November 24, 2018 • 63 mins
Retail is America's largest employment sector that often treats its low-wage workforce worse than an H&M sales rack. Cristen and Caroline explain why.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff Mom
never told you. So. Is after Thanksgiving here in the
United States, which means naturally shopping, right. What better time
(00:28):
to shop than when you're stuffed to the brim with food.
When I was in high school, I used to work
on Black Friday, which if you don't know, is I'm
sure you probably do, but if you don't, it's this
big shopping day after Thanksgiving in the United States. Um.
And I worked at Osh Gosh Bagosh sells baby clothes,
and I would get there around eleven PM the day
(00:51):
of Thanksgiving and I would work until probably eight am,
I think. And I got to see a lot of
very frustrated shoppers not believing me when I said, no,
we do not have any more of whatever size that
you want in the back. People refuse to believe that. Um.
If they insisted, I would go to the back, which
literally had nothing nothing, and I would sit for a minute,
(01:12):
drink some coffee, check my phone, and I would go
back out and tell them, yes, I checked, but there's
no more in that size. And then my friend who
she she worked with me, we would go to iye Hoop.
We lived in a small town so our options are remanded.
And she would deliriously tell me her sister was going
to steal her hashgrowns. That seriously happened more than once.
(01:35):
She did not handle lack of sleep well. Um. And
Black Friday is something that my mom and I enjoyed
when I was young, um in a very low key
type of way. But the situation for retail workers in
the United States is not great, and it's a conversation
we wanted to revive and revisit in this classic episode.
(01:55):
I hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told
you from how stupp 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
(02:18):
this podcast, the holiday season is upon us, which means
'tis the season for shop until you drop in? 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,
(02:40):
I just can't do it. 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 are congregating in the stores,
(03:01):
They're not walking fast enough, 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. Right, everybody's shopping for those bargains. You've got
(03:22):
Black Friday deals. But imagine, Caroline, 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
(03:45):
okay one time, um, but imagine having to do that
avery day. Um. And if you are a part time
retail worker, full time retail already things are stressful, and
then the holidays just ramp it up. And of course
(04:08):
every year seasonal retail workers 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 Prime to the mall.
(04:34):
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 were yelling at you as
if things are your fault when you are the floor walker. UM,
(04:54):
Messy customers, people again, throwing merchandise. It seems like I
mean you and I. Chris and I've 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 neither does the person behind
(05:16):
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 people really pushing those credit cards,
(05:39):
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 not making very much money to
(06:00):
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. And I didn't realize this,
(06:20):
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 a year median and
(06:42):
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 in management,
it's really really tough, especially if you are a woman,
(07:03):
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 nine percent were
promoted to store manager over a ten year period. So
(07:26):
tailors 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 cashier jobs and even just the salesperson jobs. Yeah,
and this kind of reminds me of the episode we
(07:47):
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 one in five are the soul breadwinners
(08:09):
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 also there's the issue that
(08:30):
of retail workers receive their schedules a week or less
in advance, which that's great for the employer they can
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, their own holiday shopping, just so
(08:52):
many other things that can really put your life into
a tailspin if you can't even plan like a couple
of days in advance. And I would are you 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, you know, because once you get
(09:14):
to uh, 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 be paid over time, for employees
(09:36):
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.
(09:56):
So because when you 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
(10:19):
a 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.
(10:42):
And 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 widens um,
which seems counterintuity, but this is another example of that
(11:02):
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
(11:23):
harken 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,
(11:43):
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. But I can't wait till Yeah,
I'm just and a guilt everybody at Thanksgiving. The world's
first department store opened in seventeen nineties six. It was
(12:08):
called 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,
furs and fans. Haberdashery. I'm sorry, I literally don't know
how to say that word without saying it like that
(12:28):
jewelry and clocks and millinery. Yeah. I like that they
have 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,
(12:49):
I would imagine, would be safe for the ladies to
go in and look at all their their BIMs and
bobs and ribbons and what what's not and things with
the feathers. Yes, and for the men folk to be
able to safely go over and smoke their cigars and
look at the their fedoras. Um. And like you said,
(13:09):
the first retail clerks, we're guys, uh. And these were
men who operated and 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
(13:31):
me if anyone out there has watched Deadwood of the
hardware store, that the two main 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
(13:55):
the Wild West, the Frontier. No prostitutes 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
(14:16):
the penny candies and the ribbons. And I want to
say that they also slept above 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
(14:39):
to know what changed everything, the same thing that changed
everything for white women in employment outside 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
(14:59):
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, 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
(15:20):
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 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
(15:43):
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 up, and it's deemed inappropriate
for for women to be clerks. Snobs called them counterhoppers,
(16:06):
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 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
(16:26):
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 ladies were like, now y'all,
we're going to meet here too, and they got together
to figure out how to improve employment options for women,
(16:48):
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 be come shop assistant. She said, why
should bearded men be employed to sell ribbon lace and handkerchiefs,
which to me just echoes our advertising Women in Advertising
(17:11):
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 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
(17:33):
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 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
(17:56):
go to 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 often was, and
shopping was really not an enjoyable process. All these somber
men working as clerks, right, And that was another argument
to get women working as clerks, because you know, ladies
(18:20):
like ladies, right, Ladies can probably sell better too. Ladies.
