December 7, 2016 • 61 mins
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from housetop works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and we're talking about women in retail
today because as we're recording this podcast, the holiday season
(00:24):
is upon us, which means 'tis the season for shop
until you dropping? Yeah? I can't. I'm terrified, Kristen. I
can't go into stores normally because it stresses me out
so much. Um. And by that, I just mean, like,
you know, the peak time of day when there's a
million people at the mall, I just can't do it.
(00:44):
I can go early in the morning, I can go
right before close, but if there's a million people, I
can't do it. Um. And Christmas season, holiday season, gift
giving season, and by that I mean obsessive shopping season.
It's all too much. People are all over the place,
they're congregating in the stores, they're not walking fast enough,
(01:06):
They're picking up the merchandise and just like throwing it
or something. I don't know what happens, but basically what
I'm saying is, Uh, we don't pay our retail workers
enough for them to deal with the horror that is
us as consumers during the holiday season. All right, everybody's
shopping for those bargains. You've got Black Friday deals. But imagine, Caroline,
(01:28):
all of the things that annoy both of us about
holiday shopping, the traffic, the people, the mess, the stress
that beatles. Christmas song playing over and over again, simply
having a wonderful Christmas time. It doesn't stop from Thanksgiving
to Christmas Eve. Uh. It's okay one time, um, but
(01:52):
imagine having to do that avery day. Um. And if
you are a part time retail worker, full time retail worker,
already things are stressful, and then the holidays just ramp
it up. And of course every year seasonal retail workers
(02:14):
are hired. On this year in the US alone, there
are seven hundred thousand projected seasonal workers who will be hired. Um.
Although some of that is transitioning from traditional storefront to
warehouse work because of people like me who prefer Amazon
(02:34):
Prime to the mall. Also supporting local independent artisans and
makers whenever I can, of course, but all of this
just exacerbates these year round issues. Rude customers who are
yelling at you as if things are your fault when
(02:54):
you are the floor walker. Um. Messy customers, people again
throwing merchandise. It seems like, I mean, you and I
Kristen have talked about the horror that is H and
M on like a Saturday. It gets even worse around
the holidays. UM and the awkwardness of having to push
a stores credit card on customers. You don't like it, customers,
(03:17):
neither does the person behind the register. And that was
something I hadn't thought about until we ended up on
a Reddit thread asking retail workers like, what don't we
know what's happening behind the scenes? And the pushing the
store credit card was something that came up a lot
because some stores allah the whole Wells Fargo fiasco of
(03:40):
people really pushing those credit cards, managers setting quotas that
they have to hit and really making them as uncomfortable
as we are. And and the twisted thing about that
is too. A lot of times the employees who are
being pressed to push these credit cards on us are
(04:00):
not making very much money to begin with, you know, um,
and retail represents such a massive sector of jobs. Oh yeah,
fifteen million people work retail jobs in the United States alone,
and more than half about fifty of them are women
(04:22):
and I didn't realize this, but cashiers and retail salespeople. Uh,
those are the two largest occupations in this country according
to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Uh, and that equates
to about seven point eight million people. And those seven
point eight million people are making around twenty two thousand
(04:43):
a year median and one in three or part time,
and a lot of those are also working nights and weekends. Um.
And you see a lot of disparities that we're going
to get into deeper into the podcast. But in terms
of transitioning from part time to full time and then
(05:03):
in management, it's really really tough, especially if you are
a woman, and even more especially if you are a
woman of color. So if you look at Walmart alone,
women make up about fifty of their workforce, but a
study from the think tank Demos found that only twenty
(05:24):
nine percent were promoted to store manager over a ten
year period. So tail is all this time. You definitely
see a disproportionate number of fellas and management supervisory and
ownership roles, and more of that of women in the
workforce who are in the lower paying cash sheer jobs
(05:47):
and even just the salesperson jobs. Yeah, and this kind
of reminds me of the episode we did on waitresses
women working in restaurant server positions. But by that I
mean the situation is not great in terms of working
conditions and also compensation. About one point three million women
in retail live at or near the poverty line, and
(06:10):
one in five are the soul breadwinners for their family. Also,
one in five women who work retail want more hours.
They want to be able to work more make more money,
but they can't get them um. For a variety of reasons,
employers might want to maintain just a part time workforce.
They don't want to pay you full time um. But
(06:31):
also there's the issue that of retail workers receive their
schedules a week or less in advance, which that's great
for the employer they can remit, maintain like a flexible
schedule and fit people in where they need to. Horrifying
though for the workers who are actually trying to have
a life and plan things like childcare, elder care, doctor's appointments,
(06:53):
their own holiday shopping, just so many other things that
can really put your life into a tail spin if
you can't even play and like a couple of days
in advance, and I would argue that in terms of
not giving people more hours, not having more full time
employees is maybe to do with not wanting to pay benefits,
(07:17):
you know, because once you get to the full time
status then it costs employers more. And there's a whole
other conversation that we could have that we don't have
time to have in this podcast about changes the Obama
administration made lowering the threshold for employees to have to
(07:37):
be paid over time, for employees to have to start
giving paid sick leave and vacation, things that really, um,
I believe that all workers should be afforded. But when
you look too at a lot of these one in
five women who are part time and want more hours,
they're working like thirty one hours. So because when you
(08:01):
might hear part time and think, oh, it's what like
fifteen hours a week, twenty hours a week, No, it's
almost full time but not quite, just to keep that
overhead low. And of course, not surprisingly, there is a
wage gap issue as well. Uh, full time retail sales
women earn about sixty eight cents to every dollar a
(08:22):
man in the same position earns. And to put that
in perspective, that woman would need to work in extra
six months to match that man's annual income. Yeah, and
these are apples to apples jobs. People were not talking
about a cashier making sixties eight cents to a mail
manager's dollar. This is the same across the board. And
(08:45):
this reminds me of our conversation about the gender wage
gap in custodial work, where in these lower paying jobs
we often see that the wage gap why ends um,
which seems counterintuitive, but this is another example of that
(09:05):
absolutely being the case. And surprise, no surprise, retail has
never been particularly kind to women, even though we think
of it as a very feminized and woman friendly type
of job. Well, now it's very feminized. But again, to
(09:26):
hearken back to Kristen, would you say most of our episodes, uh,
so many of them uh teaching? Uh? What else? Librarianship?
These things all started out employing men folk, uh, and
then started employing women because they were cheaper secretarial work. Yes,
(09:47):
So a little tidbit that I I didn't know. Um shocking.
I'm not fully aware of the entire history of retail establishments,
but I am now. Um, but we're gonna be so
fun at holiday parties by now, I can't wait till Yeah,
I'm just gonna guilt everybody at Thanksgiving. The world's first
department store opened in seventeen nineties six. It was called
(10:12):
Harding Howl and Companies, Grand Fashionable Magazine. Uh. And that
was in London, and it had four departments. Uh. Furs
and fans really all the important food groups, right, firs
and fans. Haberdashery. I'm sorry, I literally don't know how
to say that word without saying it like that, jewelry
and clocks and millinery. Yeah, I like that they have
(10:35):
millinery and haberdashery separate because I guess you know, folks
were wearing so many hats even you wouldn't want men
and women in the same space. You cannot have the
mixing of hats up promiscuous group of hats. So millinery,
I would imagine, would be safe for the ladies go
in and look at all their their BIMs and bobs
(10:57):
and ribbons and what what's nuts and things with the others. Yes,
and for the men folk to be able to safely
go over and smoke their cigars and look at their
their fedoras. Um. And like you said, the first retail clerks,
we're guys. Uh, and these were men who operated and
(11:19):
often slept in their stores. These were small stores, and
really there was no major need to hire women because
fathers would essentially apprentice their sons. It was the family business. Yeah.
It kind of reminded me if anyone out there has
watched Deadwood of the hardware Store, that the two main
(11:40):
guys open in Deadwood because they they basically sleep there.
They run this hardware store and they live there. It's
their whole life. Their whole existence is around this hardware store,
minus some drama with some prostitutes. Now, Caroline, this reminds
me also of the wild West, the Frontier, no prostitutes.
(12:02):
Though this makes me think of Nelly Olsen in Little
House in the Prairie because her family, if y'all remember,
they owned Olsen's Mercantile, which was the general store, and
she was such a snob and so mean because she
had access to all the penny candies and the ribbons.
And I want to say that they also slept above
(12:25):
the general store, which I just thought was really cool.
But this was also in the phase where my dream
car was a camper, so go figure. Um. But Nellie
would not have been the person to have run the store.
Her dad would have passed it down to her brother.
And you want to know what changed everything, The same
thing that changed everything for white women in employment outside
(12:52):
the home and outside the domestic service in the United States,
the Civil War. Really, wars always get women out of
the house and into new jobs, and retail is one
of those. Yeah, there was a man drain, and I
just picture men getting stuck in a drain, the old
man drain. It happens. There's the World War One man drain,
(13:13):
the World War two man drain. But really, without man drains,
would we have women's gains as a rhyme? Oh, put
that on a poster And was it not though considered
sort of dirty and scandalous for women to be behind
the counter working with money and making these transactions. Yeah,
I mean this was This was one of the first
(13:34):
times that female labor was really put on public display.
So she would have been coming into contact with not
only other women, but also with other men. And so
if we hop back to London, where a lot of
stuff is going on. Initially, you have this rising middle
class in the Victorian era, and apartment stores are popping
(13:58):
up and it's deemed inappropriate for for women to be clerks.
Snobs called them counterhoppers, but there were some more progressive
women who were like, uh, ladies need employment. Working class
women need to be able to make a wage. And
(14:20):
in eighteen fifty nine there was this group of women
in London's West Side called the Ladies of Langham Place
who got together at a coffee house, which, first of all,
if y'all have listened to our episode on gender Coffee
and Barisa's, you know that that's a daring move to
begin with, because coffee houses were for fellas. But these
(14:42):
ladies were like, no, y'all, we're going to meet here too,
and they got together to figure out how to improve
employment options for women, and they really inspired what's considered
the shopgirl revolution. Yeah, and you have one of these
Ladies of Langham Place, Jesse Boucherette, who called for schools
to be founded to train girls to become shop assistant.
