Respect

The other day I was at my retail job folding a pile of clothes and minding my own business. Suddenly a woman and a whole herd of her children came tearing over, ripping through the piles I had just made. One of her eldest saw me and the slightly annoyed look on my face and realized how impolite they were being. She turned to her other siblings and asked them to please fold the clothes after they were done looking at them. Her mother quickly snapped back and said, “Don’t worry about it sweetie, that girl over there gets paid minimum wage to clean up after us!”

Shocked by her utter lack of manners and care for my feeling I just turned around and kept folding. In that moment that women and her children made me feel like nothing. Like all of my hard work meant nothing. Even though I was a hard working student, a good friend, a kind person none of that meant anything because my job wasn’t good enough.

Why are people allowed to treat other people this way? The worst part about seeing this behavior to me is that it is taught. Because this women is acting in such a disrespectful manner these children will think it is OK to talk to their teacher, friends, etc. this way.

Even though everyone assumes retail is easy, it can be a very difficult job. We are all human and all have bad days so it is difficult to constantly deal with angry, confused, and disrespectful shoppers.

People assume that just because some people get paid more, are better looking, or live in a wealthier area we should treat them better. That is just not true! Everyone deserves to be treated with the same level of kindness and respect.