Are we not kind of touching on emotional labor here? Sure?
Codling 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
(18:41):
considered rude or a bad employee. Well, because well before
the ladies of lang in Place got together at ye
oldie Starbucks, the guy that the department store magnate and
his name is escaping me right now, um had already
come up with the philosophy of the customer always being right.
(19:03):
So that was already ingrained. And that also establishes this
class system that 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
(19:24):
retail although some stores hired more than others. But what
was driving a 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.
(19:44):
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 are cheaper. And here we're still talking about
white women though, true, true, true, And so if you
look at eighteen ninety, about one in fifty sales people
were women. By ninety though that was one in sixteen. Um.
(20:09):
But things were not rosy. It wasn't like there was
some like lady utopia behind the counter 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 poop, you know, trying on different
(20:30):
coursets and fainting into each other's arms. Um. And for
listeners who have have or are are right now working
in retail, hell, can you imagine not only having that
job but also having that job responsible for your housing.
(20:51):
So and this makes me think of one of my
best friends who for a very long time worked at
American Apparel and who all, she's got some stories 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 do Jerry
(21:15):
would probably be laying in wait up. But that's kind
of the situation. So especially for a lot of 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
(21:36):
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 female flight attendants
had to live in stewardess dormitories. And that major league
paternalistic move was also really money grubbing on the part
(21:58):
of these shop owners because while they did require the
women to live in these dorms, they also required them
to pay rent, but the rent 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
(22:20):
sequestered in these highly regulated dorms was to manage morality. Yeah.
But the thing is, 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,
(22:40):
and so you start to see this association. It was
already such a scandalous thing to have women needing to
work work outside the home, and no less in a
job that required them to interact with all sorts of people. Um,
but that's when you really see the strong association between
the scandal of having women work as uh, shop ladies
(23:03):
or shop girls and assuming that they're all sex workers
or prostitutes. Well, because a lot of them had to
turn to sex 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 Uh.
In that BBC series which will link to in the
(23:24):
source post 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, 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
(23:50):
to the US, the thing is as deplorable as these
situations kind of were. And I'm not sure how often
uh 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
(24:11):
these jobs still tended to pay more than domestic labor
and manufacturing work, which if you are 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
(24:33):
a factory. At least we're not in a factory. But
that doesn't mean the 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,
(25:00):
the conditions were so physically punishing that they prompted Nellie
Bli 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
(25:20):
nicknamed the standing evil because they tended to develop anemia
and consumption. 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.
(25:43):
They can take a break for a second. But unfortunately
the bustle stick never caught on. Yeah, I think you
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 a lean and perch. I I
am heading straight to Ori e I and asking do
(26:03):
you have a bustle where the bustle sticks women, Um, well, yeah,
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
(26:24):
disrespect if they saw any of these shop girls sitting down.
Oh yeah, I mean it's heaped in, steeped in classism. Uh.
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
(26:45):
supervisors Lady Go Macy's. But Macy's also did not allow
sitting and considered what they called unnecessary conversations grounds for firing. Yeah.
I mean, like they adim on a short leash. Don't
be too chick addie, as one boss told me when
I was right out of college. Um. And it is funny,
(27:06):
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 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
(27:29):
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 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,
(27:53):
ye oldies. Sales ladies would be happy to hear them.
But you know, I don't call like, if I see
a woman who's about my age working at Best buy
or or or a jay 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 Bram measurements. Sales ladies. Yeah, exactly. My
(28:16):
mother was a sales lady. She worked at Coldwater Creek
part time to supplement her flight attendant income slash have
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
(28:37):
them on, because if you want to hear a bunch
of women complain about you, be the person who leaves
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
(28:59):
all do. That was something on the Reddit thread where
especially if someone is wearing a name tag, uh, they're like,
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
(29:20):
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 try something on, the person says, oh, okay, I'm Belinda,
I immediately forget Belenda's name. I know, and immediately, but
after this episode, I'm going to remember Belenda. You're just
(29:43):
everyone's gonna become Blenda now. But in retail workers listening,
let me know, am I just like overblowing this because
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
(30:04):
to our history. Women at this time, even though they
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
(30:28):
of just across the industry to be dead end workers
because men were always hired as clerks with the implicit
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, we're just
(30:49):
kinda churned through them. Um, No One, No one considered
an employment ladder for women at the time. I think
the one exception that we could cite, or one of
the exceptions that we could say it would be buyers.