(15:04):
She said, why should bearded men be employed to sell
ribbon lace and handkerchiefs, which to me just echoes our
advertising Women in Advertising episode where women are arguing we
need more women in advertising because women can speak to
other women, they know what women want. So therefore we
need to get women in here, and then there ended
(15:25):
up being this like pink ghettoization of the products that
women were hawking. And to me, this kind of reads
like this as well, because it's sort of a preview
of actually getting more women into these sales lady or
shop girl roles. Yeah, and we learned a lot of
this info about the shop girl revolution in London from
(15:46):
this fantastic multipart BBC series that's also starts out recounting
diary entries from well healed women who could afford to
go to stores and go buy their ribbon lace and
handkerchiefs from the bearded men, and how dismissed they often
were by the mail clerks and what a drag it
(16:09):
often was, and shopping was really not an enjoyable process
of all these somber men working as clerks, right, And
that was another argument to get women working as clerks,
because you know, ladies like ladies, right, Ladies can probably
sell better too, Ladies. Are we not kind of touching
(16:30):
on emotional labor here? Sure? Codyling being kind when you
don't care. There is so much emotional labor that goes
into retail work, and it's expected. If you aren't putting
forth the emotional labor effort, you're considered rude or a
bad employee. Well, because well before the ladies of langm
(16:51):
Place got together at ye oldie Starbucks, the guy that
the department store magnate and his name is a escaping
me right now, um had already come up with the
philosophy of the customer always being right. So that was
already ingrained. And that also establishes this class system that
(17:12):
you have behind the counter and in front of it.
And because of that class and the fact that these
women needed those jobs, yes, from eighteen fifty we do
see women making the first inroads into retail, although some
stores hired more than others. But what was driving a
(17:33):
lot of that for the male shop owners who were
hiring them was that there was a large supply of them,
and they came cheap, like those penny candies. They came
as cheap as a penny candy. But it's the same
kind of thing that we do see with the shift
to secretarial work, where it's like, well, you know, the
women are cheaper. Same thing with librarianship, Well the women
(17:57):
are cheaper. And here we're still talking about white women though. True, true,
And so if you look at ninety about one in
fifty sales people were women by though that was one
in sixteen. Um. But things were not rosy. It wasn't
like there was some like lady Utopia behind the counter
(18:19):
in these in these shops, I know, if only it
were all just fun makeover montages. Everybody dabbing each other's
faces with this huge, comically large like powder poopy, you know,
trying on different coursets and fainting into each other's arms. Um.
And for listeners who have have or are are right
(18:42):
now working in retail, hell, can you imagine not only
having that job but also having that job responsible for
your housing? So and this makes me think of one
of my best friends who for a very long time
worked at American Apparel, And yeah, she's got some stories
(19:04):
to tell. Um. And if if she also had to
work at American Apparel and then turn around and go
home to the American Apparel dormitories where I mean doub
cherry would probably be laying in wait. Uh, but that's
kind of the situation. So especially for a lot of
(19:27):
these stores um in Britain that we're popping up at
the time, and these shop girls who were moving into
the big city. They required women to quote unquote live
in or live in accommodations designated by the employer, which
is exactly what we were talking about a little while
ago on our episode about women flight attendants. The first
(19:51):
female flight attendants had to live in stewardess dormitories. And
that major league paternalistic move was also really money grubbing
on the part of the shop owners. Oh yeah, because
while they did require the women to live in these dorms,
they also required them to pay rent, but the rent
(20:11):
was just taken out of their paycheck, which is that
is a dirty move. Yeah, so you're already hiring cheaper
labor than men. And we should also mention that another
motivation for keeping these women sequestered in these highly regulated
dorms was to manage morality. Yeah. But the thing is,
(20:33):
when you have these workers who are making such paltry
sums of money, it drove many of them too in
order to survive into sex work, and so you start
to see this association. It was already such a scandalous
thing to have women needing to work work outside home,
and no less, in a job that required them to
(20:53):
interact with all sorts of people. Um. But that's when
you really see these strong association between the scandal of
having women work as uh, shop ladies or shop girls
and assuming that they're all sex workers or prostitutes. Well,
because a lot of them had to turn to sex
(21:14):
work to actually make ends meet they didn't make enough money.
I mean, this was a very real fact of shop
work at this time. And in that BBC series which
will link to in the source posts for this episode
on stuff Mom Never Told You dot com because it's
on YouTube and you should check it out. It's fascinating. Uh.
(21:34):
The host goes into one of these very old shops
and goes upstairs where the shop girls would possibly meet
customers to make some extra cash selling their bodies. Um.
And if we hop back to the US, the thing
(21:56):
is as deplorable as these situations kind of work. And
I'm not sure how often women in retail at this
time in the US we're also turning to sex work.
I can't imagine that that none of them we're doing it,
but it's still these jobs still tended to pay more
than domestic labor and manufacturing work, which if you are
(22:20):
a working class woman, those are really the only options
employment options that you've got, so kind of like secretarial work.
While they were being undervalued and underpaid and in some
case outright abuse. It's like, well, but at least it's
not at least we're not in a factory. At least
we're not in a factory. But that doesn't mean the
(22:41):
work was not punishing. You worked incredibly long hours, think
six am to nine pm. You'd be stocking things, tidying
up and cleaning, having to deal with the emotional labor
aspect of customer service. And you better not sit down.
Oh yeah, no sitting allowed. I mean the conditions were
(23:04):
so physically punishing that they prompted Nellie Bligh style exposes
on the harsh working conditions. For instance, there was one
published called Death and Disease behind the Counter. The physical
ailments that women in retail often developed became nicknamed the
standing evil because they tended to develop anemia and consumption.
(23:30):
There was even this thing called the bustle stick, which
was invented at one point that would allow women to
just sort of lean back and and perch on it.
So they're not sitting necessarily, but they're not quite standing.
They can take a break for a second. But unfortunately
the bustle stick never caught on. Yeah, I think you
(23:51):
can get something like that now for camping. So when
you're on the trail hiking up a mountain, you know,
you don't have to necessarily lie down or sit down.
You can sort of just lean and perch. I am
heading straight to Ori e I and asking you have
a bustle Who are the bustle sticks women? Um? Well, yeah,
(24:13):
I mean it was considered in poor taste to be
sitting down. And that wasn't just a directive coming from
the higher ups in the department store. Customers would complain. Uh,
they thought it was like a sign of laziness and
disrespect if they saw any of these shop girls sitting down.
Oh yeah, I mean it's heaped in, steeped in classism. Uh.
(24:34):
And Macy's probably a familiar name to a lot of listeners.
Nineteenth century Macy's was real intense. Although on the one hand,
they did promote a lot of the first female supervisors
Lady Go Macie's. But Macy's also did not allow sitting
and considered what they called unnecessary conversations grounds for firing. Yeah,
(25:00):
I mean, like the animal a short leash. Don't be
too chatty, as one boss told me when I was
right out of college. Um, and it is funny, you know.
We in our waitressing episode, we kicked it off by
asking women who are in the service industry, do you
prefer to be called waiters, waitresses, servers, what? Because what
(25:22):
you call yourself and what other people call you it
does matter. Um And American stores did originally adopt the
British term shop girls, but the serious employees preferred sales ladies. Right.
They didn't even want to be called saleswomen. They want
to be called sales ladies because again, class a lady
(25:42):
is someone who I mean that denotes a higher class. Yeah,
but reading this, I was like, oh, I call them
sales ladies, not ironically or or anything. I just called.
I refer to them as sales ladies. Well, ye, oldise
sales ladies will be happy to hear them. But you
know I don't call like, if I see a woman
who's about my age, like working at best buy or
(26:05):
or or a J Crew or something, I don't think
of her as a sales lady. I tend to think
of sales ladies as as the women who were in
their fifties, sixties, seventies. Maybe they're at Talbot, the ones
who do bra measurements. Yeah, sales ladies, Yeah, exactly. My
mother was a sales lady. She worked at Coldwater Creek
part time to supplement her flight attendant income slash have
(26:27):
something to do on her off time, and uh, I
think she would qualify as a sales lady. She's also
the reason that I make sure to always remove my
clothes from the dressing room when I am done trying
them on, because if you want to hear a bunch
of women complain about you be the person who leaves
(26:48):
your clothes in the dressing room, you will be disliked intensely. Well.
And speaking of what retail sales people prefer to be called,
let's not forget that they also have names, as we
all do. That was something on the Reddit thread where
especially if someone is wearing a name tag, uh, they're like,
(27:10):
I'm wearing a name tag for a reason. You can
you can call me by my name, and we really
appreciate it if you, Yeah, if you remember our names.
And I have a horrible short term memory, and often
in stores like a maid Well where I go too often,
only when the sale is on sale, but still it's
too often. Um, and you know, whenever you go to
(27:32):
try something on the person says, oh, okay, I'm Blenda,
I immediately forget Belenda's name. I know, and immediately, but
after this episode, I'm going to remember Belenda. You're just
everyone's gonna become Blenda now. But in retail workers listening,
let me know, am I just like overblowing this because
(27:53):
it's got to feel nice and humanizing for people to
remember your name when you tell it to them. So
just another thing that we can do in addition to
keeping our dressing rooms tidy when we're leaving. But back
to our history. Women at this time, even though they
(28:16):
might have been sales ladies, they might have been a
bit more ambitious and cared about their job and had
every intention of working in it for as long as
they could. They were often considered by employers and kind
of just across the industry to be dead end workers
because men were always hired as clerks with the implicit
(28:39):
understanding that they were working their way up a ladder
and sort of an unofficial apprenticeship, but women were just
seen as almost like seasonal workers. Today the way that
we use them during the holidays, like, well, it just
kind of churned through them. Um. No one, No one
considered an employment ladder for women at the time. I
(29:00):
think the one exception that we could cite, or one
of the exceptions that we could site, would be buyers.
A lot of women did start out as shop girls,
and we're able to work. When I say a lot,
I don't actually literally mean a lot. I mean some
worked their way up to being buyers where they would
deal with the manufacturers and the designers to get new
(29:21):
styles in. And a lot of that goes back to
to the attitude that we cited earlier of like don't
women know women better? Um? And so rather than having uh,
these fuddy duddy men who just take what the manufacturers make,
why don't we get women in here who know how
women want to address themselves and have them uh set
(29:42):
the tone for what the fashions will be in the stores.
