What do you currently do for a living?

Supervisor at a department store. It’s been getting a little stressful at work, less customers means less sales, and less sales has the company cutting overtime pay and the talk of shutting the store for good has become louder recently.

The retail scene in Singapore has been taking a hammering since the 08’ financial crisis and the rise of Indonesia and Malaysia retail scenes, which are supported by domestic demand and cheaper prices, plus the availability of high street brand they would have had to come to singapore for.

Now, for my particular dept store I’m seeing more price conscious shoppers who will only come when there’s a sale, but having too many sales hurts the bottom line as well.

During the lockdown we shut for two months and I guess it’s true, once you get used to not wanting something, you realise you don’t need it, and perhaps because of that impulse purchases are down.

The other major factor is the rise of online retailing, well suffice to say my company is old school and really has not invested in making the online presence a big part of their decisions, and our member app it’s so shit folk on the app store routinely curse us.


All these and more make me think this company won’t make it to the end of the decade in a hyper-competitive environment and more savvy shoppers.