A lot of women did start out as shop girls,
and we're able to work. When I say a lot,
(31:09):
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
styles in. And a lot of that goes back to
to the attitude that we sited 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,
(31:32):
why don't we get women in here who know how
women want to dress themselves and have them uh set
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
(31:53):
like they hired a bunch of women and were like,
and now we're going to educate you at college for
this exact thing, right, because more often than not, 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
(32:14):
plenty of them. They're cheap. Just bring them in and
toss them out. So we should remake the expendables, uh
and have it just be shop girl nine century British
shop Girls. Yeah, 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
(32:39):
women of color. That's because the history of black sales
ladies 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 these Civil War
(33:09):
man 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 to white women.
(33:32):
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 by jan
(33:52):
Whittaker called Service and Style, How the American Department Store
Fashioned 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 stores swapping them out
(34:16):
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 a
c P, for instance, initiated a don't buy where you
(34:38):
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 hire us. No. And women were very
(34:58):
instrumental in or 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, did afford some black people more
(35:22):
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 there were arguments though around and after World War
(35:44):
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, so we why wouldn't we hire them
as as retail workers. But to put some numbers around
that benevolent racism, shall we call it? A nine New
(36:07):
York retail customer survey found that most white people were
fine with black sales people if they had light enough skin,
but of them did not want them touching clothing, lingerie,
or food. So no, we're actually not We're not fine
(36:29):
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. As long as they weren't visible,
(36:51):
then okay, maybe we will hire you. UM. Store owners
were genuinely 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 to come in, UM, and that would
(37:14):
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 customers and retail um who would go
into wide establishments and be treated like second class citizens.
(37:40):
But well, I mean that's 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 owned businesses because literally those were the
only safe spaces wore them to shop. Now, once we
(38:02):
get to the late nineteen fifties and early sixties with
a civil rights movement, we do see protests ramping up
against racist hiring practices, targeting the largest department stores. Um.
And you do start to see the dial moving a
little bit. In ninety eight, the New York State Commission
against Discrimination kind of padded itself on the back because
(38:25):
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
out of how many, I mean, it still has to
be a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage. And so you know
(38:45):
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 failings wars. Stores that weren't seeing as
much customer traffic anyway, UM, or they were not getting
(39:07):
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
women to work with furniture. Oh, it's big and heavy
and dusty, and the same ended up applying to black
(39:30):
people in general. But certainly not for 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, we have to acknowledge the crucial importance
(39:51):
of lunch counter desegregation that was going on because a
lot of these were in department stores. So you have
this combination of civil rights prot tests and pocketbook boycott's
and lunch counter desegregation. UM. That is opening the space
up slowly but surely, and no surprise, White owned stores
(40:13):
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 saleswoman in a not black owned store. Yeah,
(40:41):
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
(41:06):
with everything we've 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,
(41:26):
you have 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, Sephora, Zara, Barney's, CVS,
(41:50):
Best Buy, Ross, Walgreen's, Hollister, Um. All of these stores
have gotten in trouble for issues of racial profiling and
not to mention to 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, who reported that
(42:14):
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 aren't great at Walmart either. In ten John Crawford,
(42:37):
the third was shot at in Ohio Walmart by security
guards just because he picked up a baby 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 those stories a couple of
(42:57):
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
(43:18):
often face as customers in retail stores. And Gallop Pole
found that cent of black respondents felt they'd 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.
(43:42):
Because we've already talked about the gendered siloing of low
income jobs in retail. Well, once you toss race and
ethnicity into the mix, it gets even worse, as it
often does hashtag intersectionality. Yeah, retail is the second largest
source of jobs for Black Americans, and it's one of
(44:04):
the largest sources of new employment across the United States.
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
(44:26):
hidge job? Right, So it ended up going to the
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.
(44:47):
And like I said, the Supreme Court ruled in her favor.
Abercrombie has long had a reputation though for UH presenting
a very white, very lusionary 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.
