As someone who has worked in both retail and the food service industry, there's no way around it: Both worlds can be massively demoralizing, bad for your health, or even straight up toxic. After all, neither industry is safe from the wrath of manager-seeking Karens. While working at a restaurant may paid better than my retail gigs, I found that the job encouraged some seriously unhealthy habits. You know, drinking after every shift, never seeing daylight, taking lots of late night cabs to get home safe. My retail jobs were more forgiving in the lifestyle department, but pretending to be happy to serve entitled rich tourists in Soho was definitely not great for my mental health. And I know I'm not alone in these experiences.
Twitter user @bluehoodiebaby proved that both careers can be immensely damaging a few days ago thanks to a simple one sentence tweet. She asked her followers the following:
if you have worked in food service AND retail which is worse
— :) (@bluehoodiebaby) August 22, 2021
And they were more than happy to comply with their own informative and massively depressing takes - inspired by experience, of course. While there's no definitive winner, both teams make some excellent (and sobering) points about the pitfalls and side-effects of working in either field. A takeaway that we should all agree on is this: Everyone should be nicer to service workers, whether they're serving you food or greeting you at the register.
