To think retail and fast food jobs teach you more life skills than school ever did?

[FrontTillPHD]

People love to look down on retail, hospitality or fast food work, like it’s something you “grow out of” or leave behind once you get a “real job.” But honestly I think those jobs teach you resilience.

You learn how to stay calm under pressure, how to handle difficult people, how to read the room, how to speak clearly and how to meet people’s needs, fast. You don’t get that from sitting in a classroom or even from some fancy office job where you don’t deal with the public.

If you’ve done any customer-facing job, you know. There’s a toughness, a people-sense and a work ethic that gets built in, and it stays with you.

AIBU to think we don’t give enough credit to how much you grow in those kinds of jobs?

Schools aren't there to teach life skills though. They teach academic knowledge.

Though I agree that having a job is very good for young people and teaches them important workplace skills.

I think people give a lot of credit to those sorts of jobs and the skills you gain from them, which is why employers rate them so highly when looking for your next role.

I dont think the main purpose school is to teach those skills anyway.

I dont think people would 'grow out of them' if they paid more, or there were more options for career development. A lot of people want to do different work they find more interesting or financially rewarding or easier, or more social hours but it doesnt mean they dont value what they learned.

School isn’t for life skills, parents should be teaching you life skills so if you are lacking not the schools fault.

Sure you grow in those kind of jobs.

That said I've done fast food, retail and 'fancy'🤔office jobs - also manual work, farm work, voluntary work and have worked for myself. I learned different things about how to stay calm under pressure, how to handle difficult people, how to read the room, how to speak clearly and how to meet people’s needs in all those environments.

I also think school teaches you those things in sport and in dealing with other pupils.

With the exception of farm work I would say none were better at instilling toughness, resilience or work ethic than the others. That was punishing.

I think that's a ridiculous statement - they teach you different things. Both are valuable.

yabu to phrase it how you have - it shouldn’t be schools place to teach you some of those things. Parents should be doing a lot more. And calling office jobs fancy is just nasty and unnecessary. And you might not have given enough credit to people doing those jobs but that’s yourself not everyone

You are being unreasonable oinly becaues I intrinsically disagree with you that people don't value or appreciate the skills that retail/hospitality deliver. If I am looking at the CV of a young person who has done a job like this, they immeidately go much higher up the pile. Simiolarly, most of us are fully aware that learning skills like customer service, multi tasking, problem solving are not necessarily skills you learn at school and that jobs like this are great places to do so.

it IS true that there are people who think that remaining in a retail/hospitality job (particularly at a fairly "low" level) is a career that is a bit more simplistic or beneath them. But that's not relevant to your question whichis about the skils they're learning. nAnd I think we can all agree that a good server or fat food worker can transform the experienmce. It's a pity that few people can afford to do a job like this full time and actually pay the bills.

YANBU.

Schools are very overrated when it comes to teaching kids anything particularly useful tbh aside from niche subjects for the kids destined for academia.

We're not all destined for academia. The whole system needs overhauling. A lot of kids could be far more suitably taught than how they are currently.

I've always had the idle thought that (as far as possible obviously) people should have to work in some sort of retail/waitressing/dealing with people job for a while...1)as it makes you a much nicer person to people doing those jobs and 2) teaches you so much about people...

You cannot do customer facing roles without a decent education, will need to speak correctly, read, basic maths, IT skills, reasoning.

All jobs bring their challenges and what is a "customer facing role?" even in the office or workshop, your follow work colleagues are, in many respects, your customers too.

I agree with all the comments (though the vote doesn't seem to reflect the same).
YABU with your title and the way you've phrased your OP.

I completely agree with learning resilience and people skills through doing those jobs, but they are different skills, to add to what you have learnt / are learning at school.
They make you much more employable later in life than those who have never done anything like that, by adding to your skillset.

I honestly think this misses the point of school. It's about literacy and numeracy. Ideally, about how to think/analyse, how to find different information. There's an element of reaching a bare minimum understanding of cultural and societal issues that have shaped our countries, environments, processes (from history to English), it's about learning the basics of science and why and how things work that is the foundation of any futre learning you might do whether that's formally or informally.

Both are valuable but they teach very different things. I worked in retail and hospitality when I was younger and the experiences were great for my confidence. School wouldn’t have taught me that.

My DS finished college this summer and wanted a year off to work out his next steps and just to have a break from study. He's been doing a retail job since August and it has done wonders for him - he's so much more mature and confident, and is dealing with all sorts of people and situations, and working with people much older than him (he's very much the baby of the team but he gets on with them all and has a 'work mum' 😆). He doesn't want to do it long-term but I'm really glad he's doing it for now and it will definitely give him skills for life.