(45:09):
I've also seen this where they've got the sales gimmicks
with the white chiseled guys in and next to nothing
standing outside and just all of that just body spray
just coming at you so much, so much. Body spread
a headache just walking past from Abercrombie. But I'm even
surprised at aberca ominous Honestly, side that, I'm surprised at
(45:30):
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
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,
(45:54):
they are likelier to be among the working poor. Uh So,
like the overall retail workforce, a majority of black and
Latino retail workers do have some education post high school
and about a third or parents. But seventeen percent of
black retail workers and of Latino or Latina retail workers
(46:16):
live below the poverty line, compared to just nine percent
of the overall workforce, and they have fewer opportunities 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
(46:40):
wage gap. And again this is coming from research conducted
jointly by Demos and the Double a CP finding that
black and Latin X full time cashiers are nine pcent
of what white cashiers do, which translates to about loss
of eight dollars now full time sales people. Though it
(47:05):
gets even worse. That gap is twenty White people make
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,
(47:31):
and the cashier wage gap, meanwhile, is 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 about protecting Americans,
(47:56):
working for Americans, wanting to uh 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 make sure that
(48:19):
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
(48:39):
in terms of the part time work, again, 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
(49:00):
lack of benefits that you would get as a full
time worker. Then you have to deal 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
(49:24):
your schedule, um as little as a 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
(49:47):
these people are childcare elder care, 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 searched for better work
because you don't know when you're gonna be working at
(50:09):
the job you have right now. 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
(50:31):
five cents an hour, folks, that is not a living wage,
especially 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.
(50:55):
Oh okay, well, um, maybe big retailers can hop on
paying their workers the 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
(51:17):
about what exactly is the living wage for you where
you live in work h 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
(51:38):
course what you 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
be the ones paying for these you know, these ex
(52:00):
urban in salaries that are essentially subsistence, 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,
(52:20):
we worked hard for our money. Yeah. Well, uh, This
Berkeley study crunched the numbers and found that if Walmart,
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
(52:42):
I mean, I don't know, caroline cents that could buy you,
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,
(53:04):
that siloing of people of color and also women 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
(53:25):
checks on a lot of your employees who are already
the working poor, it is just automatically disqualifying so many
of them for circumstances that they themselves cannot help. And
another thing that employers could and come on should do
(53:48):
is to ensure more stable hours and predictable schedules. I mean,
letting people know what they're going to be 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
(54:12):
care of their personal life stuff, but enable them to
miss less work. Right, it seems that way, absolutely, 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
(54:33):
like a simple fix, But I'm curious to know in
reality why it is such a juggling act? What 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
(54:55):
a similar kind of thing, And UM, I wonder if
it has to do with target sales being reached 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,
(55:15):
I mean, it just it does seem unnecessarily cruel, and
yet it's so common. Um. And while the federal initiatives
that could potentially happen uh seem really sad to think
about at the moment because of the recent election and
(55:36):
how sort of anti working poor. UM, I would argue
a lot of the politicians now in power seemed to
be we do have bright spots, wonderful champions like Senator
Elizabeth Warren who has sponsored the Schedules that Work Act.
(55:59):
She has in reduced 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 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.
(56:23):
Dial up your local reps, dial up your congressional representatives,
tell them that you want to see the schedules that
Work 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,
(56:44):
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 for
retail workers in particular, they are often so powerless because
they're they're not unionized. And when I mean, I know
(57:06):
that unions are. There's a lot of politics that goes
on in that a lot of it's a very polarized thing.
But when workers aren't organized and they're already marginalized, it
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.
(57:29):
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
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.
(57:50):
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 can not
underestimate the power of our pocketbooks, even if we don't
have a ton of money to spend. If you make
(58:10):
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
listen to where the money goes, and if the money
stops coming in, they'll probably maybe start paying attention. UM.
(58:32):
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
and millions of people who are stuck in what seems
like a real economic trap. Um. And if this is
(58:54):
not if this is not a reason to treat retail
workers like humans and to just simply clean up after
yourself in your dressing rooms, even if you are in
a bustling h and m uh, then I don't know
what is so retail workers, let us know what's happening. Um,
(59:17):
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
worked a retail job? I have not. Okay, So, folks,
we are speaking from inexperienced firsthand. So please Phillison let
(59:37):
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
can also directly reach out to Caroline and me. I'm
at Kristen Conger and I am at the Caroline herv
and we've got a couple of messages to share with you. Now.
(01:00:05):
I have a letter here from Sam. She says, I
was writing in about your recent Genius episode and 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 Rinselaer
Polytechnic Institute and major to mechanical engineering. As you can guess,
it's primarily a technical engineering school, but I noticed a
(01:00:28):
strong divide among the women in choice of major. The
only biomedical engineering majors I knew 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 toward
the organic sciences and not physics or computer science. Also
(01:00:51):
would like to give a shout out to all the
women like myself not conforming 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
(01:01:11):
wanted any women out there thinking about pursuing the science
is to know it is 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 too every
(01:01:32):
day as I do science. The Boy Geniuses episode struck
a chord for me, as I just 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
(01:01:52):
stems fun intended from the perception of women as responsible
multitaskers as compared to men who 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
(01:02:13):
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 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 this stuff going on in our post election society.
