Exploring the work-related experiences of retail workers in Saskatchewan: A critical narrative study

Abstract

The retail industry is predominant in providing goods and services to customers worldwide. For example, studies have found that more than 10% of employees work in the retail sector in Canada. However, frontline retail employees experience considerable challenges, such as mistreatment and hostility from managers. Yet, research has generally failed to explore the nature of those challenges or offer strategies to address them. Using a narrative inquiry/approach methodology, the study explored the work-related experiences and conditions of four frontline retail workers at a Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada store. The study drew on critical theory and social justice theory as theoretical lenses to challenge the prevalence of neoliberal ideology at the studied workplace and its influence on the work-related experiences of frontline workers at that workplace. The narrative inquiry building blocks of temporality, sociality, spatiality, and other narrative approaches, as well as the theoretical framework, guided the presentation and discussion of the study findings. The participants’ narratives revealed they experienced neoliberal policies and practices that they thought constituted voicelessness, sexism, individualism, racism, nepotism, underemployment, and cronyism at their retail store. The integration of the participants’ data created informative narratives of their work-related experiences and offered a way to improve their fragmented, scattered, and sometimes contradictory narratives into coherent narratives. The narratives also revealed that some participants perceived their workplace conditions as overwhelming, harsh, and alien. The implications of the findings of the study for policy, practice, and theory development, as well as suggestions for further research and recommendations arising from the study, are discussed.