A Victoria’s Secret worker is going viral on TikTok after sharing what it’s really like working in retail during the holiday season.
Ariana Ortega (@arianaaortegaa) said she’ll be working at the lingerie, clothing, and beauty store over the coming months—which means tons of customers on days like Black Friday.
However, working in retail during these times of increased foot traffic comes with several downsides. Among them are a plethora of customers demanding that workers check “the back” of the store. Then there’s the stress that comes with managing “the back”—i.e. the stock room.
“Pov: you work in retail during the holidays,” Ortega wrote in the accompanying text overlay.
In her video, Ortega showed viewers dozens of cardboard boxes, most of which were unopened and stacked atop each other. But it got worse from there.
“Trust me there’s more boxes around the corner… and more getting delivered the next day,” she said in the video’s caption. As of Sunday, her clip had amassed more than 514,400 views.
Stock rooms during the holiday season
Ortega certainly isn’t the only content creator to document the highs and lows that come with a job in retail. Last month, for instance, two Target workers showed viewers why an item that says it’s in stock might not be on the store’s shelves.
In one TikTok video, a self-identified seasonal Target worker showed viewers the store’s stock room, which contained rows and rows of boxes. This made it harder for employees to simply walk in and grab something. In a second clip, a worker who said they unloaded the truck of supplies, said he couldn’t believe the amount of merchandise that Target received during “the holiday months.”
According to USA Today, this is not uncommon around this time. Retailers, it said, are actually encouraged to stock shelves earlier for the holidays as Americans typically spend hundreds of billions of dollars during the final months of the year.
These items in the stockroom will hit the shelves eventually. Experts told the outlet that showcasing them early could persuade customers to buy products earlier. Plus, there’s more competition now between in-person stores and e-commerce websites, including Amazon.
“That’s not necessarily always great for consumers, but a lot of retailers are very conscious about, ‘What’s the next thing?’ They’re always trying to think ahead,” Neil Saunders, a retail analyst with GlobalData, a research and analytics firm, told USA Today.
@arianaaortegaa trust me theres more boxes around the corner…and more getting delivered the next day…🧍🏻♀️ #retail #retailmanager #victoriassecret ♬ original sound – knottedbymalaysia
The plights of retail work during the holidays
In the comments section of Ortega’s video, a number of self-identified retail workers said that managing an overflowing stockroom was one of the worst parts of the job.
Ortega was among them. “I’m already crashing out,” she wrote in response to one commenter who watched her clip.
Others agreed.
“I don’t miss truck days in retail,” one woman said.
“My back room looks insane right now,” another added. “I was a key holder there for a year and did all the shipments.”
“It’s the 200 boxes delivered at a time for me,” a third viewer quipped. “Like I don’t have yesterday’s 200 boxes to process.”
Others added that customers who ask workers to “check the back” only make matters worse.
“I don’t miss this at all and then customers say, ‘It says you have it,’ ma’am you go through those boxes yourself,” one user said.
“‘It says you guys have three,’” another added. “Ma’am, I ain’t digging through 60 boxes stacked in the back room not knowing which one it’s in.”
“I’m not climbing 2 stories on a wobbly ladder just for you to tell me ‘mm actually not this one,’” one Target worker commented. “REALLY HAPPENED.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Ortega via TikTok comment and to Victoria’s Secret by email.
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