(01:02:37):
It's called the Do Better digest Um, So if you
want to check that out, 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
(01:02:58):
our blogs, videos and pod has with our sources so
you can learn more about women and retail, head on
over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff Works dot com
Hey, this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff Mom
never told you. So. Is after Thanksgiving here in the
United States, which means naturally shopping, right. What better time
(00:28):
to shop than when you're stuffed to the brim with food.
When I was in high school, I used to work
on Black Friday, which if you don't know, is I'm
sure you probably do, but if you don't, it's this
big shopping day after Thanksgiving in the United States. Um.
And I worked at Osh Gosh Bagosh sells baby clothes,
and I would get there around eleven PM the day
(00:51):
of Thanksgiving and I would work until probably eight am,
I think. And I got to see a lot of
very frustrated shoppers not believing me when I said, no,
we do not have any more of whatever size that
you want in the back. People refuse to believe that. Um.
If they insisted, I would go to the back, which
literally had nothing nothing, and I would sit for a minute,
(01:12):
drink some coffee, check my phone, and I would go
back out and tell them, yes, I checked, but there's
no more in that size. And then my friend who
she she worked with me, we would go to iye Hoop.
We lived in a small town so our options are remanded.
And she would deliriously tell me her sister was going
to steal her hashgrowns. That seriously happened more than once.
(01:35):
She did not handle lack of sleep well. Um. And
Black Friday is something that my mom and I enjoyed
when I was young, um in a very low key
type of way. But the situation for retail workers in
the United States is not great, and it's a conversation
we wanted to revive and revisit in this classic episode.
(01:55):
I hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told
you from how stupp 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
(02:18):
this podcast, the holiday season is upon us, which means
'tis the season for shop until you drop in? 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,
(02:40):
I just can't do it. 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 are congregating in the stores,
(03:01):
They're not walking fast enough, 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. Right, everybody's shopping for those bargains. You've got
(03:22):
Black Friday deals. But imagine, Caroline, 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
(03:45):
okay one time, um, but imagine having to do that
avery day. Um. And if you are a part time
retail worker, full time retail already things are stressful, and
then the holidays just ramp it up. And of course
(04:08):
every year seasonal retail workers 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 Prime to the mall.
(04:34):
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 were yelling at you as
if things are your fault when you are the floor walker. UM,
(04:54):
Messy customers, people again, throwing merchandise. It seems like I
mean you and I. Chris and I've 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 neither does the person behind
(05:16):
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 people really pushing those credit cards,
(05:39):
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 not making very much money to
(06:00):
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. And I didn't realize this,
(06:20):
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 a year median and
(06:42):
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 in management,
it's really really tough, especially if you are a woman,
(07:03):
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 nine percent were
promoted to store manager over a ten year period. So
(07:26):
tailors 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 cashier jobs and even just the salesperson jobs. Yeah,
and this kind of reminds me of the episode we
(07:47):
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 one in five are the soul breadwinners
(08:09):
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 also there's the issue that
(08:30):
of retail workers receive their schedules a week or less
in advance, which that's great for the employer they can
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, their own holiday shopping, just so
(08:52):
many other things that can really put your life into
a tailspin if you can't even plan like a couple
of days in advance. And I would are you 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, you know, because once you get
(09:14):
to uh, 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 be paid over time, for employees
(09:36):
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.
(09:56):
So because when you 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
(10:19):
a 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.
(10:42):
And 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 widens um,
which seems counterintuity, but this is another example of that
(11:02):
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
(11:23):
harken 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,
(11:43):
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. But I can't wait till Yeah,
I'm just and a guilt everybody at Thanksgiving. The world's
first department store opened in seventeen nineties six. It was
(12:08):
called 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,
furs and fans. Haberdashery. I'm sorry, I literally don't know
how to say that word without saying it like that
(12:28):
jewelry and clocks and millinery. Yeah. I like that they
have 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,
(12:49):
I would imagine, would be safe for the ladies to
go in and look at all their their BIMs and
bobs and ribbons and what what's not and things with
the feathers. Yes, and for the men folk to be
able to safely go over and smoke their cigars and
look at the their fedoras. Um. And like you said,
(13:09):
the first retail clerks, we're guys, uh. And these were
men who operated and 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
(13:31):
me if anyone out there has watched Deadwood of the
hardware store, that the two main 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
(13:55):
the Wild West, the Frontier. No prostitutes 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
(14:16):
the penny candies and the ribbons. And I want to
say that they also slept above 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
(14:39):
to know what changed everything, the same thing that changed
everything for white women in employment outside 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
(14:59):
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, 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
(15:20):
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 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
(15:43):
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 up, and it's deemed inappropriate
for for women to be clerks. Snobs called them counterhoppers,
(16:06):
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 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
(16:26):
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 ladies were like, now y'all,
we're going to meet here too, and they got together
to figure out how to improve employment options for women,
(16:48):
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 be come shop assistant. She said, why
should bearded men be employed to sell ribbon lace and handkerchiefs,
which to me just echoes our advertising Women in Advertising
(17:11):
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 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
(17:33):
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 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
(17:56):
go to 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 often was, and
shopping was really not an enjoyable process. All these somber
men working as clerks, right, And that was another argument
to get women working as clerks, because you know, ladies
(18:20):
like ladies, right, Ladies can probably sell better too. Ladies.
