Cleaning employee toilets, polishing glassware and mopping floors isn’t exactly what I’ll put on my resume once I apply for that top journalism job – but that experience could be useful for my next application at the local mall.

Many a college student has trodden down the beaten path of retail, an occupation that offers, many times, no solid skills for a future career. Yet it remains an option for the down-and-out struggling scholar to make some quick cash.

So what good can come of a low-end, entry-level job that, in essence, offers long hours of tedious labor, low pay and an unstable income?A reality check.

Boy, did I get a big one last summer when I decided to get a “real job,” one not hand-fed to me by my parent’s real-estate company. I had signed up for the employee call for a trendy clothing and shoe store, just opening up at Arden Fair Mall.

The store had started during one of the busiest times of the year: Back-to-School season. Endless rounds of children and teenagers invaded the store, with younger ones jumping on couches while parents stood in long lines to shell out cash for their kids’ new shoes and clothes.

During shifts that lasted as long as 81/2 hours, I dutifully measured feet of all sizes from people of all ages, then ran back and forth from the stock room to find the shoe that fit each customer best.”Isn’t it disgusting to handle feet all day?” one woman asked me as I knelt down to measure someone’s feet.

I didn’t reply. No, I didn’t particularly enjoy it, but it had to be done by someone, somehow. And I got paid for it.

Working retail provided a different lens to view the shopping experience: Now I knew how store employees felt when customers like me would carelessly wreck item displays or leave shoes and clothes strewn about the floor or dressing room. Now I knew why I shouldn’t complain at a long line at the cashier, when the employee is working their hands and brain as fast as possible without screwing up the order.

When the first paycheck arrived, I excitedly opened the envelope from corporate headquarters — but my jaw dropped at how much Uncle Sam had chopped from the original amount.

Once the height of the summer shopping season ended, my already tax-gouged paycheck gradually shrunk as my shifts grew shorter and shorter and the store got less and less customers. Soon all there was to do in the store was fix displays, wipe windows or sort out every single shirt on every rack repeatedly until my shift ended or when the manager cut it short.

I could finally understand why so many Americans complained about taxes, and what exactly reports about the lagging national economy actually meant for working America – less money for everyone.

I tried to play the retail sales game again at a home furnishings store in another mall during the Christmas rush. The place was, for retail standards, pretty posh: the break room had a full kitchen, and we were fed cookie and chocolate samples from time to time.

But a retail sales job by any other name is still a retail sales job. When the Christmas season ended, so did my short-lived retail stint.

I wish I could say that there was some grand, unifying theme besides money that binds low-wage retail workers together, but there usually isn’t. Kerry, a middle-aged employee for a struggling computer company, tried to bring home extra cash for his family during the holidays when his company wasn’t doing much business over the winter season. Emily, a history major at Sacramento State, wanted to fill up lots of free time. I just needed to make rent.

The often-painful working experience proved more beneficial for my character than my pocketbook, a real wake-up call to the economic realities of what many Americans must do to get by in life.

No, I probably won’t look to the mall for a job anytime soon, but I’ll definitely appreciate what I’ve been given that much more.

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