An ex-worker posted a viral video explaining the quotas she had to make when working in retail. She says this constant demand led to poor customer experiences and ultimately, drove her to leave the profession.
Hailey (@professionalchitchatter) has reached over 90,000 likes on her TikTok. She added a caption saying that “retail is long BORING shifts.”
To start her 1-minute video, Hailey says, “it’s absolutely ridiculous that retail stores require their hourly paid employees to meet quotas for credit cards, or sales goals, or anything of the sort.”
She then explains how the main reason she stopped working in retail was because she was being paid hourly. “I was making $8.50 an hour and I was being threatened.”
Do retail workers have credit card quotas?
Hailey says that her former manager would threaten to cut her hours if she didn’t make a certain number of sales.
“When I go into a store, if someone is being overly pushy with me it just makes me want to leave,” she explains. Hailey says this is what she feels like “big retail chains don’t understand.”
‘When you’re being pushy, people don’t like it,” she continues, “they’re not going to wanna come back because they know, oh yeah, the people in that store are super super pushy,” and won’t just let the customer shop.
Next, Hailey says that when making sales, the process wasn’t “the more sales you make the more money you make,” but solely based on “if you’re good at selling.”
She says “there was no benefit” from making sales at a retail store, “at all.”
A viewer in the comment section of Hailey’s video reached over 21,000 likes on her comment. She asked, “Also why does everyyyy store have a credit card??”
According to Americor, using credit cards in a retail store is “an easy way for stores to build loyalty, collect data, and—of course—earn revenue from consumers.”
“Retailers are so invested in turning customers into private-label cardholders, that they often offer their sales clerks cash incentives for signing people up,” the site continues.
Using an in-store credit card is also a way to encourage customers into spending more money at the store, Americor states. They say that more than “60 percent of consumers say that they shop more often with retailers with whom they have a store card, and they’re also more receptive to communication about events and promotions by that retailer.”
Another user in Hailey’s comment section wrote, “I just started working at Ulta and they want me to push that credit card so bad to every customer. So damn greedy.”
@professionalchitchatter also retail is long BORING shifts
♬ original sound – Hailey<3
“This ulta employee was basically forcing me to sign up for a credit card & as a retail worker I get it, but I could never because it just makes the customer so uncomfortable,” another added.
The Daily Dot reached out to request a comment from Hailey via the TikTok comment section and email.