Are we not kind of touching on emotional labor here? Sure?
Codling 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
(18:41):
considered rude or a bad employee. Well, because well before
the ladies of lang in Place got together at ye
oldie Starbucks, the guy that the department store magnate and
his name is escaping me right now, um had already
come up with the philosophy of the customer always being right.
(19:03):
So that was already ingrained. And that also establishes this
class system that 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
(19:24):
retail although some stores hired more than others. But what
was driving a 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.
(19:44):
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 are cheaper. And here we're still talking about
white women though, true, true, true, And so if you
look at eighteen ninety, about one in fifty sales people
were women. By ninety though that was one in sixteen. Um.
(20:09):
But things were not rosy. It wasn't like there was
some like lady utopia behind the counter 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 poop, you know, trying on different
(20:30):
coursets and fainting into each other's arms. Um. And for
listeners who have have or are are right now working
in retail, hell, can you imagine not only having that
job but also having that job responsible for your housing.
(20:51):
So and this makes me think of one of my
best friends who for a very long time worked at
American Apparel and who all, she's got some stories 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 do Jerry
(21:15):
would probably be laying in wait up. But that's kind
of the situation. So especially for a lot of 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
(21:36):
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 female flight attendants
had to live in stewardess dormitories. And that major league
paternalistic move was also really money grubbing on the part
(21:58):
of these shop owners because while they did require the
women to live in these dorms, they also required them
to pay rent, but the rent 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
(22:20):
sequestered in these highly regulated dorms was to manage morality. Yeah.
But the thing is, 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,
(22:40):
and so you start to see this association. It was
already such a scandalous thing to have women needing to
work work outside the home, and no less in a
job that required them to interact with all sorts of people. Um,
but that's when you really see the strong association between
the scandal of having women work as uh, shop ladies
(23:03):
or shop girls and assuming that they're all sex workers
or prostitutes. Well, because a lot of them had to
turn to sex 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 Uh.
In that BBC series which will link to in the
(23:24):
source post 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, 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
(23:50):
to the US, the thing is as deplorable as these
situations kind of were. And I'm not sure how often
uh 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
(24:11):
these jobs still tended to pay more than domestic labor
and manufacturing work, which if you are 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
(24:33):
a factory. At least we're not in a factory. But
that doesn't mean the 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,
(25:00):
the conditions were so physically punishing that they prompted Nellie
Bli 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
(25:20):
nicknamed the standing evil because they tended to develop anemia
and consumption. 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.
(25:43):
They can take a break for a second. But unfortunately
the bustle stick never caught on. Yeah, I think you
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 a lean and perch. I I
am heading straight to Ori e I and asking do
(26:03):
you have a bustle where the bustle sticks women, Um, well, yeah,
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
(26:24):
disrespect if they saw any of these shop girls sitting down.
Oh yeah, I mean it's heaped in, steeped in classism. Uh.
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
(26:45):
supervisors Lady Go Macy's. But Macy's also did not allow
sitting and considered what they called unnecessary conversations grounds for firing. Yeah.
I mean, like they adim on a short leash. Don't
be too chick addie, as one boss told me when
I was right out of college. Um. And it is funny,
(27:06):
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 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
(27:29):
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 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,
(27:53):
ye oldies. Sales ladies would be happy to hear them.
But you know, I don't call like, if I see
a woman who's about my age working at Best buy
or or or a jay 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 Bram measurements. Sales ladies. Yeah, exactly. My
(28:16):
mother was a sales lady. She worked at Coldwater Creek
part time to supplement her flight attendant income slash have
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
(28:37):
them on, because if you want to hear a bunch
of women complain about you, be the person who leaves
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
(28:59):
all do. That was something on the Reddit thread where
especially if someone is wearing a name tag, uh, they're like,
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
(29:20):
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 try something on, the person says, oh, okay, I'm Belinda,
I immediately forget Belenda's name. I know, and immediately, but
after this episode, I'm going to remember Belenda. You're just
(29:43):
everyone's gonna become Blenda now. But in retail workers listening,
let me know, am I just like overblowing this because
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
(30:04):
to our history. Women at this time, even though they
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
(30:28):
of just across the industry to be dead end workers
because men were always hired as clerks with the implicit
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, we're just
(30:49):
kinda churned through them. Um, No One, No one considered
an employment ladder for women at the time. I think
the one exception that we could cite, or one of
the exceptions that we could say it would be buyers.
