The proliferation of testimonies about labor abuses in the commerce sector has found a speaker on social networks. Platforms such as Tiktok or Instagram have become spaces where dependent and store employees open their experiences openly, marked by the precariousness. Although many of these complaints do not identify the companies involved, they reflect generalized discomfort by workers, mostly young.
This is the case of Alba, a young saleswoman, who has reported through a video posted on her Tiktok (@albakeepcalm) profile, her professional “worst experience” in a shoe store located in a “well known” shopping center in the Madrid capital, in which he describes a work environment that qualifies as “a nightmare”.
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“Basically they were negreers, the boss was a rude and literally treated you as shit,” says Alba with forcefulness. The worker says that two different schedules were maintained in the store: one visible to the public, “that taught if an inspection came”, and another internal, in which the real hours were reflected.
According to their testimony, the conference lengthened beyond what is signed in the contract, without compensation or registration. “They forced you to make extra hours that were paid in black,” he says, pointing out that those hours were paid in cash from the establishment box, with fixed amounts of 30 euros for eight hours on Sundays. “Not even four euros the time”he explains. Sometimes, these payments were delayed because they depended on money in cash, so “If there was no cash, you didn’t charge. You had to wait for the next Sunday OA the following week. ”
“If there were no customers, you had to be tinging and unleashing sneakers lords all the time”
The clerk also describes a constant control environment inside the store: “They did not let you speak among colleagues; each one had to be in a different corner. You could not be doing anything or a second. If there were no customers, you had to be tieding and unleashing laces of the shoes all the time,” he says. The pressure, according to it, was permanent, and the workers lived “crowded” in the face of the possibility of being fired from one day to another.
After that experience, the young woman says she managed to use in other firms in the textile sector with very different conditions. “Luckily, just after I went into a mango, which was wonderful: the companions, the bosses … and it became very well,” he says. Soon he will start working in Zara, where he expects “a more comfortable atmosphere, with more people and a more bearable rhythm.”
Although the author of the video does not identify the name of the store where she worked, her testimony has revived the debate on the precariousness in trade, especially in franchise chains.