And so, uh you started to see schools actually having
programs for fashion buying, and of course that was that
was an arc that wasn't all at once. It's not
like they hired a bunch of women and were like
and now we're going to to kate you at college
for this exact thing, right, because more often than not,
(30:06):
even if a gal worked to swell sixteen hour day,
she would likelier be fired than rewarded for fear of
her eventually demanding a higher salary. Women were expendable. There
are plenty of them. They're cheap. Just bring them in
and toss them out. So we should remake the expendables, uh,
(30:26):
and have it just be shop girls nine century British
shop girls. I'd watch it as long as Sylvester Stallone
is not in it. Um. But here, here's a thing
that is absent one from our conversation so far, women
of color. That's because the history of black sales ladies
(30:48):
was largely non existent pre civil rights. And we're going
to talk about that when we come right back from
a quick break. So we mentioned the Civil War man
(31:12):
drain earlier. You know, men getting caught in the drain,
like so much hair that you've got to remove. Oh
no wait, sorry, they're going off to war and women
are filling their places. Same thing happened with World War One.
So women are becoming more visible as shop girls as
retail workers around this time. But that's still mainly applied
(31:34):
to white women. Black women who were hired by these
retails stores still were relegated to jobs that revolved around
the kitchen, the bathroom, service areas until about the nineteen sixties. Yeah,
I mean it wasn't mainly white women. It was exclusively
white women. And we learned about this in a book
(31:55):
by Jan Whittaker called Service and Style, How the American
Department Store, Fat Suh and the middle Class, And she
wrote about how before the nineteen sixties, the most visible
job for an African American woman would have been as
an elevator operator, until you have department store, some department
(32:17):
stores swapping them out for sexier white women. So even
elevator operator is too visible. And you do see organizing
and protesting around this time, especially in the nineteen thirties
in black neighborhoods. The n a c P, for instance,
(32:38):
initiated a don't buy where you can't work protest that
we're focused on black neighborhoods where you have stores owned
by white people that wouldn't hire Black people. And so
you know, these customers were saying, no, this is not right.
You're you're going to take our money, but you won't
(32:58):
hire us. No, and women were very instrumental in organizing
these protests. Now, unfortunately, partly because they were so concentrated
in predominantly black areas of town, they were largely ineffective
in initially instigating industry wide change. World War two, however,
(33:22):
did afford some black people more sales floor jobs, but
as long as their skin was light enough. This goes
back to the paper bag test. Yeah, you had to
pass the paper bag test and have light enough skin
that it wouldn't potentially make white customers uncomfortable. Um. And
(33:44):
there were arguments though, around and after World War Two, that, well,
why would white people be uncomfortable with black people in
retail jobs? White people are already accustomed to black people
serving them and cleaning up after them in their homes.
We why wouldn't we hire them as as retail workers.
But to put some numbers around that benevolent racism, shall
(34:07):
we call it? A nine New York retail customer survey
found that most white people were fine with black salespeople
if they had like enough skin, but of them did
not want them touching clothing, lingerie, or food. So no,
(34:30):
we're actually not We're not fine with that UM and
the year before New York City report identified one black
saleswoman among all the stores on Fifth Avenue. Yeah, and
during this time in the forties, most of those retail
job gains for black people were again in stock rooms.
(34:52):
As long as they weren't visible, then okay, maybe we
will hire you. UM. Store owners were genuine We worried
that having black employees be visible would mean it would
scare off white customers, right, because more black employees meant
that it would be a safer space for black customers
(35:15):
to come in UM, and that would trigger all of
white customers racism, so they would go to Gimbals instead
of Macy's UM. And this also brings up another conversation
that we could have about the horrendous mistreatment of black
(35:35):
customers and retail UM who would go into wide establishments
and be treated like second class citizens. But well, I
mean that, how is that different from now with black
customers being followed around stores? Very true? So you you
know you have black customers going to patronizing uh, black
(35:58):
owned businesses because literally those were the only safe spaces
for them to shop. Now, once we get to the
late nineteen fifties and early sixties with the civil rights movement,
we do see protests ramping up against racist hiring practices,
targeting the largest department stores. UM. And and you do
(36:20):
start to see the dial moving a little bit. In
nineteen eight of the New York State Commission against Discrimination
kind of patted itself on the back because it tallied
up a grand total of one hundred black retail sales
people and two in retail management in the city. UM. Now,
I don't have the number of one hundred and two
(36:42):
out of how many. I mean, it still has to
be a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage. And so you know,
a lot of these protests and boycotts that are happening,
UM did open up some jobs. They did have an effect,
but a a lot of the jobs that were opened up,
we're in more failing stores, stores that weren't seeing as
(37:05):
much customer traffic anyway, UM or they were not getting hired.
Uh to work with high priced home furnishings and fashion,
which also was a struggle for women in general. Earlier
in our history when women struggled to get jobs with furniture,
it was it was considered so dirty and inappropriate for
(37:27):
women to work with furniture. It's big and heavy and dusty,
and the same ended up applying to black people in general.
But certainly not for a paternalistic reason. No, because these
are high ticket items that we want to move to
our wealthier customers, and wealthier customers certainly can't be waited
on by our black salespeople. Um. But in the background, too,
(37:51):
we have to acknowledge the crucial importance of lunch counter
desegregation that was going on because a lot of these
were in department store wars. So you have this combination
of civil rights protests and pocketbook boycott's and lunch counter desegregation, um.
That is opening the space up slowly but surely. And
(38:14):
no surprise, White owned stores in the South were the
most resistant because desegregation. So, for instance, I don't have
the exact year, but it wasn't until well into the
nineteen sixties that a woman named Dorothea Davis became Charlotte,
North Carolina, a relatively large city, Charlotte's first first black
(38:39):
saleswoman in a not black owned store. Yeah, and I
mean the retail industry still has not done right by
most of its black and Latina and Latino workers in particular,
and We're going to talk about that when we come
right back from a quick break. So, with everything we've
(39:09):
talked about at this point in terms of the racism
that's been deeply embedded in retail from the get go,
it's shouldn't be much of a surprise that it isn't
really an equitable haven for people of color today, because,
like you mentioned, if you're simply a customer, you have
(39:29):
to deal with racism so often in the form of
racial profiling that we have. We can we can't not
have a conversation on race and retail without talking about
customer profiling. Oh yeah, and some of our biggest stores
have been implicated in cases of racial profiling. Macy's, Sophora, Zara, Barney's, CVS,
(39:53):
Best Buy, Ross, Walgreen's, Hollister, Um, all of these stores
have gotten in trouble for if is a racial profiling
and not to mention two issues of black people being
killed outright. Um. A lot of this was highlighted in
a piece in the International Business Times by Catherine Dunn,
(40:16):
who reported that between and two thousand two, at least
six shoppers died, five of them people of color, and
confrontations with off duty police officers employed as security guards
at Dillard's department stores in three states. At Dillard's alone,
just at Dillard's. Well, things are a great at Walmart either.
(40:38):
In ten John Crawford the third was shot at an
Ohio Walmart by security guards just because he picked up
a BB gun. Yeah, I mean, well he was killed.
He was shot and killed because he just, yeah, he
just picked up a gun and the security guard assumed
that he was armed and dangerous. Meanwhile, we had this
(41:00):
stories a couple of years ago of all of those
white militants walking into Walmart's wearing guns and and they
weren't killed. Well, it's because America doesn't hate white people.
And these are just a handful of the instances of
not just discrimination but outright violence that people of color,
Black people in particular, often face as customers in retail stores.
(41:25):
And Gallop Pole found that of black respondents felt they've
been treated unfairly in stores because of their skin color.
And honestly, that sounds low to me. And it doesn't
get much better in terms of discrimination when we hop
behind the counter. Because we've already talked about the gendered
(41:48):
siloing of low income jobs in retail. Well, once you
toss race and ethnicity into the mix, it gets even worse,
as often does hashtag intersectionality. Yeah, retail is the second
largest source of jobs for Black Americans, and it's one
of the largest sources of new employment across the United States.
(42:11):
But not all retail jobs are created equally, as should
be no surprise. UM. I mean, you've got a ton
of mainstream major stores who faced lawsuits for discriminatory hiring practices. Um.
What was the story a couple of years ago about
Abercrombie and Fitch being sued over a woman wearing a
Hidge job. Right, So it ended up going to the
(42:34):
Supreme Court and they ruled in favor of the former
Abercrombie employee, UM, who was fired because they refused to
allow her to wear her he job on the store floor. UM.
And like I said, the Supreme Court ruled in her favor.
Abercrombie has long had a reputation though for uh presenting
(43:00):
a very white, very exclusionary image, UM, with its advertising,
with its hiring. UM. There was one time in New York,
and I'm sure a lot of New Yorker is listening.
I've also seen this where they've got the sales gimmicks
with the white chiseled guys in and next to nothing
(43:21):
standing outside and just all of that just body spray,
just coming at you so much, so much, body spray
a headache just walking past an Abercromby. But I'm even
surprised at aberca Imus. Honestly, side now, I'm surprised at
Abercrombie even still exists. But in same with wet Seal,
they've also been nailed for discriminatory hiring practices. I can't
believe that store still exists and target place where a
(43:45):
lot of us love to shop in the name of
self care. Um and Okay, So if we talk again,
if we zero in on these Black Americans working in retail,
they are likelier to be among the working poor. Uh So,
like the overall retail workforce, a majority of black and
(44:06):
Latino retail workers do have some education post high school
and about a third or parents. But seventeen percent of
black retail workers and percent of Latino or Latina retail
workers live below the poverty line, compared to just nine
percent of the overall workforce, and they have fewer opportunities
(44:28):
for advancement. They're overrepresented as cashiers which tends to be
the lowest paid retail work and underrepresented in managerial positions.
And we talked about a gender wage gap, there's also
a racial wage gap. And again this is coming from
research conducted jointly by Demos and the Double A CP
(44:52):
finding that black and Latin X full time cashiers are
nine percent of what white cashiers do, which translates to
about a loss of eight dollars now full time sales people.
Though it gets even worse. That gap is twenty White
(45:13):
people make tent more than sales people of color, which
translates to an income difference of seventy five hundred dollars
a year. And consider this, the retail salesperson is the
industry occupation with the highest share of workers but the
widest wage divide, and the cashier wage gap, meanwhile, is
(45:37):
narrower because the income is just so low to begin with.
