The Difference Between Working in a Store and Working in the Online Department

February 2017 will make three years that I have been employed at Vixen Vapors, and during this time I have spent about a year of it in a store and the rest of the time has been spent behind the scenes. Currently, I work at the Distribution Center/Online Department. It’s actually really common that I get asked what it’s like and how different it is from working in an actual store. Honestly, it’s extremely different, and I love it.

The main difference would be the customers, and how I get to interact with them. In a store nearly every customer encounter is done face to face, with the occasional phone call here and there. Behind the scenes, though, you have basically zero face to face interaction, everything is done over the phone or via email. Due to the fact that we don’t have customers walking in and dealing with us in person we get to have a little more freedom with some things. Music, in every store in the world (not just vape shops) it’s a pretty common rule of thumb that the music being played should be appropriate for all customers to hear. That is not the case here. We basically have musical freedom, and are allowed to play whatever we want (deciding on a genre is the difficult part). The only people that get to hear our music is us and members of our corporate office. Additionally, in stores you have to be mindful of the noise level, but behind the scenes that’s not really something you have to worry about; blast it if you want.

Music isn’t the biggest plus side to working behind the scenes, it’s just a lot more fun all around in my opinion. There are only three of us that work at this location, and we get to know each other extremely well because of that. All three of us are super sarcastic and we love to joke around with each other, we’re just a bunch of trolls honestly. Some of the conversations we have are completely hilarious and get crazy! The only other real difference is that we all go to lunch at the same time, which is awesome on Friday’s when we usually visit a restaurant as a group.  There is a considerable amount of added stress working behind the scenes, but what job isn’t stressful at times? I’ll take the extra stress in exchange for everything else. What aspects of your job make it feel different from others?