On How Retail Prepared Me for My Career as a Writer

Le Principe du Plaisir - Rene Magritte (1937)

A friend of mine was posting on her Instagram earlier all about the twisty, winding path she's taken in life to get where she currently is. Today, she has her own highly successful wedding photography business, but years ago, when I first met her, she was a waitress.

In her post, she talked a bit about why she was a waitress for so many years despite hating the job -- the easy money and the way food service requires you to "hustle" a bit for your supper. She also touched on how being a waitress back then prepared her in many ways for what she's doing now, as the two businesses are a lot more alike than they probably seem at surface value. 

It got me thinking back on the many years I spent in retail. Aside from an extremely brief period of less than a year where I worked as a vet tech, pretty much all of the traditional time clock jobs I've had were ordinary retail jobs that are a dime a dozen. Like my friend, I absolutely loathed what I was doing, and just thinking about doing it for the rest of my life depressed the shit out of me. I don't know that I'd be as good at working for myself (or at writing) as I am without that as part of my background, though.

I developed people skills. 

Anyone who's known me long or read much of my more personal writing knows how introverted and asocial I am in my offline life. Well, if you think I'm introverted now, you should have seen me as a young person just getting started in life and figuring out how to earn a living. I wanted a nice job stocking shelves or working in the back at some cute shop somewhere. But I had one of those pretty faces potential employers know are good for business, so hiding me in the back was out of the question as far as they concerned. I had to learn to work the sales floor instead -- my worst nightmare at the time.

The great thing about being forced to strike up conversations with strangers and deal with people, though, is it eventually becomes instinctual. If you're super introverted like me, you'll probably never learn to like it. You will get used to it, and that's a very good thing. Knowing what makes people tick and understanding how to get what you want from your interactions with them is a useful skill for absolutely anyone to have. 

I learned the value of income I could control.

My parents are baby boomers, so when they were young and trying to make their way in the world, you could work one ordinary work-a-day job and still be able to raise a family, buy a home, support yourself, and all that good stuff. I'm sure I don't have to tell anyone reading this that things were different by the time I was an adult looking to make my way in the world. Some jobs may pay that well, but most hourly jobs do not -- especially the humble kind like I've always worked. 

Working my little ass cheeks off and still barely being able to pay my bills didn't work for me in the least, so I quickly learned to work smarter instead of harder. There wasn't much available to me at the time but retail, so I became genuinely excellent at what I was doing. Eventually, I moved away from the crappy hourly positions into high-end commission-based sales jobs where you didn't necessarily have to put in a ton of hours to earn a living. If you worked harder and sold more, you made more. Simple. And, better yet, fair!

I realized I liked having that control over my income. It made it possible to keep the lights on and food on the table without basically working my entire life away. Figuring out how to earn that way prepared me to go into business for myself eventually as well.

I got to know myself as a professional.

Before I learned the ropes and hit my stride at my very first retail job, I never thought of myself as someone who'd make a decent business person. If you'd asked me what I wanted to be, I would have told you that I planned on being a housewife someday. Not because I wanted children or like to spend my time catering to others (because I didn't, and I don't). I just plain didn't want to do much with my life, and the idea of working with the general public in any capacity whatsoever terrified me. I couldn't even picture being good enough at a job to genuinely learn to like it.

Retail taught me I was wrong -- not necessarily about being able to like work because I genuinely did loathe waiting on others for a living, but about my work ethic in general. I learned that I don't have to like people to be good at offering them a service. I found out I'm a quick study and pick up new skills very quickly. I was a natural at coming up with ways to make things run more smoothly in regards to any business. And perhaps most importantly of all, I learned I'm someone people naturally trust, listen to, and gravitate toward.

I learned what I do and don't like in a job.

The world of retail is vast. Even if you stick to sales and nothing but sales, you can still cover a lot of ground and learn a lot about how you work best. In addition to learning I work well when my earnings are based on productivity instead of hours, I realized less is more when it comes to total hours worked. Like a lot of creative people, I'm not at my most productive when I'm putting in a full 40 hours a week. Peak productivity for me comes when my total work hours for the week are between 20 and 30 hours. Any more than that and I'm a mess who isn't getting much done.

I also learned that my best asset as a worker isn't my labor. It's... well... me. I wasn't successful at retail because I was a particularly tenacious salesperson or a good hustler. I was successful because I figured out how to leverage my personality, my intelligence, my sense of humor, and my looks to build a loyal clientele who frequently refused to work with anyone else. I knew how to make my customers feel good about themselves and good about being around me. I run my writing business the same way, and it works. 

At one point in my life, I genuinely thought I'd wasted my entire 20s working dead-end jobs in a go-nowhere field I didn't want to be part of. I came to realize no experience is ever a waste. To this day, I still use skills and leverage knowledge I picked up as a retail salesgirl to succeed as a writer in various ways. In other words, life just has a way of working itself out for the best, even if it seems like you're living in your own private disaster otherwise, so hang in there. It gets better, and it sure as shit starts to make more sense.