And so I think all I could keep thinking when
I was reading these statistics and how massive and sprawling
the retail workforce is. All I could think was, huh,
our politicians on the left of the right, whoever talk
(45:57):
about protecting Americans work for Americans, wanting to help families,
and oh you know this country just steps on the
working poor. Well, a lot of those people are in
retail in some way or another. And if we aren't
doing more to protect these people, bolster these people, UM,
(46:22):
make sure that they are making a living wage. That's
a good percentage of Americans that are being stepped on.
Oh absolutely. And it's not just the low wage issue.
It's also the instability of that part time work that
we talked about, and also this thing called just in
time scheduling. So in terms of the part time work, again,
(46:46):
black and Latino X retail employees are likelier than white
people to be part time workers, working thirty one hours
a week on average, even when they would rather be
full time. And then heap on top of that, you
know that that lack of benefits that you would get
as a full time worker, then you have to deal
(47:08):
with the rampant use slash abuse of justin time scheduling,
which is the worst and happens most often again to
black and Latin X workers. So just in time scheduling
UH is basically the nickname for employers giving very little
advanced notice of your schedule UM as little as a
(47:31):
week in advance. And on top of that, you're also
subject to shifts being canceled or getting sent home if
it's a slow day. So if you're managing things like
transportation cost, being the breadwinner, the soul earner in your household,
as a lot of these people are childcare elder care,
(47:53):
all of this is thrown into complete chaos because there
is nothing stable about these jobs. And it also prevents
you from probably being able to go out and reliably
search for better work because you don't know when you're
gonna be working at the job you have right now.
(48:15):
So what do we do. Well, for one, we could
raise the federal minimum wage. Right people are on board
for that, probably not President elect Trump. Actually, by probably,
I mean he's talked openly about how he thinks the
minimum wage, which is seven dollars and twenty five cents
an hour, folks, that is not a living wage, especially
(48:40):
if you live anywhere close to a metropolitan area. Uh.
He thinks that that is too high already. So with
the Republicans now in control of the House and Senate, Uh,
that's not likely to happen in the next four years. Okay, Well, um,
(49:00):
maybe big retailers can hop on paying their workers a
living wage. Yes, they could do that. They absolutely could
do that. You know, if you are a CEO of
Target making bazillion million dollars a year, you could reallocate
some of that money to pay your workers a living wage.
And listeners, if you are curious about what exactly is
(49:22):
the living wage for you where you live in work
uh m, I T has a hand calculator that we
will link to in this source post. And for us Caroline,
it's eleven dollars and thirty six cents, far cry from
seven dollars and cents. Yeah, And of course what you
(49:42):
often hear from people, um, this has happened to me
on Twitter, It's happened to me, uh, from people in
my own family. When you discuss things like the minimum wages, Well,
how are we going to pay for it? Are you
going to pay for it? Right? Prices will go up, right,
so we'll we will actually to be the ones paying
for these, you know, these exorbitant salaries that are essentially subsistence,
(50:07):
which again I would say ties back into an earlier
episode we did on the welfare queen stereotype. People are
so scared about what the working poor are going to
do with more money, Well, they presume that they are
lazy and undeserving. You know, we worked hard for our money. Yeah. Well, uh,
this Berkeley study crunched the numbers and found that if Walmart,
(50:30):
for instance, which again has a massive workforce all on
its own, paid twelve dollars an hour as a starting wage,
shoppers would see a price increase of one point one percent,
or forty six cents per shopping trip. Oh wow, So
I mean, I don't know, caroline cents that could buy you,
(50:51):
uh like two and a half chicken nuggets McDonald's. Um,
I don't know if we can be that generous. Another thing, though,
that DEMOS and the c P recommend, especially for uh
ending that siloing of people of color and also women
(51:13):
in general in those lower paying jobs, is ending employment
credit checks, because credit checks are mostly used for things
like loans and housing. Uh. And when you start enforcing
employment credit checks on a lot of your employees who
are already the working poor, it is just automatically disqualifying
(51:40):
so many of them for circumstances that they themselves cannot help.
And another thing that employers could and come on should
do is to ensure more stable hours and predictable schedules.
I mean, letting people know what they're going to be
(52:00):
working two weeks out at least is that much of
a hardship? I mean, especially for part time workers. Uh,
Ending that whole just in time scheduling process or system
could go a long way to enabling people to not
only take care of their personal life stuff, but enable
them to miss less work rights. It seems that way, absolutely,
(52:24):
And I do want to hear from retail managers listening
who are in charge of scheduling, because I'm sure that
where we're sitting this, the ending just in time scheduling
seems like a simple fix. But I'm curious to know
in reality why it is such a juggling act. What
(52:45):
kind of factors perhaps force your hand at being so
late to give your employees notice, Because I mean, I
know from friends who've worked in retail like they dealt
with a similar kind of thing. And um, I wonder
if it has to do with target sales being reached
(53:06):
or not being reached, um, mandates from the powers that
be in your retail brand. Um, So if folks can't
help phillison on that, that would be super helpful, because yeah,
I mean, it just it does seem unnecessarily cruel, and
yet it's so common. UM. And while the federal initiatives
(53:29):
that could potentially happen uh seem really sad to think
about at the moment because of the recent election and
how sort of anti working poor. UM. I would argue,
a lot of the politicians now in power seemed to be.
(53:51):
We do have bright spots, wonderful champions like Senator Elizabeth
Warren who has sponsored the Schedules that Work Act. She
has introduced it. There are a number of co sponsors
on it as well. UM, But it has yet to
be passed. And I have a feeling that in a
(54:12):
quote unquote pro business, pro jobs, Republican administration, UM, it's
unlikely to get signed. But we have to remember that
our state legislatures can make a difference as well. Dial
up your local reps, dial up your congressional representatives, tell
them that you want to see the Schedules that Work
(54:35):
Act get past. If not in the US Congress, then
in the state congress. UM. The the other part of
this and the reason why it is, I believe, especially
now in these times, part of our civic obligation to
do as much as we can to reach out and
advocate on behalf of disenfranchised groups is that are retail
(55:01):
workers in particular. They're often so powerless because they're they're
not unionized. And when I mean, I know that unions
are there's a lot of politics that goes on in
that a lot of it is a very polarized thing.
But when workers aren't organized and they're already marginalized, it
(55:22):
is hard for them to collectively advocate for themselves. Well sure,
and I mean, um, you know, maybe some folks want
to march to their state capital or something like that.
But again, it goes back to the scheduling issue, like
how much free time do you have if you're also
your main breadwinner and your main source of childcare and
you know you're working crazy hours that you're not sure
(55:43):
when you're going to be scheduled. It kind of makes
it hard to even get together with like minded individuals,
not even I mean like unions aside, or or activism aside.
It makes it hard to even have time to talk
to other people about this well, and especially this episode
coming out during the holiday shopping season. We cannot underestimate
(56:04):
the power of our pocketbooks, even if we don't have
a ton of money. To spend. If you make a
decision to not support a particular store or brand because
of how they treat their employees, be loud about it.
Make it known, you know, organize a boycott. Uh. Companies
(56:27):
listen to where the money goes, and if the money
stops coming in, they'll probably maybe start paying attention. Um.
So this is this is an issue that is hugely
important year round because again, I mean, this is the
largest industry sector in the United States, millions and millions
(56:48):
and millions of people who are stuck in what seems
like a real economic trap. Um. And if this is not,
if this is not a reason and to treat retail
workers like humans and to just simply clean up after
yourself in your dressing rooms, even if you are in
(57:10):
a bustling h and m uh, then I don't know
it is so retail workers, let us know what's happening. UM.
I personally have never worked retail. I've worked fast food,
I've worked I've done domestic work, childcare, etcetera. But um,
retail has not been one of them. Caroline, have you
(57:32):
worked a retail job? I have not. Okay, so, folks,
we are speaking from inexperienced firsthand, So please Phillison let
us know all of your thoughts and for anyone who
has suggestions on political organizing, sent them our way. Mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast. You
(57:53):
can also directly reach out to Caroline and me. I'm
at Kristen Conger and I am at the Caroline and
We've got a couple of messages to share with you
right now. I have a letter here from Sam. She says,
I was writing in about your recent Genius episode and
(58:14):
it you talked a bit about how women who do
pursue science tend to gravitate towards the biological sciences, which
is something I noticed in college myself. I went to
rinse a Ler Polytechnic Institute and major to mechanical engineering.
As you can guess, it's primarily a technical engineering school,
but I noticed a strong divide among the women in
choice of major. The only biomedical engineering majors I knew
(58:37):
were women or gay men, while on the other hand,
I could count the number of women in my classes
on one hand out of say fifty or so people.
I always thought it was strange how women even today
still tend to gravitate towards the organic sciences and not
physics or computer science. Also would like to give a
shout out to all the women like myself not conforming
(58:57):
to stereotypical gender roles. Not only did I get my
BS and mechanical engineering, I went into the Navy as
a submarine officer and was part of the second or
so group of women stationed aboard U S submarines. I
now work in the commercial sector as a design engineer
for building automation, but just wanted any women out there
thinking about pursuing the science is to know it is
(59:18):
possible with some hard work and a little bit of genius.
So thanks Sam. I've got a letter here from Hannah
also about our episode on gender and genius, and she writes,
as a cancer biology PhD candidate, I love listening to
you two every day as I do science. The Boy
Geniuses episode struck a chord for me as I just
(59:40):
had a conversation with a brilliant professor the other day
about females and leadership positions in STEM. We've both observed
that women tend to hold positions of authority and have
a ton of responsibility, but not actually a lot of power.
I think this stems fun intended from the perception of
women and as responsible multitaskers as compared to men who
(01:00:03):
hold qualities like leadership and vision. Justin anecdotal observation from
a newly devoted listener, I'm hoping that a new generation
of informed and introspective scientists can lead the way in
changing our perception of who makes a great leader. Well,
thank you so much for that insight, Hannah, and thanks
to everybody who's written into us. Mom Stuff at how
(01:00:25):
stuff works dot com is our email address. And speaking
of email friends, I Kristen have started a tiny letter
in response to a lot of the stuff going on
in our post election society. It's called the Do Better
digest Um. So if you want to check that out,
(01:00:45):
you can subscribe at tiny letter dot com slash Kristen
and it's Kristen c R I S T E N.
Should be a good one and I hope to see there.
And for links to all of our social media as
well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts with
our sources so you can learn more about women and retail,
(01:01:08):
head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot
com for more on this, and thousands of other topics.
