Any given community might support a number of shops with varying levels of specialization. Work with your DM to determine how your shop fit into your hometown and your backstory. Choose the type of shop where you worked, or roll on the table below.

You had to know a lot about the merchandise in your shop to do your job. If you worked in a clothing shop, you had to learn about fiber characteristics, types of woven and knit fabrics and their applications, and how a garment should generally fit. If you worked in a general store, you can probably eyeball a common weight or volume measure of most staple foods and know how best to store them and how long they are shelf stable. You have little difficulty distinguishing the quality of the type of items your shop carried, and whether they have been stored or cared for properly.

You have advantage on History and Investigation checks relating to items like those you worked with every day. Once per long rest, you may use this feature to succeed on one ability check meeting this requirement. You can choose to do this after you roll the die, but before the outcome is determined.

Some shop assistants, and indeed a few people in just about every industry, focus exclusively on dealing with customer requests and complaints. Your experience is mainly in talking to people, reading them, and figuring out how to make them happy, while saving the shop as much money as possible.

When you choose your words as if you're dealing with an angry customer, you double your proficiency bonus on Persuasion or Deception checks. This feature applies to the skill you chose as part of this background, unless you were already proficient in both from another source, in which case you choose at character creation which applies.