For context, I work at an independent liquor chain in Kentucky. The owners are really cool people, but they don't adjust our pay despite inflation or how well the stores do. They go on a lot of vacations with store profits, while the rest of us are paycheck to paycheck making 11 – $12/hr. I could forgive all of that, especially since I'm at this job to learn so I can start homebrewing and eventually brewing my own beer commercially, but management is the fucking worst.
My manager, who has been here for 9 years, will make any effort possible to make excuses for the employees she likes, no matter how dogshit their work ethic is. Meanwhile, me being the new guy (been here 4 months) and one of maybe half a dozen men across the whole chain, I am expected to work my everloving ass off at all times and produce results or I will get reamed and pictures sent to me at stupid early hours of things I overlooked or did wrong. I consistently come in at 10 am on Sundays after closing the night before at 1 am, and caring for my daughter when she wakes up around 8 am, to find the store utterly obliterated.
Nothing gets stocked in the cooler, especially 30 racks of light beer (I have been told a dozen times that beer MUST be stocked because it's summer and people want cold beer), the store is filthy (food bits on the counter, rugs caked with dirt and debris, and trash not taken out), lottery isn't filled out and normally isn't fixed until the first person of the day tries to buy any, and I have a four figure order to assemble that has been on order for 2 weeks but no one else bothered to take care of it (technically I could have, but I assumed in the 3 days I was across town filling in, someone would have handled it). All the while, she just has the list of shit to do with my name on it with a note saying Saturday night shift was too busy to do it, even though we are supposed to stay open up to an hour after we close to get our job done. Lazy ass employees get no penalty while the hardest working have to work harder and harder to avoid being bitched at. I hate retail and I wish I could find a job where I don't have to deal with people that I can support my family on.
TL;DR: Retail is ass, management is ass, and working for dirt wages while your bosses live lavishly is ass.