Visit how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from housetop works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and we're talking about women in retail
today because as we're recording this podcast, the holiday season
(00:24):
is upon us, which means 'tis the season for shop
until you dropping? Yeah? I can't. I'm terrified, Kristen. I
can't go into stores normally because it stresses me out
so much. Um. And by that, I just mean, like,
you know, the peak time of day when there's a
million people at the mall, I just can't do it.
(00:44):
I can go early in the morning, I can go
right before close, but if there's a million people, I
can't do it. Um. And Christmas season, holiday season, gift
giving season, and by that I mean obsessive shopping season.
It's all too much. People are all over the place,
they're congregating in the stores, they're not walking fast enough,
(01:06):
They're picking up the merchandise and just like throwing it
or something. I don't know what happens, but basically what
I'm saying is, Uh, we don't pay our retail workers
enough for them to deal with the horror that is
us as consumers during the holiday season. All right, everybody's
shopping for those bargains. You've got Black Friday deals. But imagine, Caroline,
(01:28):
all of the things that annoy both of us about
holiday shopping, the traffic, the people, the mess, the stress
that beatles. Christmas song playing over and over again, simply
having a wonderful Christmas time. It doesn't stop from Thanksgiving
to Christmas Eve. Uh. It's okay one time, um, but
(01:52):
imagine having to do that avery day. Um. And if
you are a part time retail worker, full time retail worker,
already things are stressful, and then the holidays just ramp
it up. And of course every year seasonal retail workers
(02:14):
are hired. On this year in the US alone, there
are seven hundred thousand projected seasonal workers who will be hired. Um.
Although some of that is transitioning from traditional storefront to
warehouse work because of people like me who prefer Amazon
(02:34):
Prime to the mall. Also supporting local independent artisans and
makers whenever I can, of course, but all of this
just exacerbates these year round issues. Rude customers who are
yelling at you as if things are your fault when
(02:54):
you are the floor walker. Um. Messy customers, people again
throwing merchandise. It seems like, I mean, you and I
Kristen have talked about the horror that is H and
M on like a Saturday. It gets even worse around
the holidays. UM and the awkwardness of having to push
a stores credit card on customers. You don't like it, customers,
(03:17):
neither does the person behind the register. And that was
something I hadn't thought about until we ended up on
a Reddit thread asking retail workers like, what don't we
know what's happening behind the scenes? And the pushing the
store credit card was something that came up a lot
because some stores allah the whole Wells Fargo fiasco of
(03:40):
people really pushing those credit cards, managers setting quotas that
they have to hit and really making them as uncomfortable
as we are. And and the twisted thing about that
is too. A lot of times the employees who are
being pressed to push these credit cards on us are
(04:00):
not making very much money to begin with, you know, um,
and retail represents such a massive sector of jobs. Oh yeah,
fifteen million people work retail jobs in the United States alone,
and more than half about fifty of them are women
(04:22):
and I didn't realize this, but cashiers and retail salespeople. Uh,
those are the two largest occupations in this country according
to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Uh, and that equates
to about seven point eight million people. And those seven
point eight million people are making around twenty two thousand
(04:43):
a year median and one in three or part time,
and a lot of those are also working nights and weekends. Um.
And you see a lot of disparities that we're going
to get into deeper into the podcast. But in terms
of transitioning from part time to full time and then
(05:03):
in management, it's really really tough, especially if you are
a woman, and even more especially if you are a
woman of color. So if you look at Walmart alone,
women make up about fifty of their workforce, but a
study from the think tank Demos found that only twenty
(05:24):
nine percent were promoted to store manager over a ten
year period. So tail is all this time. You definitely
see a disproportionate number of fellas and management supervisory and
ownership roles, and more of that of women in the
workforce who are in the lower paying cash sheer jobs
(05:47):
and even just the salesperson jobs. Yeah, and this kind
of reminds me of the episode we did on waitresses
women working in restaurant server positions. But by that I
mean the situation is not great in terms of working
conditions and also compensation. About one point three million women
in retail live at or near the poverty line, and
(06:10):
one in five are the soul breadwinners for their family. Also,
one in five women who work retail want more hours.
They want to be able to work more make more money,
but they can't get them um. For a variety of reasons,
employers might want to maintain just a part time workforce.
They don't want to pay you full time um. But
(06:31):
also there's the issue that of retail workers receive their
schedules a week or less in advance, which that's great
for the employer they can remit, maintain like a flexible
schedule and fit people in where they need to. Horrifying
though for the workers who are actually trying to have
a life and plan things like childcare, elder care, doctor's appointments,
(06:53):
their own holiday shopping, just so many other things that
can really put your life into a tail spin if
you can't even play and like a couple of days
in advance, and I would argue that in terms of
not giving people more hours, not having more full time
employees is maybe to do with not wanting to pay benefits,
(07:17):
you know, because once you get to the full time
status then it costs employers more. And there's a whole
other conversation that we could have that we don't have
time to have in this podcast about changes the Obama
administration made lowering the threshold for employees to have to
(07:37):
be paid over time, for employees to have to start
giving paid sick leave and vacation, things that really, um,
I believe that all workers should be afforded. But when
you look too at a lot of these one in
five women who are part time and want more hours,
they're working like thirty one hours. So because when you
(08:01):
might hear part time and think, oh, it's what like
fifteen hours a week, twenty hours a week, No, it's
almost full time but not quite, just to keep that
overhead low. And of course, not surprisingly, there is a
wage gap issue as well. Uh, full time retail sales
women earn about sixty eight cents to every dollar a
(08:22):
man in the same position earns. And to put that
in perspective, that woman would need to work in extra
six months to match that man's annual income. Yeah, and
these are apples to apples jobs. People were not talking
about a cashier making sixties eight cents to a mail
manager's dollar. This is the same across the board. And
(08:45):
this reminds me of our conversation about the gender wage
gap in custodial work, where in these lower paying jobs
we often see that the wage gap why ends um,
which seems counterintuitive, but this is another example of that
(09:05):
absolutely being the case. And surprise, no surprise, retail has
never been particularly kind to women, even though we think
of it as a very feminized and woman friendly type
of job. Well, now it's very feminized. But again, to
(09:26):
hearken back to Kristen, would you say most of our episodes, uh,
so many of them uh teaching? Uh? What else? Librarianship?
These things all started out employing men folk, uh, and
then started employing women because they were cheaper secretarial work. Yes,
(09:47):
So a little tidbit that I I didn't know. Um shocking.
I'm not fully aware of the entire history of retail establishments,
but I am now. Um, but we're gonna be so
fun at holiday parties by now, I can't wait till Yeah,
I'm just gonna guilt everybody at Thanksgiving. The world's first
department store opened in seventeen nineties six. It was called
(10:12):
Harding Howl and Companies, Grand Fashionable Magazine. Uh. And that
was in London, and it had four departments. Uh. Furs
and fans really all the important food groups, right, firs
and fans. Haberdashery. I'm sorry, I literally don't know how
to say that word without saying it like that, jewelry
and clocks and millinery. Yeah, I like that they have
(10:35):
millinery and haberdashery separate because I guess you know, folks
were wearing so many hats even you wouldn't want men
and women in the same space. You cannot have the
mixing of hats up promiscuous group of hats. So millinery,
I would imagine, would be safe for the ladies go
in and look at all their their BIMs and bobs
(10:57):
and ribbons and what what's nuts and things with the others. Yes,
and for the men folk to be able to safely
go over and smoke their cigars and look at their
their fedoras. Um. And like you said, the first retail clerks,
we're guys. Uh, and these were men who operated and
(11:19):
often slept in their stores. These were small stores, and
really there was no major need to hire women because
fathers would essentially apprentice their sons. It was the family business. Yeah.
It kind of reminded me if anyone out there has
watched Deadwood of the hardware Store, that the two main
(11:40):
guys open in Deadwood because they they basically sleep there.
They run this hardware store and they live there. It's
their whole life. Their whole existence is around this hardware store,
minus some drama with some prostitutes. Now, Caroline, this reminds
me also of the wild West, the Frontier, no prostitutes.
(12:02):
Though this makes me think of Nelly Olsen in Little
House in the Prairie because her family, if y'all remember,
they owned Olsen's Mercantile, which was the general store, and
she was such a snob and so mean because she
had access to all the penny candies and the ribbons.
And I want to say that they also slept above
(12:25):
the general store, which I just thought was really cool.
But this was also in the phase where my dream
car was a camper, so go figure. Um. But Nellie
would not have been the person to have run the store.
Her dad would have passed it down to her brother.
And you want to know what changed everything, The same
thing that changed everything for white women in employment outside
(12:52):
the home and outside the domestic service in the United States,
the Civil War. Really, wars always get women out of
the house and into new jobs, and retail is one
of those. Yeah, there was a man drain, and I
just picture men getting stuck in a drain, the old
man drain. It happens. There's the World War One man drain,
(13:13):
the World War two man drain. But really, without man drains,
would we have women's gains as a rhyme? Oh, put
that on a poster And was it not though considered
sort of dirty and scandalous for women to be behind
the counter working with money and making these transactions. Yeah,
I mean this was This was one of the first
(13:34):
times that female labor was really put on public display.
So she would have been coming into contact with not
only other women, but also with other men. And so
if we hop back to London, where a lot of
stuff is going on. Initially, you have this rising middle
class in the Victorian era, and apartment stores are popping
(13:58):
up and it's deemed inappropriate for for women to be clerks.
Snobs called them counterhoppers, but there were some more progressive
women who were like, uh, ladies need employment. Working class
women need to be able to make a wage. And
(14:20):
in eighteen fifty nine there was this group of women
in London's West Side called the Ladies of Langham Place
who got together at a coffee house, which, first of all,
if y'all have listened to our episode on gender Coffee
and Barisa's, you know that that's a daring move to
begin with, because coffee houses were for fellas. But these
(14:42):
ladies were like, no, y'all, we're going to meet here too,
and they got together to figure out how to improve
employment options for women, and they really inspired what's considered
the shopgirl revolution. Yeah, and you have one of these
Ladies of Langham Place, Jesse Boucherette, who called for schools
to be founded to train girls to become shop assistant.
