What is the deal with retail employment?

Calamity said :

creativecanberran, I would think of a snappy retort but alas, I am a Gen Y and am bored of this conversation.

No, you are bored *with* this conversation.

teddyhb said :

Jim Jones said :

creative_canberran said :

Calamity said :

Gen Y bashing. How very original.

I speak from experience. In a store with roughly 30 staff, all the staff Gen-X or older had been there for years and though not that interested in the job, were interested in career progression. In one year, we had no less than a dozen Gen-Ys come in and leave within 3mths. Most of the time, it was just to try a different store, and their stated reason was boredom.

Based on this information, Gen Y sound like a pretty intelligent bunch to me.

Im with Jim Jones on this one, why would I want to stay in a job that is completely boring when there are plenty of others that have equivalent pay that may not be as boring and might actually be enjoyable. You spend so much of your life at work, why would you want to spend that time somewhere you dont want to be when there are plenty of other options out there that might be better?

I think the point is that they move between identical jobs, expecting that the boredom won’t follow them, instead of moving on to something different and more interesting. I’ve seen it a lot amongst friends and acquaintances – moving from one hospitality job to the next, or one retail job to the next, often in different cities, all the while complaining about how boring life in [insert current city of residence] is. Not all of Gen-Y exhibit this behaviour. It just seems like a lot of them.

I always assumed it was a lack of ambition.

I didn’t actually read creative_canberran’s comments as Gen-Y bashing. Saying that someone can’t stand work that is akin to mind and soul castration, surely isn’t bashing? Isn’t that just saying they’re looking for something more challenging?

I was a job-hopper in my younger days. I put myself through uni with a string of devastatingly boring jobs. The only way to keep myself from diving under a truck just to break the boredom was by changing jobs frequently. Generally, a semester = a job. This was also helped along by inflexible working hours. Every time my timetable changed, my employers were mostly uninterested in allowing me to change my hours/days. Off I’d go!

creative_canberran said :

Calamity said :

Gen Y bashing. How very original.

I speak from experience. In a store with roughly 30 staff, all the staff Gen-X or older had been there for years and though not that interested in the job, were interested in career progression. In one year, we had no less than a dozen Gen-Ys come in and leave within 3mths. Most of the time, it was just to try a different store, and their stated reason was boredom.

Had you considered the possibilty that all of the short term Gen-Xers who weren’t interested in career advancement left years ago?

creative_canberran said :

Calamity said :

Gen Y bashing. How very original.

I speak from experience. In a store with roughly 30 staff, all the staff Gen-X or older had been there for years and though not that interested in the job, were interested in career progression. In one year, we had no less than a dozen Gen-Ys come in and leave within 3mths. Most of the time, it was just to try a different store, and their stated reason was boredom.

Turn that around, what exactly did the employer do to keep them?

Jim Jones said :

creative_canberran said :

Calamity said :

Gen Y bashing. How very original.

I speak from experience. In a store with roughly 30 staff, all the staff Gen-X or older had been there for years and though not that interested in the job, were interested in career progression. In one year, we had no less than a dozen Gen-Ys come in and leave within 3mths. Most of the time, it was just to try a different store, and their stated reason was boredom.

Based on this information, Gen Y sound like a pretty intelligent bunch to me.

Im with Jim Jones on this one, why would I want to stay in a job that is completely boring when there are plenty of others that have equivalent pay that may not be as boring and might actually be enjoyable. You spend so much of your life at work, why would you want to spend that time somewhere you dont want to be when there are plenty of other options out there that might be better?

creativecanberran, I would think of a snappy retort but alas, I am a Gen Y and am bored of this conversation.

creative_canberran said :

Calamity said :

Gen Y bashing. How very original.

I speak from experience. In a store with roughly 30 staff, all the staff Gen-X or older had been there for years and though not that interested in the job, were interested in career progression. In one year, we had no less than a dozen Gen-Ys come in and leave within 3mths. Most of the time, it was just to try a different store, and their stated reason was boredom.

Based on this information, Gen Y sound like a pretty intelligent bunch to me.

Calamity said :

Gen Y bashing. How very original.

I speak from experience. In a store with roughly 30 staff, all the staff Gen-X or older had been there for years and though not that interested in the job, were interested in career progression. In one year, we had no less than a dozen Gen-Ys come in and leave within 3mths. Most of the time, it was just to try a different store, and their stated reason was boredom.