A lot of women did start out as shop girls,
and we're able to work. When I say a lot,
(31:09):
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
styles in. And a lot of that goes back to
to the attitude that we sited 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,
(31:32):
why don't we get women in here who know how
women want to dress themselves and have them uh set
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
(31:53):
like they hired a bunch of women and were like,
and now we're going to educate you at college for
this exact thing, right, because more often than not, 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
(32:14):
plenty of them. They're cheap. Just bring them in and
toss them out. So we should remake the expendables, uh
and have it just be shop girl nine century British
shop Girls. Yeah, 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
(32:39):
women of color. That's because the history of black sales
ladies 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 these Civil War
(33:09):
man 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 to white women.
(33:32):
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 by jan
(33:52):
Whittaker called Service and Style, How the American Department Store
Fashioned 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 stores swapping them out
(34:16):
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 a
c P, for instance, initiated a don't buy where you
(34:38):
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 hire us. No. And women were very
(34:58):
instrumental in or 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, did afford some black people more
(35:22):
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 there were arguments though around and after World War
(35:44):
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, so we why wouldn't we hire them
as as retail workers. But to put some numbers around
that benevolent racism, shall we call it? A nine New
(36:07):
York retail customer survey found that most white people were
fine with black sales people if they had light enough skin,
but of them did not want them touching clothing, lingerie,
or food. So no, we're actually not We're not fine
(36:29):
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. As long as they weren't visible,
(36:51):
then okay, maybe we will hire you. UM. Store owners
were genuinely 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 to come in, UM, and that would
(37:14):
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 customers and retail um who would go
into wide establishments and be treated like second class citizens.
(37:40):
But well, I mean that's 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 owned businesses because literally those were the
only safe spaces wore them to shop. Now, once we
(38:02):
get to the late nineteen fifties and early sixties with
a civil rights movement, we do see protests ramping up
against racist hiring practices, targeting the largest department stores. Um.
And you do start to see the dial moving a
little bit. In ninety eight, the New York State Commission
against Discrimination kind of padded itself on the back because
(38:25):
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
out of how many, I mean, it still has to
be a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage. And so you know
(38:45):
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 failings wars. Stores that weren't seeing as
much customer traffic anyway, UM, or they were not getting
(39:07):
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
women to work with furniture. Oh, it's big and heavy
and dusty, and the same ended up applying to black
(39:30):
people in general. But certainly not for 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, we have to acknowledge the crucial importance
(39:51):
of lunch counter desegregation that was going on because a
lot of these were in department stores. So you have
this combination of civil rights prot tests and pocketbook boycott's
and lunch counter desegregation. UM. That is opening the space
up slowly but surely, and no surprise, White owned stores
(40:13):
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 saleswoman in a not black owned store. Yeah,
(40:41):
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
(41:06):
with everything we've 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,
(41:26):
you have 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, Sephora, Zara, Barney's, CVS,
(41:50):
Best Buy, Ross, Walgreen's, Hollister, Um. All of these stores
have gotten in trouble for issues of racial profiling and
not to mention to 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, who reported that
(42:14):
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 aren't great at Walmart either. In ten John Crawford,
(42:37):
the third was shot at in Ohio Walmart by security
guards just because he picked up a baby 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 those stories a couple of
(42:57):
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
(43:18):
often face as customers in retail stores. And Gallop Pole
found that cent of black respondents felt they'd 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.
(43:42):
Because we've already talked about the gendered siloing of low
income jobs in retail. Well, once you toss race and
ethnicity into the mix, it gets even worse, as it
often does hashtag intersectionality. Yeah, retail is the second largest
source of jobs for Black Americans, and it's one of
(44:04):
the largest sources of new employment across the United States.
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
(44:26):
hidge job? Right, So it ended up going to the
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.
(44:47):
And like I said, the Supreme Court ruled in her favor.
Abercrombie has long had a reputation though for UH presenting
a very white, very lusionary 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.
