Stick to your office jobs! Minimum wage=maximum effort! Worked to the bone! No spare minutes in the day! True for my site anyway!

@SylvanianFrenemies

I've worked various retail and hospitality jobs when younger.

Yes, they can be physically taxing, boring etc. But they are not demanding. When your shift is over, you are done. You don't carry a mental load, and there are no serious implications if you make an error.

Same here. I've done pot washing, portering (god that hotel was a shit hole!), but when the work was done, I could forget about it.

Difference now is, if I don't get what I'm doing now finished and 100% accurate by the end of the day tomorrow, I'm going to cost the section of the business I work in just shy of a million quid in penalties and it won't be too smart for my employment outlook. I'm not leaving that one at the door at the end of the day when I finish.

In the last couple of office jobs I've had I've been worried sick about work 24/7, especially when having a holiday and worrying about all the work piling up waiting for you when you get back

This. I've worked in offices for over 40 years, but never again, and if I could go back to my young self I wouldn't go near an office - although, having said that, office work when I was young was far more interesting and fun than it is now. I would far rather have less money and more stress free time - I work to live, not live to work!

To be fair though stacking shelves is easy. Retail work is boring and low paid because it is easy. No specialist skills needed

It's the type of stress. I've done both and customers are transient, they can be dicks, I can get a manager and that's about the end of it.

In my office job Its a stress I can't leave at the door. The worry of what will have changed when i get back, constant catching up, spotting and correcting errors before serious impacts. Knowing that if something doesn't get done well it follows you around and damages yours reputation. It's mental rather than physical.

YANBU. I once worked in a cafe washing up for ten hour shifts for £5 an hour cash in hand. It was absolutely exhausting. If I did it full time I would be more tired than I am in my current job. It’s the toughest job I’ve done.

I work in a GP surgery so I do work in a office but in a customer service role. It's a huge surgery we work really hard and I will always do my best to give the best level of customer service I can.I regularly get positive feedback from patients and other staff and will stay late to finish things off. I think what they might be getting at is that I and others who work in supermarkets ect dont have the responsibility of sorting staffing issues, dealing with staff grievances, if we get a complaint yes we try and help but ultimately we have a manager who will be the one who has to make the decisions ect, we dont have to get calls and have to sort out rotas and find cover at 6am. I go to work try my absolute best but can then leave and dont have to take work home or anything like that. Is that not what they are talking about rather than thinking it will be easy?

Are you not doing the same to your friends? The way you talk about only hiring people who have grafted makes it sound like you think they don't/people in office jobs don't.

I think what most people mean when they say stuff like this is its 'easy' because you leave work at work and can switch off after your shift.

I work as a solicitor and sometimes feel like my day never ends really because I'm always thinking about something and have huge responsibility for clients. I may not be drained physically but I certainly am mentally. So yes, there has sometimes been the appeal of finding a job where I can just go in, do my shift and leave without being solely responsible for huge times in clients lives.

I’ve done lots of jobs and not all retail is the same. Working in a shoe shop was really awful, boring and hard work. Working in a newsagent was really fun and I loved it. I had my own clothes shop and that was incredibly stressful. I loved working in the petrol station. Being a barmaid was one of my most hated jobs as I was so crap at it and it was ridiculously hard work.

I have worked in a supermarket for 4 years. While it was the most physically tiring job I've had, it was also the easiest job because there was minimal stress, it wasn't difficult mentally, and I could leave the job at work once I left the building.

Working in a mentally demanding job is much harder. I sometimes yearn for the days when I was just someone in a uniform and all I had to worry about was finding Mrs Smith's favourite yoghurt in the stock room.

So I think YABU

I probably was a bit stressed yesterday and yes I should not berate office jobs! I'm sure my friends do work very hard and have a lot of stress. I think the tier 3 restrictions here haven't helped as office workers work from home. We get busier here on my site. I feel for my staff because they do work hard for the money. Most managers hiring minimum wage positions have had team hours/ positions cut from above. So yes sorry it is non-stop hard work.

Totally agree about everyone's jobs seeming different from the outside.

I personally get both! Hard graft and the mental load being manager. Can also do the books at home on an evening 😴

*I'm an assistant manager currently on min wage.. I wish it was more, but despite this I love my job.

The previous retail management jobs i've had have been above min wage but barely, maybe 15-20p more per hour, which hardly seems worth the responsibility tbh, so I do think you have to love it to keep working in retail for so long.*

Wow that's rubbish. What's the incentive to get promoted if the wages are the same? and you're not being paid for extra responsibility.

Lidl customer assistants earn just over £10ph in London and area managers are on around £60k.

I've worked at Eat and enjoyed and found it easy. I find office work and politics very boring but I need the money and flexibility.

I think the tier 3 restrictions here haven't helped as office workers work from home. We get busier here on my site.

Just because people are working from home, the job isn't easier. When I'm not on client sites, I work from home anyway, but I've had to do what would be client facing consultancy online, it doesn't work and makes it twice as hard to deliver.

I guess the only bonus is, it stops me having 18 hour days delivering the consultancy and also travelling.

Working in an office is soul destroying. Every day sitting at a desk under artificial light, listening the same people drone on about last night's dinner and all the politics involved in boiling a kettle. Yes retail is hard but it's constantly moving and every day is different. I've met some really interesting people from all over the world - both staff and customers, I've been able to make someone happy just by helping them. I've also never been spoken to more rudely than when working in retail - I mean, jaw droppingly rude.

Retail is hard work as you have to be so adaptable and thick skinned. I could never go back to the dull, repetitive hell of an office stuck in an environment as stale as the air conditioning.

