店員
てんいん · tenin · JLPT N4 · noun
clerk
🏪 店員 = shop (店) + staff member (員)
店 (ten) means shop, as in 店長 (tenchō, shop manager). 員 (in) marks a member of a group, as in 会社員 (company employee) or 駅員 (station staff). So a 店員 is literally a shop-member: the person working the counter.
店 — 广 (shelter radical) + 占 (zhān, phonetic)
店 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The radical 广 depicts a roof or open shelter, suggesting a building, while 占 supplies the sound (zhān → diàn). Originally it referred to a roadside inn or stall set up under a shelter, and over time the meaning narrowed to 'shop' or 'store'.