(45:09):
I've also seen this where they've got the sales gimmicks
with the white chiseled guys in and next to nothing
standing outside and just all of that just body spray
just coming at you so much, so much. Body spread
a headache just walking past from Abercrombie. But I'm even
surprised at aberca ominous Honestly, side that, I'm surprised at
(45:30):
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
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,
(45:54):
they are likelier to be among the working poor. Uh So,
like the overall retail workforce, a majority of black and
Latino retail workers do have some education post high school
and about a third or parents. But seventeen percent of
black retail workers and of Latino or Latina retail workers
(46:16):
live below the poverty line, compared to just nine percent
of the overall workforce, and they have fewer opportunities 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
(46:40):
wage gap. And again this is coming from research conducted
jointly by Demos and the Double a CP finding that
black and Latin X full time cashiers are nine pcent
of what white cashiers do, which translates to about loss
of eight dollars now full time sales people. Though it
(47:05):
gets even worse. That gap is twenty White people make
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,
(47:31):
and the cashier wage gap, meanwhile, is 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 about protecting Americans,
(47:56):
working for Americans, wanting to uh 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 make sure that
(48:19):
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
(48:39):
in terms of the part time work, again, 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
(49:00):
lack of benefits that you would get as a full
time worker. Then you have to deal 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
(49:24):
your schedule, um as little as a 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
(49:47):
these people are childcare elder care, 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 searched for better work
because you don't know when you're gonna be working at
(50:09):
the job you have right now. 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
(50:31):
five cents an hour, folks, that is not a living wage,
especially 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.
(50:55):
Oh okay, well, um, maybe big retailers can hop on
paying their workers the 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
(51:17):
about what exactly is the living wage for you where
you live in work h 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
(51:38):
course what you 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
be the ones paying for these you know, these ex
(52:00):
urban in salaries that are essentially subsistence, 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,
(52:20):
we worked hard for our money. Yeah. Well, uh, This
Berkeley study crunched the numbers and found that if Walmart,
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
(52:42):
I mean, I don't know, caroline cents that could buy you,
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,
(53:04):
that siloing of people of color and also women 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
(53:25):
checks on a lot of your employees who are already
the working poor, it is just automatically disqualifying so many
of them for circumstances that they themselves cannot help. And
another thing that employers could and come on should do
(53:48):
is to ensure more stable hours and predictable schedules. I mean,
letting people know what they're going to be 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
(54:12):
care of their personal life stuff, but enable them to
miss less work. Right, it seems that way, absolutely, 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
(54:33):
like a simple fix, But I'm curious to know in
reality why it is such a juggling act? What 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
(54:55):
a similar kind of thing, And UM, I wonder if
it has to do with target sales being reached 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,
(55:15):
I mean, it just it does seem unnecessarily cruel, and
yet it's so common. Um. And while the federal initiatives
that could potentially happen uh seem really sad to think
about at the moment because of the recent election and
(55:36):
how sort of anti working poor. UM, I would argue
a lot of the politicians now in power seemed to
be we do have bright spots, wonderful champions like Senator
Elizabeth Warren who has sponsored the Schedules that Work Act.
(55:59):
She has in reduced 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 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.
(56:23):
Dial up your local reps, dial up your congressional representatives,
tell them that you want to see the schedules that
Work 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,
(56:44):
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 for
retail workers in particular, they are often so powerless because
they're they're not unionized. And when I mean, I know
(57:06):
that unions are. There's a lot of politics that goes
on in that a lot of it's a very polarized thing.
But when workers aren't organized and they're already marginalized, it
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.
(57:29):
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
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.
(57:50):
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 can not
underestimate the power of our pocketbooks, even if we don't
have a ton of money to spend. If you make
(58:10):
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
listen to where the money goes, and if the money
stops coming in, they'll probably maybe start paying attention. UM.
(58:32):
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
and millions of people who are stuck in what seems
like a real economic trap. Um. And if this is
(58:54):
not if this is not a reason to treat retail
workers like humans and to just simply clean up after
yourself in your dressing rooms, even if you are in
a bustling h and m uh, then I don't know
what is so retail workers, let us know what's happening. Um,
(59:17):
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
worked a retail job? I have not. Okay, So, folks,
we are speaking from inexperienced firsthand. So please Phillison let
(59:37):
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
can also directly reach out to Caroline and me. I'm
at Kristen Conger and I am at the Caroline herv
and we've got a couple of messages to share with you. Now.
(01:00:05):
I have a letter here from Sam. She says, I
was writing in about your recent Genius episode and 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 Rinselaer
Polytechnic Institute and major to mechanical engineering. As you can guess,
it's primarily a technical engineering school, but I noticed a
(01:00:28):
strong divide among the women in choice of major. The
only biomedical engineering majors I knew 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 toward
the organic sciences and not physics or computer science. Also
(01:00:51):
would like to give a shout out to all the
women like myself not conforming 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
(01:01:11):
wanted any women out there thinking about pursuing the science
is to know it is 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 too every
(01:01:32):
day as I do science. The Boy Geniuses episode struck
a chord for me, as I just 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
(01:01:52):
stems fun intended from the perception of women as responsible
multitaskers as compared to men who 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
(01:02:13):
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 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 this stuff going on in our post election society.
(01:02:37):
It's called the Do Better digest Um, So if you
want to check that out, 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
(01:02:58):
our blogs, videos and pod has with our sources so
you can learn more about women and retail, head on
over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff Works dot com
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