Have been lurking on this sub for a bit and i'm not sure if this story fits this sub but thought I'd share my one and only experience in retail. English is not my first language but I am on pc so no worries about formatting. Also I tend to ramble so apologies for that in advance.
This happened in January of 2020, before shit hit the fan. I was doing my masters in London and I was broke as fuck, so I started looking for a part-time job. With no prior retail experience, a lot of places never called me back, but one day this chicken shop in Clapham calls me for an interview. I go there, the person interviewing is really nice, I tell them that I have no prior experience, they're like it's completely okay we'll have you do a training shift to see if you get the hang of it and if you do you'll be hired.
Fast forward to two days later, it's the day of my training shift. They told me to show up at 9 to help with cleaning and also get most of the training done before the store opens. I show up at 9 on the dot, store is close and nobody is inside. I keep waiting until 9:30 and finally, someone shows up, but it's one of the cooks and he had no idea I was supposed to come today, I'm like kinda weird but also I don't expect management to keep all the employees up to date on new hires, especially since I wasn't gonna be working in the kitchen, I was gonna be at the till. Anyway he lets me in, we start chatting and we realise we come from the same country, so we start being friendly, he gives me a spare uniform, gives me a tour of the place, and sometimes they're short on staff so he helps with the till, so he showed me the basics of how to work with it. This takes us like an hour, we still have another hour left before opening, and no sign of the manager or the other person on shift that day according to the employee timetable. I'm like I'll take some initiative and ask the cook where are the cleaning supplies so I can clean up a bit before opening up and also hoping the manager will come before then and sees me working and not just staring at a wall waiting for him. I scrub the whole goddamn shop, still no sign of anyone and we have to open.
The cook is like just open the shop, and if you have any questions just come and ask me. I'm not confident but I'm like sure, so we open, it's pretty slow at the beginning, we got like 3 customers for the first 2 hours of opening which was great for me because I'm still super slow, but by 1 pm people started flooding in and I'm freaking out, no way I'm gonna be able to deal with this, and then miracle, the owner of the shop pops by, he introduces himself quickly and start manning the tills, I only have to hand out food to clients. After we dealt with all the customers, we were finally able to catch a breather, and I turn to him like dude???? I was left all alone the whole morning??? thank god the cook knew how to deal with the till and shit because without him we wouldn't have been able to serve anyone!!! Now you'd think he'll give me a solid reason as to why there was no one else with me right? right?? he just looked at me and was like I'm not in charge of this, I just came by to check in like I always do and saw you were swamped so I came in to help. I have to leave now but I'll call the manager and I'll keep you updated and he just fucking left.
So I was left alone again, but thank god after that rush, customers started coming slowly. Now it's almost 3, and it's the time that I was supposed to leave, but I still haven't heard from the owner, and clearly, there was no sign of anyone coming to take over for me because according to the employee timetable, the other person that was supposed to be here stays until 6, that's when another employee takes over. So I ask the cook and he's like I have the owner's number and usually, I'm not supposed to use it unless it's an emergency and I just look at him like and this isn't???? So he calls him and the owner is like, yeah just called the manager and that other employee is sick and they forgot to tell you to not come today, but since you're here can you stay until 6? Now I'm more confused than angry because yeah sure shit happens you forget to update people, shitty thing to do but whatever we move, I'm just confused because if they let me know beforehand, there would have been literally nobody at the till???? and they're fine with that???
Anyway after hearing that I just gave back the uniform and left. I don't know how they managed or what they did but I couldn't care less. I did get an email a few days later from the person that interviewed me apologising and hoping that a schedule conflict wouldn't affect my desire to work with them. I just replied that I'm still waiting for them to pay for that day and haven't heard from them again. They did end up paying me like a week later and I bought myself a switch game with it (Super Smash bros for anyone interested.)
TL;DR Manager schedules a training shift before hiring me, leaves me alone for the whole day with no training or supervision, I walk out leaving the tills empty.