(15:04):
She said, why should bearded men be employed to sell
ribbon lace and handkerchiefs, which to me just echoes our
advertising Women in Advertising episode where women are arguing we
need more women in advertising because women can speak to
other women, they know what women want. So therefore we
need to get women in here, and then there ended
(15:25):
up being this like pink ghettoization of the products that
women were hawking. And to me, this kind of reads
like this as well, because it's sort of a preview
of actually getting more women into these sales lady or
shop girl roles. Yeah, and we learned a lot of
this info about the shop girl revolution in London from
(15:46):
this fantastic multipart BBC series that's also starts out recounting
diary entries from well healed women who could afford to
go to stores and go buy their ribbon lace and
handkerchiefs from the bearded men, and how dismissed they often
were by the mail clerks and what a drag it
(16:09):
often was, and shopping was really not an enjoyable process
of all these somber men working as clerks, right, And
that was another argument to get women working as clerks,
because you know, ladies like ladies, right, Ladies can probably
sell better too, Ladies. Are we not kind of touching
(16:30):
on emotional labor here? Sure? Codyling being kind when you
don't care. There is so much emotional labor that goes
into retail work, and it's expected. If you aren't putting
forth the emotional labor effort, you're considered rude or a
bad employee. Well, because well before the ladies of langm
(16:51):
Place got together at ye oldie Starbucks, the guy that
the department store magnate and his name is a escaping
me right now, um had already come up with the
philosophy of the customer always being right. So that was
already ingrained. And that also establishes this class system that
(17:12):
you have behind the counter and in front of it.
And because of that class and the fact that these
women needed those jobs, yes, from eighteen fifty we do
see women making the first inroads into retail, although some
stores hired more than others. But what was driving a
(17:33):
lot of that for the male shop owners who were
hiring them was that there was a large supply of them,
and they came cheap, like those penny candies. They came
as cheap as a penny candy. But it's the same
kind of thing that we do see with the shift
to secretarial work, where it's like, well, you know, the
women are cheaper. Same thing with librarianship, Well the women
(17:57):
are cheaper. And here we're still talking about white women though. True, true,
And so if you look at ninety about one in
fifty sales people were women by though that was one
in sixteen. Um. But things were not rosy. It wasn't
like there was some like lady Utopia behind the counter
(18:19):
in these in these shops, I know, if only it
were all just fun makeover montages. Everybody dabbing each other's
faces with this huge, comically large like powder poopy, you know,
trying on different coursets and fainting into each other's arms. Um.
And for listeners who have have or are are right
(18:42):
now working in retail, hell, can you imagine not only
having that job but also having that job responsible for
your housing? So and this makes me think of one
of my best friends who for a very long time
worked at American Apparel, And yeah, she's got some stories
(19:04):
to tell. Um. And if if she also had to
work at American Apparel and then turn around and go
home to the American Apparel dormitories where I mean doub
cherry would probably be laying in wait. Uh, but that's
kind of the situation. So especially for a lot of
(19:27):
these stores um in Britain that we're popping up at
the time, and these shop girls who were moving into
the big city. They required women to quote unquote live
in or live in accommodations designated by the employer, which
is exactly what we were talking about a little while
ago on our episode about women flight attendants. The first
(19:51):
female flight attendants had to live in stewardess dormitories. And
that major league paternalistic move was also really money grubbing
on the part of the shop owners. Oh yeah, because
while they did require the women to live in these dorms,
they also required them to pay rent, but the rent
(20:11):
was just taken out of their paycheck, which is that
is a dirty move. Yeah, so you're already hiring cheaper
labor than men. And we should also mention that another
motivation for keeping these women sequestered in these highly regulated
dorms was to manage morality. Yeah. But the thing is,
(20:33):
when you have these workers who are making such paltry
sums of money, it drove many of them too in
order to survive into sex work, and so you start
to see this association. It was already such a scandalous
thing to have women needing to work work outside home,
and no less, in a job that required them to
(20:53):
interact with all sorts of people. Um. But that's when
you really see these strong association between the scandal of
having women work as uh, shop ladies or shop girls
and assuming that they're all sex workers or prostitutes. Well,
because a lot of them had to turn to sex
(21:14):
work to actually make ends meet they didn't make enough money.
I mean, this was a very real fact of shop
work at this time. And in that BBC series which
will link to in the source posts for this episode
on stuff Mom Never Told You dot com because it's
on YouTube and you should check it out. It's fascinating. Uh.
(21:34):
The host goes into one of these very old shops
and goes upstairs where the shop girls would possibly meet
customers to make some extra cash selling their bodies. Um.
And if we hop back to the US, the thing
(21:56):
is as deplorable as these situations kind of work. And
I'm not sure how often women in retail at this
time in the US we're also turning to sex work.
I can't imagine that that none of them we're doing it,
but it's still these jobs still tended to pay more
than domestic labor and manufacturing work, which if you are
(22:20):
a working class woman, those are really the only options
employment options that you've got, so kind of like secretarial work.
While they were being undervalued and underpaid and in some
case outright abuse. It's like, well, but at least it's
not at least we're not in a factory. At least
we're not in a factory. But that doesn't mean the
(22:41):
work was not punishing. You worked incredibly long hours, think
six am to nine pm. You'd be stocking things, tidying
up and cleaning, having to deal with the emotional labor
aspect of customer service. And you better not sit down.
Oh yeah, no sitting allowed. I mean the conditions were
(23:04):
so physically punishing that they prompted Nellie Bligh style exposes
on the harsh working conditions. For instance, there was one
published called Death and Disease behind the Counter. The physical
ailments that women in retail often developed became nicknamed the
standing evil because they tended to develop anemia and consumption.
(23:30):
There was even this thing called the bustle stick, which
was invented at one point that would allow women to
just sort of lean back and and perch on it.
So they're not sitting necessarily, but they're not quite standing.
They can take a break for a second. But unfortunately
the bustle stick never caught on. Yeah, I think you
(23:51):
can get something like that now for camping. So when
you're on the trail hiking up a mountain, you know,
you don't have to necessarily lie down or sit down.
You can sort of just lean and perch. I am
heading straight to Ori e I and asking you have
a bustle Who are the bustle sticks women? Um? Well, yeah,
(24:13):
I mean it was considered in poor taste to be
sitting down. And that wasn't just a directive coming from
the higher ups in the department store. Customers would complain. Uh,
they thought it was like a sign of laziness and
disrespect if they saw any of these shop girls sitting down.
Oh yeah, I mean it's heaped in, steeped in classism. Uh.
(24:34):
And Macy's probably a familiar name to a lot of listeners.
Nineteenth century Macy's was real intense. Although on the one hand,
they did promote a lot of the first female supervisors
Lady Go Macie's. But Macy's also did not allow sitting
and considered what they called unnecessary conversations grounds for firing. Yeah,
(25:00):
I mean, like the animal a short leash. Don't be
too chatty, as one boss told me when I was
right out of college. Um, and it is funny, you know.
We in our waitressing episode, we kicked it off by
asking women who are in the service industry, do you
prefer to be called waiters, waitresses, servers, what? Because what
(25:22):
you call yourself and what other people call you it
does matter. Um And American stores did originally adopt the
British term shop girls, but the serious employees preferred sales ladies. Right.
They didn't even want to be called saleswomen. They want
to be called sales ladies because again, class a lady
(25:42):
is someone who I mean that denotes a higher class. Yeah,
but reading this, I was like, oh, I call them
sales ladies, not ironically or or anything. I just called.
I refer to them as sales ladies. Well, ye, oldise
sales ladies will be happy to hear them. But you
know I don't call like, if I see a woman
who's about my age, like working at best buy or
(26:05):
or or a J Crew or something, I don't think
of her as a sales lady. I tend to think
of sales ladies as as the women who were in
their fifties, sixties, seventies. Maybe they're at Talbot, the ones
who do bra measurements. Yeah, sales ladies, Yeah, exactly. My
mother was a sales lady. She worked at Coldwater Creek
part time to supplement her flight attendant income slash have
(26:27):
something to do on her off time, and uh, I
think she would qualify as a sales lady. She's also
the reason that I make sure to always remove my
clothes from the dressing room when I am done trying
them on, because if you want to hear a bunch
of women complain about you be the person who leaves
(26:48):
your clothes in the dressing room, you will be disliked intensely. Well.
And speaking of what retail sales people prefer to be called,
let's not forget that they also have names, as we
all do. That was something on the Reddit thread where
especially if someone is wearing a name tag, uh, they're like,
(27:10):
I'm wearing a name tag for a reason. You can
you can call me by my name, and we really
appreciate it if you, Yeah, if you remember our names.
And I have a horrible short term memory, and often
in stores like a maid Well where I go too often,
only when the sale is on sale, but still it's
too often. Um, and you know, whenever you go to
(27:32):
try something on the person says, oh, okay, I'm Blenda,
I immediately forget Belenda's name. I know, and immediately, but
after this episode, I'm going to remember Belenda. You're just
everyone's gonna become Blenda now. But in retail workers listening,
let me know, am I just like overblowing this because
(27:53):
it's got to feel nice and humanizing for people to
remember your name when you tell it to them. So
just another thing that we can do in addition to
keeping our dressing rooms tidy when we're leaving. But back
to our history. Women at this time, even though they
(28:16):
might have been sales ladies, they might have been a
bit more ambitious and cared about their job and had
every intention of working in it for as long as
they could. They were often considered by employers and kind
of just across the industry to be dead end workers
because men were always hired as clerks with the implicit
(28:39):
understanding that they were working their way up a ladder
and sort of an unofficial apprenticeship, but women were just
seen as almost like seasonal workers. Today the way that
we use them during the holidays, like, well, it just
kind of churned through them. Um. No one, No one
considered an employment ladder for women at the time. I
(29:00):
think the one exception that we could cite, or one
of the exceptions that we could site, would be buyers.
A lot of women did start out as shop girls,
and we're able to work. When I say a lot,
I don't actually literally mean a lot. I mean some
worked their way up to being buyers where they would
deal with the manufacturers and the designers to get new
(29:21):
styles in. And a lot of that goes back to
to the attitude that we cited earlier of like don't
women know women better? Um? And so rather than having uh,
these fuddy duddy men who just take what the manufacturers make,
why don't we get women in here who know how
women want to address themselves and have them uh set
(29:42):
the tone for what the fashions will be in the stores.
