The goal of research the results of which are presented in this paper was to gain an insight into the experience of work and of everyday life of women employed in large retails stores in Zadar. To respond to the research questions connected with the experience and conditions of work in large retail stores, as well as with the everyday life of the employees outside of the place of work, the qualitative method of semi-structured interviews was employed. In the interpretation of the research results literature on the topic of so-called “flexible work” was used, as well as literature on the “light capitalism” (Bauman), characteristic for the postmodern conditions and postindustrial society. Based on the analysis of the interviews carried out in the field, it is shown that the situation in the large retail stores in Zadar is between the experience of extreme insecurity and competitiveness characterizing work in the same context in the developed Western countries, and the situation in which there still exist friendly relations and a certain feeling of the community among the employed. The interviewees express dissatisfaction with the impossibility of planning the future in the conditions of flexible work and economic crisis, and lay emphasis on the ideals of secure permanent employment with predictable work tasks, which they recognize in the conditions that existed in this regard in Croatia in the socialist period.