Fast approaching 3 years now I’ve been working in the retail industry. As it stands, the retail industry employs 11% of the UK population which works out at about 29 million people, it is also a consistently profitable industry with £278 billion being made last year alone. In these uncertain times of economical recovery, retail seems like the only stable industry we have in this country, people consume in times of economical decline/recovery as a means to entertain themselves, take their mind’s off things, it’s pretty simple really!
With so many people in the industry, and knowing quite a few people that work in it obviously, I can’t help think that we’re trapped, stuck in a rut we can’t get out of. I know part of being where I am is due to my very average A level results, but I was told A levels are important but I’m pretty sure there are people who were in my year that didn’t go on to A level and have better paid jobs than I have! Surely even having even average A level results is worth something? If not I was lied too when I was told that they were!
Then there’s the increasingly populer degrees, some are completely useless and I’ll be the first to admit it. Not that I’m saying people who have them didn’t work hard to get them it’s just the unfair world we live in now where a lot of people have them and unless the degree is one in something stand out and has high merit, I find they are getting completely disregarded when it comes to employment after graduating. Realising this was one of the reasons I bailed on my degree but I wish I realised it before I started it! We’re told that higher education is so important, but when a poor soul who has worked hard to get a degree and it doesn’t go straight into a job or like I said isn’t really sort after, is now thousands in debt and forced to work in a unstimulating, poorly paid job, which will most likely be in the retail industry or some form of customer service job! I speak from witnessing this first hand, countless people come and go from where I work, fresh out of University, with no clue what to do with themselves! Some decide to stay and hopelessly try to climb the ladder towards promotion, which believe me takes years and only really pays well when you have reached the very top. I think it’s crazy that some poor soul, maybe with a philosophy degree, who is infinitely more intelligent than the majority of higher ups in most retail jobs, may struggle to get promoted because someone else who’s maybe worked there a while longer decided the popcorn could be displayed a bit better, or a sneaky way to exploit customers for more money, will get promoted instead! Maybe eventually running a whole site of a huge corporation and they could even just have GCSEs! You may think this hypothetical situation is a bit extreme, but it’s very much the case!
So now we’re stuck with a whole generation of people in debt, people who were lied to by being told a degree will get them a good job, will make them go places, but this isn’t always the case. Now I’m not saying that any person with any degree should just automatically get an amazing job, it should just count towards something at least, leading them into work should be happen for the majority of degrees if not all of them, just even helping them out afterwards just a little because these people have just paid thousands of pounds for it! Then you’ve got people like me, with A levels that mean absolutely nothing with nowhere to go. The way we educate, the way we employ it needs to change, skills need to be taught, what needs to be studied that is deemed important needs to be specified or we’re just going to be stuck with a mass of doomed youths, with no direction, no money and no hope!
6 Comments
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Agreed 100%. If only there was some way to get insta-experience.
Wes, you remind me of me. £278 billion made from the misery of you and people like you.
It’s an over-saturation of education, you really have to excel at your field to get anywhere with it. I mean, it’s not like all 15 of us in my Graphic Communication class will become graphic designers; if that were the case there’d be waaaaay too many. It’s just life really. And an increasing birth rate/life length. I do agree that employers put too much emphasis on experience though. Also, you may want to manually spell check your posts
um, that wasn’t supposed to be an angry face. Whoops!
well les, i wear the perspirent of failure all day. it doesn’t wear off after 24 hours either, its a stench that follows you about until you decide to wash your pits with a job that means something to you which is well hard to find because for people like us, the retail peeps, generation Y, the only good things on offer are cleaner work, office work, customer ass rimmer and ball licker. anything worthy of a gander is out of reach because those DREADED WORDS ‘experience required’ hold you back
what keeps me ticking over in a weird way is that a lot of cunts like us are united in their ambitionless nothingness, cradling a dream of something better. doesn’t matter if you have a degree or below par gcses, we’re all being treat the same way. the only thing to live for is sun, beer and good times which will have to do for now
This is odd, I thought I’d posted a blog ages ago called ‘Generation Why’, but it’s still on my computer as a draft. You remind me. I will write it up, but it’s in a similar vein. I agree. There are too many people in the world, too much competition, too much striving and absolutely no give. Fuck it, let’s have a sexy party.