I’ve worked in both

Retail in my experience is more tiring but easier on the brain It’s more routined less decision making - maybe that’s what they mean

I feel for those that work in places like McDonalds as the work is absolutely relentless and people are so rude to them.

I get this with DP. He has a manual job and it is often very tiring. I understand that, sympathise, appreciate what he does. I too have worked in physically demanding jobs in the past; commercial laundry, farm work, retail, factory. I get it.

He does not understand what I do, and that it is also hard and tiring, but in a different way. He cannot grasp the pile up of work around holiday or sick time, as he thinks someone else should do it while I'm off, and cannot understand why that isn't possible. Or how the incoming work can't just be stopped for a bit. He doesnt understand why I work extra hours I'm not being paid overtime for. He doesn't understand why I get stressed.

I have a professional 'office job'. He is a bit thick to be honest, to not grasp that all jobs are not like his.

I’m a coffee shop manager. The pay difference between me and my staff isn’t all that big, not even in the £’s. I disagree with a previous poster who said only office workers work to deadlines, audits etc. We also have that in retail/hospitality, financial audits, health and safety audits, environmental health inspections, and coffee audits. Deadlines for implementing new offers, keeping on top of waste and ordering stock, balancing that fine margin of profit and loss. I have to account for everything. Every little penny needs to be counted and if we overspend on on unplanned maintenance it comes out of my shops profit and hits my bonus.
I do all hiring and firing and have to know my shit when it comes to employment law and interview questions and techniques. All of this as well as plastering on a big smile for the customers and making a good cup of coffee!
It’s not all doom and gloom though otherwise I wouldn’t do it! I’m stood here mumsnetting on company time between customers.
What gets on my goat though is people come in and see mindless minimum wage worker just because I happen to make coffee.

I think one of the really grating things about working in minimum wage supermarket jobs is the total lack of respect you get from the general public. It is actually easier to ‘use your brain’ (as a PP put it) and receive recognition for it than to be looked down on and treated rudely solely based on your occupation.

Agree there is a difference between retail and retail management role! We cant just switch off either.

I always felt this way when I'd a really stressful job. I used to look enviously at the people working on the checkout in tesco and wish I could swap places. I worked in retail for many years when I was young and whilst it was crap hours and physically hard sometimes, it was easy mentally, had great chat and banter with colleagues and customers and it was minimal stress. You went in, did your job and came home not thinking about it again until your next shift whereas stressful careers have a nasty way of taking over your life. I don't think your friends meant it disrespectfully, I think they just wish they could escape to something with less responsibility perhaps?

I don’t think they are easy jobs, it can be quite physically demanding however I don’t think the stress levels are close to a higher paid office job in my experience.

I’ve had minimum wage jobs and worked in supermarkets and my feet always hurt at the end of the day. But I could leave work at work.

My office job I’m constantly stressed, it affects me more mentally. I work long hours, evenings and weekends but only get paid for 8-5 weekdays. There is a reason these jobs pay more because they are more mentally demanding and less people who are trained to do them.

I would say my minimum wage job was easier but it wasn’t easy

They are ignorant and more likely to end up in a warehouse doing ridiculous hours, shitty working conditions and treated like dirt by the agency and managers for as little mobey as possible.

I had a high stress, extremely fast paced office role and warehouse wins for sheer graft and little reward.

I walked out of teacher training (despite good reports) because it wasn't for me and then did four years in retail. I'm now a low ranking civil servant and my life- and job- is a LOT easier than retail ever was. Teacher training was probably the most unrelenting in terms of hours actually worked vs contracted but I think because I wasn't happy I felt disconnected and switched off quite easily although I was permanently unhappy.

First year in retail was fine- working short hours, no weekends, not too physical, some downtime, feeling good at something after hating teaching and feeling happy again, but the just over three years in the management were much harder and trapping than anything I've ever done and it's hard to switch off from.

If you work full time - which mgmnt usually do, you have no life. You work weekends, earlies, evenings (I once got put on "permanent evenings" for a few months and my mental health nosedived as I couldn't see my friends for more or less the entire time) and as Pp have stated, you're "on call" on your days off if there's an emergency. Yes, I know other jobs do this too but they pay better- we weren't paid much above the staff. They expect A LOT in return. If you're unlucky enough to be on a work whatsapp group- especially a management one which might cover your whole trading area, you'll be messaged the entire time. Muting it doesn't help because you might miss something "important". People can message you about stuff on your day off and expect replies ASAP. I once came out of a pliates class to 6 missed calls to discuss a PayPal return gone astray 9 weeks prior. I stupidly set work a special whatsapp sound at one job. If I hear that noise now, 3 years later, I hyperventilate and start to tremble. Oh and if you're a keyholder your details go to the alarm company. They don't care if you're the furthest away, if you answer you go in. At 3am.

You're under pressure with targets the whole time- everything is made to feel life or death, if you're holding store, you're in charge of everything that happens and you also have to set the example. I did more admin but you also still have to muck in with the physical and manage and lead things like floor flips. You also can't duck arsehole customers as you're "the manager". My perception of customers was waaaaaay worse after promotion because I was either busting queues/working tills when it was busy because I could do restricted stuff or wheeled out to deal with dickheads and bitches. Cleared up way more piss, vom, shit, spunk, needles, used tampons etc to prove we weren't "above it", too. Which was as it should be but it's hard.

Much prefer my set hours, mon - fri, questions out of hours once in a blue moon which I can actually answer, and I can go home and relax 99 times out of 100. My office closes and we all leave it at the door. With retail when you're open long hrs every day of the week and you're tied to the shop- you don't fully switch off. It's like letting someone else mind your toddler.