Not that the views from a GenYer who works in recruitment (and has been there for more than six months) really matters, but, I’m going to attempt to shed some light on the situation…

Firstly I would like to address the statement about people being given the boot after they turn 21 in search for younger, ‘cheaper’ workers… I’m going to address that with a question – which age bracket do you think is the HARDEST for me to find work for? Hot Tip – not the Baby Boomers and not GenX. It’s the youngest generation who are suffering. Canberra is a unique market in that it’s not quite big enough to merit plonking a companies Head Office down in, nor is it big enough to merit having Regional Managers here permanently (granted, this is improving). This results in the attention from Regional Managers being spread out between Flagship stores in Sydney and new stores in Canberra. Who gets all the attention out of those two, do you think? My point is – companies cannot afford to spend the time with the younger generations getting them up to the speed of the people who have been in the industry for 10+ years; companies will indeed spend an extra few dollars an hour on someone capable of working autonomously from the get-go.
As for the actual topic of discussion (empty shops), there’s a tonne of macro and micro-economic reasons for this (GFC, anyone?), but lets just cast our attention to Westfield. Whilst it was incredibly generous of Westfield to spend millions of dollars on a new ‘super-mall’ for Belconnen which will service the district for many years to come… the money to facilitate such an expansion has to come from somewhere…. So, where? A rent rise ought to fix it! Yes, it’s only logical to raise our prices so high we end up with some fifty empty shops… the logic fails me too, don’t worry.

Other factors with Canberra are the government; handing out fat salaries and luring workers, who fly in like a moth on speed that just saw his first lantern. Oversaturation, tightening purse strings and not to mention an Australian dollar price which makes buying overseas that little bit more appealing (sorry Mr Harvey, it’s true).

As you can see I could write about this for days, because no one person could ever explain EVERY reason why there are empty shop front and lack of staff in the nations capital…

Brilliant topic for discussion though, very good.

Oh, and Campbeln, I don’t ever want to hear you complain about a burnt coffee from a café who had to scrap their ‘fussy’ selection criteria in exchange for a ‘warm body’ 😉

Three words: Queensland Investment Corporation. Sky high rents (fixed costs) at a stable or falling income forces lower variable costs (e.g. casual wages).

Of all the responses so far, Creative Canberran came the closest to posting some considered reasons in reply to the OP. The people arguing with him/her evidently forgot to answer the OP.

There is an oversupply of retail space, clearly. Probably some other issues, like way too many shops crowded into huge malls so people can’t quickly duck in to one specific shop, unless they work near/in the mall.

I too wonder how people could afford to live in Canberra on retail wages. I remember at Brand Depot, quite a few of the sales assistants commuted in from country towns.

Retail is boring, if you’re on the front line. Anyone with intelligence or drive will quickly move on to something better paid and more interesting. Also you are often dealing with managers or owners who are pretty awful at managing people, and so off you go.

Unemployment is low currently, enhancing the prospects of people who want to move up from retail.

Creative_canberran, I’d be more open to saying that the mobility of ‘Gen-Y’ could easily be attributed to workforce casualisation, high demand and higher levels of educational attainment (and maybe a little of your point 2). Charactising an entire generation using lame marketing speak is unhelpful and ignorant. It’d be like me saying that all baby boomers are boring, debt ridden drones who are too risk-averse to leave their boring public service jobs of 25 years.

Calamity said :

Gen Y bashing. How very original.

+1

Gen Y bashing. How very original.

The need for labour is because:
1. Gen-Y can’t last in a job more than 6mths without getting bored. I know someone who worked at a local clothing shop, got bored, moved to Perth to work in the exact same chain for the same money doing the same task. Did the same moving from Sydney to here. Wonders why she has no money because constantly flying back to see family.

2. Retail work is akin to having one’s mind and soul castrated slowly and with the local anaesthetic wears off.

3. Shops tend to move people along once they reach 21, the full adult award only kicks in at 21. Between 14 and 20, they can pay much lower.

4. Shops tend to oppose corporate knowledge over time and move people along once they attain a level of competence. Competence is a threat to incompetent management.

Your post is illogical. Canberra has an oversupply of retail space (Hence the DFO vs. Brand Depot debacle) The oversupply means that there are plenty of jobs going round and that there are plenty of empty shopfronts as 1- There is an oversupply of the same kinds of shops and 2 – There is an oversupply of space to put shops in.