And so, uh you started to see schools actually having
programs for fashion buying, and of course that was that
was an arc that wasn't all at once. It's not
like they hired a bunch of women and were like
and now we're going to to kate you at college
for this exact thing, right, because more often than not,
(30:06):
even if a gal worked to swell sixteen hour day,
she would likelier be fired than rewarded for fear of
her eventually demanding a higher salary. Women were expendable. There
are plenty of them. They're cheap. Just bring them in
and toss them out. So we should remake the expendables, uh,
(30:26):
and have it just be shop girls nine century British
shop girls. I'd watch it as long as Sylvester Stallone
is not in it. Um. But here, here's a thing
that is absent one from our conversation so far, women
of color. That's because the history of black sales ladies
(30:48):
was largely non existent pre civil rights. And we're going
to talk about that when we come right back from
a quick break. So we mentioned the Civil War man
(31:12):
drain earlier. You know, men getting caught in the drain,
like so much hair that you've got to remove. Oh
no wait, sorry, they're going off to war and women
are filling their places. Same thing happened with World War One.
So women are becoming more visible as shop girls as
retail workers around this time. But that's still mainly applied
(31:34):
to white women. Black women who were hired by these
retails stores still were relegated to jobs that revolved around
the kitchen, the bathroom, service areas until about the nineteen sixties. Yeah,
I mean it wasn't mainly white women. It was exclusively
white women. And we learned about this in a book
(31:55):
by Jan Whittaker called Service and Style, How the American
Department Store, Fat Suh and the middle Class, And she
wrote about how before the nineteen sixties, the most visible
job for an African American woman would have been as
an elevator operator, until you have department store, some department
(32:17):
stores swapping them out for sexier white women. So even
elevator operator is too visible. And you do see organizing
and protesting around this time, especially in the nineteen thirties
in black neighborhoods. The n a c P, for instance,
(32:38):
initiated a don't buy where you can't work protest that
we're focused on black neighborhoods where you have stores owned
by white people that wouldn't hire Black people. And so
you know, these customers were saying, no, this is not right.
You're you're going to take our money, but you won't
(32:58):
hire us. No, and women were very instrumental in organizing
these protests. Now, unfortunately, partly because they were so concentrated
in predominantly black areas of town, they were largely ineffective
in initially instigating industry wide change. World War two, however,
(33:22):
did afford some black people more sales floor jobs, but
as long as their skin was light enough. This goes
back to the paper bag test. Yeah, you had to
pass the paper bag test and have light enough skin
that it wouldn't potentially make white customers uncomfortable. Um. And
(33:44):
there were arguments though, around and after World War Two, that, well,
why would white people be uncomfortable with black people in
retail jobs? White people are already accustomed to black people
serving them and cleaning up after them in their homes.
We why wouldn't we hire them as as retail workers.
But to put some numbers around that benevolent racism, shall
(34:07):
we call it? A nine New York retail customer survey
found that most white people were fine with black salespeople
if they had like enough skin, but of them did
not want them touching clothing, lingerie, or food. So no,
(34:30):
we're actually not We're not fine with that UM and
the year before New York City report identified one black
saleswoman among all the stores on Fifth Avenue. Yeah, and
during this time in the forties, most of those retail
job gains for black people were again in stock rooms.
(34:52):
As long as they weren't visible, then okay, maybe we
will hire you. UM. Store owners were genuine We worried
that having black employees be visible would mean it would
scare off white customers, right, because more black employees meant
that it would be a safer space for black customers
(35:15):
to come in UM, and that would trigger all of
white customers racism, so they would go to Gimbals instead
of Macy's UM. And this also brings up another conversation
that we could have about the horrendous mistreatment of black
(35:35):
customers and retail UM who would go into wide establishments
and be treated like second class citizens. But well, I
mean that, how is that different from now with black
customers being followed around stores? Very true? So you you
know you have black customers going to patronizing uh, black
(35:58):
owned businesses because literally those were the only safe spaces
for them to shop. Now, once we get to the
late nineteen fifties and early sixties with the civil rights movement,
we do see protests ramping up against racist hiring practices,
targeting the largest department stores. UM. And and you do
(36:20):
start to see the dial moving a little bit. In
nineteen eight of the New York State Commission against Discrimination
kind of patted itself on the back because it tallied
up a grand total of one hundred black retail sales
people and two in retail management in the city. UM. Now,
I don't have the number of one hundred and two
(36:42):
out of how many. I mean, it still has to
be a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage. And so you know,
a lot of these protests and boycotts that are happening,
UM did open up some jobs. They did have an effect,
but a a lot of the jobs that were opened up,
we're in more failing stores, stores that weren't seeing as
(37:05):
much customer traffic anyway, UM or they were not getting hired.
Uh to work with high priced home furnishings and fashion,
which also was a struggle for women in general. Earlier
in our history when women struggled to get jobs with furniture,
it was it was considered so dirty and inappropriate for
(37:27):
women to work with furniture. It's big and heavy and dusty,
and the same ended up applying to black people in general.
But certainly not for a paternalistic reason. No, because these
are high ticket items that we want to move to
our wealthier customers, and wealthier customers certainly can't be waited
on by our black salespeople. Um. But in the background, too,
(37:51):
we have to acknowledge the crucial importance of lunch counter
desegregation that was going on because a lot of these
were in department store wars. So you have this combination
of civil rights protests and pocketbook boycott's and lunch counter desegregation, um.
That is opening the space up slowly but surely. And
(38:14):
no surprise, White owned stores in the South were the
most resistant because desegregation. So, for instance, I don't have
the exact year, but it wasn't until well into the
nineteen sixties that a woman named Dorothea Davis became Charlotte,
North Carolina, a relatively large city, Charlotte's first first black
(38:39):
saleswoman in a not black owned store. Yeah, and I
mean the retail industry still has not done right by
most of its black and Latina and Latino workers in particular,
and We're going to talk about that when we come
right back from a quick break. So, with everything we've
(39:09):
talked about at this point in terms of the racism
that's been deeply embedded in retail from the get go,
it's shouldn't be much of a surprise that it isn't
really an equitable haven for people of color today, because,
like you mentioned, if you're simply a customer, you have
(39:29):
to deal with racism so often in the form of
racial profiling that we have. We can we can't not
have a conversation on race and retail without talking about
customer profiling. Oh yeah, and some of our biggest stores
have been implicated in cases of racial profiling. Macy's, Sophora, Zara, Barney's, CVS,
(39:53):
Best Buy, Ross, Walgreen's, Hollister, Um, all of these stores
have gotten in trouble for if is a racial profiling
and not to mention two issues of black people being
killed outright. Um. A lot of this was highlighted in
a piece in the International Business Times by Catherine Dunn,
(40:16):
who reported that between and two thousand two, at least
six shoppers died, five of them people of color, and
confrontations with off duty police officers employed as security guards
at Dillard's department stores in three states. At Dillard's alone,
just at Dillard's. Well, things are a great at Walmart either.
(40:38):
In ten John Crawford the third was shot at an
Ohio Walmart by security guards just because he picked up
a BB gun. Yeah, I mean, well he was killed.
He was shot and killed because he just, yeah, he
just picked up a gun and the security guard assumed
that he was armed and dangerous. Meanwhile, we had this
(41:00):
stories a couple of years ago of all of those
white militants walking into Walmart's wearing guns and and they
weren't killed. Well, it's because America doesn't hate white people.
And these are just a handful of the instances of
not just discrimination but outright violence that people of color,
Black people in particular, often face as customers in retail stores.
(41:25):
And Gallop Pole found that of black respondents felt they've
been treated unfairly in stores because of their skin color.
And honestly, that sounds low to me. And it doesn't
get much better in terms of discrimination when we hop
behind the counter. Because we've already talked about the gendered
(41:48):
siloing of low income jobs in retail. Well, once you
toss race and ethnicity into the mix, it gets even worse,
as often does hashtag intersectionality. Yeah, retail is the second
largest source of jobs for Black Americans, and it's one
of the largest sources of new employment across the United States.
(42:11):
But not all retail jobs are created equally, as should
be no surprise. UM. I mean, you've got a ton
of mainstream major stores who faced lawsuits for discriminatory hiring practices. Um.
What was the story a couple of years ago about
Abercrombie and Fitch being sued over a woman wearing a
Hidge job. Right, So it ended up going to the
(42:34):
Supreme Court and they ruled in favor of the former
Abercrombie employee, UM, who was fired because they refused to
allow her to wear her he job on the store floor. UM.
And like I said, the Supreme Court ruled in her favor.
Abercrombie has long had a reputation though for uh presenting
(43:00):
a very white, very exclusionary image, UM, with its advertising,
with its hiring. UM. There was one time in New York,
and I'm sure a lot of New Yorker is listening.
I've also seen this where they've got the sales gimmicks
with the white chiseled guys in and next to nothing
(43:21):
standing outside and just all of that just body spray,
just coming at you so much, so much, body spray
a headache just walking past an Abercromby. But I'm even
surprised at aberca Imus. Honestly, side now, I'm surprised at
Abercrombie even still exists. But in same with wet Seal,
they've also been nailed for discriminatory hiring practices. I can't
believe that store still exists and target place where a
(43:45):
lot of us love to shop in the name of
self care. Um and Okay, So if we talk again,
if we zero in on these Black Americans working in retail,
they are likelier to be among the working poor. Uh So,
like the overall retail workforce, a majority of black and
(44:06):
Latino retail workers do have some education post high school
and about a third or parents. But seventeen percent of
black retail workers and percent of Latino or Latina retail
workers live below the poverty line, compared to just nine
percent of the overall workforce, and they have fewer opportunities
(44:28):
for advancement. They're overrepresented as cashiers which tends to be
the lowest paid retail work and underrepresented in managerial positions.
And we talked about a gender wage gap, there's also
a racial wage gap. And again this is coming from
research conducted jointly by Demos and the Double A CP
(44:52):
finding that black and Latin X full time cashiers are
nine percent of what white cashiers do, which translates to
about a loss of eight dollars now full time sales people.
Though it gets even worse. That gap is twenty White
(45:13):
people make tent more than sales people of color, which
translates to an income difference of seventy five hundred dollars
a year. And consider this, the retail salesperson is the
industry occupation with the highest share of workers but the
widest wage divide, and the cashier wage gap, meanwhile, is
(45:37):
narrower because the income is just so low to begin with.
