It’s the most wonderful time of the year, but for a sizeable portion of the U.S. workforce the holiday shopping season can be the most strenuous and stress-filled time of year. As consumers furiously stock up on everything they need for under the tree and around the table, retail workers — who make up more than one quarter of the U.S. labor force — find themselves literally on the front lines of the holiday madness.
In addition to extended store hours, increased inventory pressures and customers who often are even more impatient than normal, these workers also often find themselves working more hours at a time when many other employees are taking time off.
“On top of being overworked during the holidays, there is also the expectation that workers remain available to operate the store at a time that everyone wants to take it easy and be with family,” said Margaux Lantelme, a frontline associate at REI Chicago. “The reality is not everyone is going to get that time off. Many people will be left to handle a store, understaffed, underpaid and without the chance of getting to spend time visiting family.”
Lantelme was part of a group of retail workers who shared their experiences and hopes for this holiday season in a briefing organized by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), which represents more than 100,000 workers across the U.S. It was clear from the representatives at the briefing that flexible, transparent scheduling and adequate staffing are topping retail workers’ wish lists this year, along with kindness and understanding from customers.
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Finding Joy Amid the Frenzy
Despite the added pressures, many workers enjoy the holiday season at their store. “Christmas at Bloomingdale’s is beautiful,” said Cynthia Russo, a sales associate who has worked at the 59th Street Bloomingdale’s flagship in NYC for almost 19 years. “We pride ourselves on our decorations, and the unveiling of our windows is always a big thing. We have a lot of installations on every floor; there’s Christmas music playing everywhere, so the spirit in the store is very uplifting, very joyous, especially when the children come to see Santa. It’s a lot of fun.”
“I love the holiday season,” said Eddie Quezada, the Produce Manager at a Stop & Shop in Long Island, N.Y. “There’s nothing better than going in to work, and it feels like you were only there for four hours instead of eight hours because the hustle and bustle makes time go fast. I just ask that the consumers be patient with us. We’re consumers also; we get it. We do our best to make sure we provide for the consumer. We’re not perfect, but believe me, we’re trying.”
Workers’ Biggest Needs: Scheduling Transparency, Adequate Staffing
Not surprisingly, scheduling is a primary concern of retail workers, particularly during the holiday season, and a number of employees at the briefing cited the union protections in this regard as a key benefit.
“One of my most cherished parts of our [union] contract, which is not very flashy, is our scheduling protections,” said Kathryn Harper, a Senior Bookseller at McNally Jackson in NYC. “We get a lot of notice of when our schedule is posted, and it really allows us to plan our lives at this time of year. I’ve worked in retail jobs where they’ll post the schedule on Sunday for the week that starts the next day, and [that] makes it impossible to plan.
“We also have a lot of rules about overtime and agreeing to it,” Harper added. “Some people really want it, some people don’t, and we have excellent protections to either grab that opportunity or say ‘No, I want to spend some time with my family and loved ones.’”
The situation can be very different for workers not represented by a union, however, as Lantelme described. Lantelme’s REI store voted to unionize but has been in negotiations with the retailer for more than a year and remains without a contract.
“It’s always important for workers to have a union and to know their rights and their worth, but the holidays definitely exacerbate that need,” she said. “People are working longer hours, often understaffed for the amount of traffic. Rarely, if ever, is there any kind of holiday bonus time, and to top it all off, workers are often met with even more impatience and rudeness from customers than usual.”
In fact, understaffing is a problem even at unionized stores. According to Motorola Solutions’ second-annual U.S. Retail Worker Safety Report, more than 65% of retail workers said they expect to be understaffed this holiday season. More than two-thirds of respondents (68%) who expect their stores to be understaffed said they don’t feel safe because of it.
Lantelme said that despite an expected increase in holiday traffic, her store has been “cutting hours like crazy,” and Quezada said it is not uncommon for his store to cut back on staff during Thanksgiving week despite it being one of the busiest times of the year at Stop & Shop. “It’s almost like they’re saving money in case they need it that week,” he said. “Staffing this time of year does plummet a little, and I think it’s because they’re trying to bank a little money.”
Safety Still a Concern for Many Retail Workers
Inadequate staffing levels are one of the key reasons that a majority (57%) of American retail workers report feeling unsafe going into the peak holiday shopping season, according to the Motorola survey. Workers also cited recent increases in crime in their stores during the past year as driving these concerns, including petty theft (66%), grab and runs (48%) and hostile customer interactions (46%).
“We all worry about safety,” said Joan Solomon, a longtime employee at the Macy’s flagship in New York City’s Herald Square, which extends its hours to remain open until 11 p.m. during the holiday season. According to Solomon, those last night shifts are often lightly staffed, which can create uncomfortable situations with suspicious customers.
Russo also mentioned issues with the homeless population who seek out the warmth of stores when temperatures start to plummet. “I totally get that people want to stay warm, but it gets to be very, very tentative at times,” she said. “Bloomingdale’s has a policy that unless someone is really being disruptive, [security won’t] do anything about it. I wish our union could get a little bit more involved in establishing certain criteria for what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.”
One thing that is not as much of a safety concern as it has been in the past is Black Friday stampedes, which many employees on the call said have died down significantly thanks to the rise of online shopping.
In terms of solutions for retail crime, respondents in the Motorola survey pointed to access control systems (35%), license plate readers (32%), panic buttons (32%) and body cameras (20%) as measures that make them feel safer. In this regard, Chelsea Connor, Managing Director of Communications at RWDSU, pointed to new worker safety legislation that has been passed in both New York and California. The New York bill in particular, which the RWDSU helped to develop, specifically requires panic buttons and silent alarms in stores.
What Workers Need from Customers: Patience and Kindness
At the end of the day everyone is a consumer, so as the stress of the holidays kicks in, even retail insiders could probably benefit from some friendly reminders. The biggest, as Lantelme put it, is to enter stores with “grace and patience.”
“One of my favorite parts of the job is talking to people and figuring out what they’re looking for, but that leads me to one of my biggest recommendations for customers this holiday season — be patient,” said Harper. “We love to help. We want to make sure you get absolutely the perfect thing. We want to wrap it beautifully, but it takes some time, and every other customer behind you is just as stressed. When you, as a customer, come into the store, you have two things on your to-do list. We’re going to give you excellent customer service, but when you leave, you get to check those things off your to-do list, and I have to go back to seven more hours of choosing gifts for people who are stressing.
“My other customer top tip would be to just be nice,” Harper added. “I think everyone who has worked a holiday retail season can say that something happens around November and people just forget their manners. ‘Please’ and ‘thank you’ go a huge way. And being rude to us is not going to make us go any faster, it’s not going to make the thing that’s out of stock magically appear. Don’t be the person that I’m going to come home and complain to my roommates about later.”
“Anybody that shops for Thanksgiving knows the fun that it is to be in the supermarket when it’s three, four times the amount of people that are normally there,” said Quezada sarcastically. “Unfortunately our COVID honeymoon is over. We’re not treated like we were treated during COVID, that’s kind of faded away and it’s okay, that short time was appreciated. We just ask that the public respect that we are trying our hardest to make sure that we get the freshest product out to the shelf. Nothing is more disappointing than when you order, for example, 20 cases of stuffing mushrooms, and you only get 10. I know half my customers are not going to be happy, but it happens.”
Management can help in this regard by supporting employees as they deal with difficult customers, and as Harper pointed out, small gestures can go a long way to boosting morale: “In our contract, everyone gets a free cup of coffee each shift,” she said. “Taking that 10 minutes to go have a cup of coffee in the back and hit up the snack station can’t beat worker protections, but it certainly does help around the holiday period.”
