Retail Jobs Are Treated As A Temporary Bridge To Something Better. But Why?

People lick their fingers, touch money and hand it to you. They take money out of bras or hand you bills soaking wet with lake water. When you become a grocery cashier, says Rachel Baker, you quickly learn that retail is really filthy. She thinks back to how she landed at her store in southern Oregon, after college and a couple other jobs. Grocery work was meant to be a way station, a steady paycheck until she found her forever career. It’s a very common retail story. Five years, two stores and a little promotion later, there you are, still ringing up shoppers until 9:30 at night. “Nobody is in retail because they really want to be; it’s a bridge to another place,” Baker says and wonders: What if it didn’t have to be this way? “It would be really nice if we could make that environment so that that’s not necessarily the case, because some people don’t have that choice.” Read more at NPR.