The Working World: A Life Centred Around Earning for the Powerful

by sentient6082

I once made the mistake of working for a big business. I think everybody makes that mistake at least once in their life; be it as a lowly retail worker, or a managing director. Though, when I reflect on it, I realise that I learnt an extraordinary thing. Working in business cemented my beliefs about power structures in society. I’ve read a lot of books imploring me to reassess my place in society, and they had a great effect on me. Though, when I think back to my work in a business, those ideas have never seemed so translatable to the practical world.

My place in the business world was that of a lowly retail worker. Many will argue that I have no knowledge of the way that business works or the London professional culture. I argue that retail work gives one unique perspective over not only business and capitalist construction, but also humanity. When I was a retail worker, I was the bottom rung of the social ladder. When you’re on minimum wage the powerful don’t care about your experience in their business, because you’re entirely powerless. If you ever want to understand how much power corrupts people, interview a retail worker. Sadly, every retail worker will have a story. Yet, the base of a business rests entirely upon the front line worker. If every minimum wage retail employee stopped selling warranty and refused to work, then the business that they represent would fail within a few months. Thus, there is a question of how powerless we are in numbers.

I remember that I used to wake up when the sun woke up, I rushed down some breakfast, forced wash etc. Then I would make the journey to work, be briefed, and led to my position for the day (you will never meet a more multi-talented person than the retail worker, we could work in several positions in the store). I was given targets to reach for the week in how much warranty I sold and how many store cards I sold to customers, who I might add, were only there to purchase products. If I didn’t reach these targets then I was berated by the chain and whip of the management team who offered nothing practical apart from the look of a person who has been in the retail world for far too long. The problem of this was that I would sometimes get upwards of £100 in terms of insurance, based on my lowly minimum wage, I wouldn’t earn that in a week. Indeed, the berating sessions easily forgot this, it was something to be expected.

It is no secret that minimum wage workers are poorly treated in society. I implore the reader to practice kindness and understanding of the retail worker’s position when next in contact. Perhaps what is certainly most clear is the importance of the front line worker. For without them, there wouldn’t be directing and managing positions alike. Without the hard working retail slave what would there be left to manage? Entirely nothing. When I worked on the front line at Christmas, I saw the evils of capitalism, the greed that it encourages and develops in people. The retail worker should be the most highly regarded person in the working world; their selfless attitudes in the face of sheer chaos, brutes, and injustice is to be commended. One thing that stuck with me the most was that I was consistently earning money for the owners, my life was centred around earning other people money. The means of my suffering was found in the ends of gaining wealth for the wealthy. Now ask yourself, isn’t yours too?

You wake up, you work as a slave throughout the daylight only to end long after the sun sleeps. You come home to desolation and joylessness, and you’ll have to do it all again tomorrow. It’s an endless cycle. Marriages break up because people spend so much of their lives earning other people money and taking a small portion of it for themselves. Life is surely more than this, yet the powerful shepherd people into these positions like sheep. There are arguments against what I propose; but perhaps we as people should aim a little bit higher than living around serving the wants of the powerful. My solution is simple; we understand our unity, we communicate, we work together and understand our worth. We raise the minimum wage cap and recognise that front line workers aren’t always there through choice. We recognise that we’re victims of a system developed to aid the powerful and weaken the powerless. There’s a reason the wealth gap has grown.