I have a relation who worked all her life in retail. I've never known anyone so rude to shop workers or waiting staff. It's almost like she's had enough of dealing with the public and wants to get her own back. I've had to apologise to people on several occasions after she's been rude.

Everyone should have to work in a customer facing role for at least 12 months at a time of their working lives.

Why?

Because if you are going to end up managing people, or making decisions about terms and conditions, or rotas, or pay scale, or employment rights, etc etc, you will do a better job of it if you have experienced living it.

I think that all young people should work in retail or hospitality for a time.

I worked in the hospitality industry from my early 20's until only a few years ago (I am 55 now). I loved it, met lots of terrible people but also lots of lovely people and a few world famous people. Hard work but a fun industry.

I would be bored out of my mind in an office job.

I agree that those jobs are incredibly useful and have often said that some sort of public facing job should be the new "national service".

But I am laughing at the idea of office jobs being "fancy" with minimal customer interaction. I got more grief from the public in my office job than I ever did working retail, and from everything I've heard call centers etc are worse again.

I worked in at least 7 different part time retail jobs between ages 16-21 - none of them came close in terms of abuse from my first full time "office" job doing admin for the housing department of my local council.

Not to mention the time spent working as a librarian, which everyone thinks of as a cushty, soft spoken relaxed job but included constantly telling men to stop watching porn, stopping homeless people from taking drugs in the toilets and on my very first day got told to "shove my archives up my arse" when I had the temerity to explain newspaper articles weren't available online.

In my own experience, YABU. I variously worked in a library, a branch of Boots and a pub when I was a student. I mean... it improved my confidence and people skills a bit. School taught me plenty. 30 years of being a teacher have also required far, far more resilience, toughness, reading the room, working under pressure, meeting people's needs fast etc than working in the pub or the shop. In fact, one week in a difficult school would.

Anyway, jobs aren't split into a binary of 'low-paid, customer-facing jobs' and 'fancy office jobs'. Lots of different jobs can teach you lots of skills. I found retail unbelievably tedious. It's ridiculous to suggest everyone should have to do it.

I don't think retail jobs teach you more than school. I think they provide the opportunity to learn and practice different skills than you'll learn at school. But I agree with what you say about resilience.

I always had Saturday and holiday jobs since school days. I did shop work, cafe work, factory work and bar work. It meant that when I started my first "proper job" after graduating it didn't come as too much of a shock. Indeed as it was in an office and I could sit down it was a lot less tiring! A lot of our new junior staff seem really overwhelmed if they haven't worked in employment before, it's a completely different experience to academia. The ones that have bar/retail jobs on their CVs seem to hit the ground running more easily and are less likely to shy away from stuff like answering the phone which seems to horrify many young people today.

Interesting. DS 2 is in his third year of Mchem and applying for an internship. He’s just had a successful interview where the interviewer spent half the time asking him about his ongoing four years at Papa John’s! Similarly DS1 was successful in a competitive grad scheme when much was made of his four years at JD Sports and experience as a football referee.

I’m very grateful that schools where I live (Canada) teach both - my elementary school aged son is literally being taught Life Skills as a subject at the moment. In high school it’s a condition in order to graduate that students complete a number of volunteering hours, as well as being taught Careers as a subject including exploring possible career paths, how to write a resume etc. I really wish that had been available to me. Even at boarding school, the sum total of career advice offered seemed to be access to a bunch of college and university prospectuses.

Yes, of course. Lots of reasons:

1. A young person who does a job likes this is demonstrating drive, responsibility, accountability, good work ethic etc from a relatively young age (or an actual young age in many cases)
2. If they were able to STAY in these jobs for a while, there are a bunch of skills that I will assume they've mastered - basic customer service, the rudiments of using custom-software etc. If I'm lucky, they may have advanced further and learnt skills like problem solving, multi tasking, de-escalation etc. Plus it demonstrates that they most likely can get on with bosses, perform tasks when demonstrated, are committed, have basic timekeeping etc.
3. Depending on WHERE they worked, they may well have received additional training and support that will embed the above. Big chains are often particularly good at this. Staff at these sort of chaiins may also have learnt the basics of all kinds of other things that might not be essential for their role in my organisation, but having that background adn base knowledge is not a bad thing. Anything from safeguarding, health and safety, to basic electronics or use of equipment to supporting/identifying/responding to people with additional needs etc.
4. They've learnt "soft skills" linked to working in a larger organsation, team or even in the corporate world and/or a a starter-level understanding of how these organisations work.