This isn’t confined to retail anymore. Most of the professionals I know lucky enough to have steady jobs are pretty much required to work 60-80 hours per week to meet their productivity benchmarks. Complain once about it, and you will be fired or forced to quit and probably trashed any time somebody checks references. It doesn’t help that upper management is laying off most/all of the admin staff and shoving that work off onto low-level exempt employees and interns to keep from having to compensate anyone for doing it.
I don’t see the problem with raising the exemption bar. It’s being abused. Funny how actually paying people for the work they do wasn’t a problem for most companies back before the open borders/globalization craze started. Some people won’t be happy until we’re all living like serfs.