Major retailers have thousands of outlets and tens of thousands of products. Thousands of manufacturers depend on these retailers to purchase and distribute their product, millions are employed to manufacture, package and ship the products to their final destinations.

Without one critical link all of this would break, leaving consumers without access to these products. What is that critical link you ask; the retail employee who unloads the truck and gets the product onto the shelves in the store.

Every night or early morning, usually well before 4 am, armies of individuals climb out of bed and head off to a local retailer to unload, sort, unbox, unpack, massive amounts of cardboard to stock retailers shelves. Without the hard work and labor (try unloading a truck and working the line when it is 85 degrees and 85 percent humidity), most stores don't turn on their air conditioning in the summer or heat in the winter until right before the store opens.

Most of these workers make minimum wage or just barely above, rarely are there benefits and they have no grandiose dream of owning the store or even running the store. They do the work because they have to for their families or to help dig themselves out of a financial hole or even because the schedule makes it a good second job.

Next time you see someone stocking the shelves in a store, tip your hat for their efforts, otherwise your availability of consumer goods would be greatly changed and your costs much higher.

For you retail worker blog readers out there here is a forum you should visit to join the dialogue about your industry. retail-worker.com