While I see your point (and I agree a bit), it's not exactly fair to put it this way.
There are many people working in these industries who didn't have much opportunity to get decent education, etc. For example, my parents. They are from rural areas from Soviet Union, where getting higher education was not something that goes by default as it is now (which might not be a great thing given the number of people with worthless law/business management degrees from the bottom 10% of universities... oh well).
Obviously, there's a segment of people who didn't give a crap and held an attitude that education is for losers / nerds (before the word 'nerd' was cool) and I don't have much for them sympathy.
So it's not fair to just disrespect everyone working in the retail as 'zero brains'.
I'm saying the job requires zero brains or education. I did not mean to imply people who work in retail have no brains or even less than average. in my country it's not really a legit career choice. it's mostly high school kids or people under 23 who do it as it's compensated below adult minimum wage. after a certain age you either get promoted or fired.
Meanwhile in Lithuania, it's fairly typical that the majority of people working in retail are in their 40s and been doing that for the last ~20 years with very minimal increments in salary (usually because of increased minimal salary).
It's not about disrespect. It's about how much effort you put in to get to that point.
How much effort is needed to get a cashier position? Show up, be sober - you got a job. Many people in IT started learning the ropes in their own time after school. Although it was a hobby, it was still an effort that turned out to be helpful in job market.
Here in the US it's not so different. When I was 20, I worked at Target when I took a semester off school. I think only two or three of my coworkers were around my age. The rest were 30+.
Hardest management job I ever had - working night shift manager at a food store while going to college during the day. Like surviving a hurricane while running a marathon while the building's on fire, every single night. I lived roughly a decade of "real" management in my senior year.
Cashiering required a surprising amount of memorization of obscure procedures and policies and item codes, not to mention carefully tracked flawless arithmetic skills when giving change.
The general manager was an artist of endcap design. At non-megacorp retail you're on your own when designing displays. Its truly an art. At the megacorps you have teams of CAD drafters, graphics artists, and sales consultants designing displays, at a non-megacorp story you have yourself, and the boss expects you to do as good of a job as the team. Teams are usually much less productive than individuals, so its not as hard as it sounds.
Stock clerk at higher levels was insane. Its really a two level job and the new hire teen kids merely threw product on marked shelves, but if you were there more than a year and were not an idiot you watched the more experienced guys and took over for them, after which you spent all your time on rotations and resets and price changes and sales stickering and being a reception clerk for the 50 or so direct store delivery trucks we had. I don't care if you have 20 pounds of soup cans for a 10 pound shelf, make all of them fit somehow and you need to accept deliveries from dairy and bread and beer and you have two hours until break time to get this all done plus or minus helping out everyone else.
I've noticed over many decades that despite enormous quantities of (self serving) propaganda, the hourly pay rate people get generally has little relationship with how difficult or important the job is, on a large enough scale.
Another interesting observation is the dumb people didn't survive on the job nearly as long as the smart people, and the dumb people absolutely suffered horribly compared to the smart people.
Depends very much on the retail job. If you're expected to sell stuff and work on any sort of commission, then retail jobs take a lot of (a certain type of) smarts if you want earn good money.
Retail managers certainly act that way, but I wish it weren't so. The one thing that has the potential to bring me to a brick and mortar store instead of buying online, is the chance to talk to an employee who is an expert on the product. Sadly it doesn't happen too often. Usually you get someone with enough brains to operate a cash register and no more than that. Ask a good question, you get a blank stare in return. Or they tell you to google it. And because they get paid garbage money, they often can't even afford to buy the product they're selling, so they don't have firsthand experience with it. Could be so much better...
