Reality

Retail the Comic:

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: An installment of Retail the Comic. by Norm Feuti.

BOSSDUDE (JOSH): Has it ever occurred to you that the mediocre effort you put into your job affects your yearly review and pay increase?

DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE (COOPER): The maximum raise an employee can get without a promotion is 3%. For me, that makes the difference between "stellar" and "mediocre" about 10 cents an hour. Has it ever occurred to you that it only costs me a dime to phone it in?

JOSH: It occurs to me that you're not worth reasoning with.]

Read the comments, they're great.

Retail workers are not fairly compensated for their time and effort. I do make more than the U.S. minimum wage, but only because I'm a keyholder, which at my job makes me the cashier, salesperson, customer service rep, loss prevention lady, maintenance chick, and stock person all at once, often while running the whole store by myself for hours at a time. Corporate slashed my hours, too, because they're worried I might hit full time and be eligible for benefits. So, I just took a huge pay decrease, despite being a pretty stellar employee.

"Wait a minute," you might be saying. "That's not a funny retail story at all! That's actually super depressing!"

Yeah, well, retail sucks. At least I'm a supervisor, so my résumé isn't totally pathetic.

"OMG, back up," you might be saying now. "Crazy blog lady is someone's boss!?"

Damn straight! And I'm the best boss ever!

(Subordinates reading this blog: shhhhh.)