And so I think all I could keep thinking when
I was reading these statistics and how massive and sprawling
the retail workforce is. All I could think was, huh,
our politicians on the left of the right, whoever talk
(45:57):
about protecting Americans work for Americans, wanting to help families,
and oh you know this country just steps on the
working poor. Well, a lot of those people are in
retail in some way or another. And if we aren't
doing more to protect these people, bolster these people, UM,
(46:22):
make sure that they are making a living wage. That's
a good percentage of Americans that are being stepped on.
Oh absolutely. And it's not just the low wage issue.
It's also the instability of that part time work that
we talked about, and also this thing called just in
time scheduling. So in terms of the part time work, again,
(46:46):
black and Latino X retail employees are likelier than white
people to be part time workers, working thirty one hours
a week on average, even when they would rather be
full time. And then heap on top of that, you
know that that lack of benefits that you would get
as a full time worker, then you have to deal
(47:08):
with the rampant use slash abuse of justin time scheduling,
which is the worst and happens most often again to
black and Latin X workers. So just in time scheduling
UH is basically the nickname for employers giving very little
advanced notice of your schedule UM as little as a
(47:31):
week in advance. And on top of that, you're also
subject to shifts being canceled or getting sent home if
it's a slow day. So if you're managing things like
transportation cost, being the breadwinner, the soul earner in your household,
as a lot of these people are childcare elder care,
(47:53):
all of this is thrown into complete chaos because there
is nothing stable about these jobs. And it also prevents
you from probably being able to go out and reliably
search for better work because you don't know when you're
gonna be working at the job you have right now.
(48:15):
So what do we do. Well, for one, we could
raise the federal minimum wage. Right people are on board
for that, probably not President elect Trump. Actually, by probably,
I mean he's talked openly about how he thinks the
minimum wage, which is seven dollars and twenty five cents
an hour, folks, that is not a living wage, especially
(48:40):
if you live anywhere close to a metropolitan area. Uh.
He thinks that that is too high already. So with
the Republicans now in control of the House and Senate, Uh,
that's not likely to happen in the next four years. Okay, Well, um,
(49:00):
maybe big retailers can hop on paying their workers a
living wage. Yes, they could do that. They absolutely could
do that. You know, if you are a CEO of
Target making bazillion million dollars a year, you could reallocate
some of that money to pay your workers a living wage.
And listeners, if you are curious about what exactly is
(49:22):
the living wage for you where you live in work
uh m, I T has a hand calculator that we
will link to in this source post. And for us Caroline,
it's eleven dollars and thirty six cents, far cry from
seven dollars and cents. Yeah, And of course what you
(49:42):
often hear from people, um, this has happened to me
on Twitter, It's happened to me, uh, from people in
my own family. When you discuss things like the minimum wages, Well,
how are we going to pay for it? Are you
going to pay for it? Right? Prices will go up, right,
so we'll we will actually to be the ones paying
for these, you know, these exorbitant salaries that are essentially subsistence,
(50:07):
which again I would say ties back into an earlier
episode we did on the welfare queen stereotype. People are
so scared about what the working poor are going to
do with more money, Well, they presume that they are
lazy and undeserving. You know, we worked hard for our money. Yeah. Well, uh,
this Berkeley study crunched the numbers and found that if Walmart,
(50:30):
for instance, which again has a massive workforce all on
its own, paid twelve dollars an hour as a starting wage,
shoppers would see a price increase of one point one percent,
or forty six cents per shopping trip. Oh wow, So
I mean, I don't know, caroline cents that could buy you,
(50:51):
uh like two and a half chicken nuggets McDonald's. Um,
I don't know if we can be that generous. Another thing, though,
that DEMOS and the c P recommend, especially for uh
ending that siloing of people of color and also women
(51:13):
in general in those lower paying jobs, is ending employment
credit checks, because credit checks are mostly used for things
like loans and housing. Uh. And when you start enforcing
employment credit checks on a lot of your employees who
are already the working poor, it is just automatically disqualifying
(51:40):
so many of them for circumstances that they themselves cannot help.
And another thing that employers could and come on should
do is to ensure more stable hours and predictable schedules.
I mean, letting people know what they're going to be
(52:00):
working two weeks out at least is that much of
a hardship? I mean, especially for part time workers. Uh,
Ending that whole just in time scheduling process or system
could go a long way to enabling people to not
only take care of their personal life stuff, but enable
them to miss less work rights. It seems that way, absolutely,
(52:24):
And I do want to hear from retail managers listening
who are in charge of scheduling, because I'm sure that
where we're sitting this, the ending just in time scheduling
seems like a simple fix. But I'm curious to know
in reality why it is such a juggling act. What
(52:45):
kind of factors perhaps force your hand at being so
late to give your employees notice, Because I mean, I
know from friends who've worked in retail like they dealt
with a similar kind of thing. And um, I wonder
if it has to do with target sales being reached
(53:06):
or not being reached, um, mandates from the powers that
be in your retail brand. Um, So if folks can't
help phillison on that, that would be super helpful, because yeah,
I mean, it just it does seem unnecessarily cruel, and
yet it's so common. UM. And while the federal initiatives
(53:29):
that could potentially happen uh seem really sad to think
about at the moment because of the recent election and
how sort of anti working poor. UM. I would argue,
a lot of the politicians now in power seemed to be.
(53:51):
We do have bright spots, wonderful champions like Senator Elizabeth
Warren who has sponsored the Schedules that Work Act. She
has introduced it. There are a number of co sponsors
on it as well. UM, But it has yet to
be passed. And I have a feeling that in a
(54:12):
quote unquote pro business, pro jobs, Republican administration, UM, it's
unlikely to get signed. But we have to remember that
our state legislatures can make a difference as well. Dial
up your local reps, dial up your congressional representatives, tell
them that you want to see the Schedules that Work
(54:35):
Act get past. If not in the US Congress, then
in the state congress. UM. The the other part of
this and the reason why it is, I believe, especially
now in these times, part of our civic obligation to
do as much as we can to reach out and
advocate on behalf of disenfranchised groups is that are retail
(55:01):
workers in particular. They're often so powerless because they're they're
not unionized. And when I mean, I know that unions
are there's a lot of politics that goes on in
that a lot of it is a very polarized thing.
But when workers aren't organized and they're already marginalized, it
(55:22):
is hard for them to collectively advocate for themselves. Well sure,
and I mean, um, you know, maybe some folks want
to march to their state capital or something like that.
But again, it goes back to the scheduling issue, like
how much free time do you have if you're also
your main breadwinner and your main source of childcare and
you know you're working crazy hours that you're not sure
(55:43):
when you're going to be scheduled. It kind of makes
it hard to even get together with like minded individuals,
not even I mean like unions aside, or or activism aside.
It makes it hard to even have time to talk
to other people about this well, and especially this episode
coming out during the holiday shopping season. We cannot underestimate
(56:04):
the power of our pocketbooks, even if we don't have
a ton of money. To spend. If you make a
decision to not support a particular store or brand because
of how they treat their employees, be loud about it.
Make it known, you know, organize a boycott. Uh. Companies
(56:27):
listen to where the money goes, and if the money
stops coming in, they'll probably maybe start paying attention. Um.
So this is this is an issue that is hugely
important year round because again, I mean, this is the
largest industry sector in the United States, millions and millions
(56:48):
and millions of people who are stuck in what seems
like a real economic trap. Um. And if this is not,
if this is not a reason and to treat retail
workers like humans and to just simply clean up after
yourself in your dressing rooms, even if you are in
(57:10):
a bustling h and m uh, then I don't know
it is so retail workers, let us know what's happening. UM.
I personally have never worked retail. I've worked fast food,
I've worked I've done domestic work, childcare, etcetera. But um,
retail has not been one of them. Caroline, have you
(57:32):
worked a retail job? I have not. Okay, so, folks,
we are speaking from inexperienced firsthand, So please Phillison let
us know all of your thoughts and for anyone who
has suggestions on political organizing, sent them our way. Mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast. You
(57:53):
can also directly reach out to Caroline and me. I'm
at Kristen Conger and I am at the Caroline and
We've got a couple of messages to share with you
right now. I have a letter here from Sam. She says,
I was writing in about your recent Genius episode and
(58:14):
it you talked a bit about how women who do
pursue science tend to gravitate towards the biological sciences, which
is something I noticed in college myself. I went to
rinse a Ler Polytechnic Institute and major to mechanical engineering.
As you can guess, it's primarily a technical engineering school,
but I noticed a strong divide among the women in
choice of major. The only biomedical engineering majors I knew
(58:37):
were women or gay men, while on the other hand,
I could count the number of women in my classes
on one hand out of say fifty or so people.
I always thought it was strange how women even today
still tend to gravitate towards the organic sciences and not
physics or computer science. Also would like to give a
shout out to all the women like myself not conforming
(58:57):
to stereotypical gender roles. Not only did I get my
BS and mechanical engineering, I went into the Navy as
a submarine officer and was part of the second or
so group of women stationed aboard U S submarines. I
now work in the commercial sector as a design engineer
for building automation, but just wanted any women out there
thinking about pursuing the science is to know it is
(59:18):
possible with some hard work and a little bit of genius.
So thanks Sam. I've got a letter here from Hannah
also about our episode on gender and genius, and she writes,
as a cancer biology PhD candidate, I love listening to
you two every day as I do science. The Boy
Geniuses episode struck a chord for me as I just
(59:40):
had a conversation with a brilliant professor the other day
about females and leadership positions in STEM. We've both observed
that women tend to hold positions of authority and have
a ton of responsibility, but not actually a lot of power.
I think this stems fun intended from the perception of
women and as responsible multitaskers as compared to men who
(01:00:03):
hold qualities like leadership and vision. Justin anecdotal observation from
a newly devoted listener, I'm hoping that a new generation
of informed and introspective scientists can lead the way in
changing our perception of who makes a great leader. Well,
thank you so much for that insight, Hannah, and thanks
to everybody who's written into us. Mom Stuff at how
(01:00:25):
stuff works dot com is our email address. And speaking
of email friends, I Kristen have started a tiny letter
in response to a lot of the stuff going on
in our post election society. It's called the Do Better
digest Um. So if you want to check that out,
(01:00:45):
you can subscribe at tiny letter dot com slash Kristen
and it's Kristen c R I S T E N.
Should be a good one and I hope to see there.
And for links to all of our social media as
well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts with
our sources so you can learn more about women and retail,
(01:01:08):
head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot
com for more on this, and thousands of other topics.
Visit how stuff works dot com.
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