No Work/Life Balance, Expect You to Work Off the Clock, Poor Management, Shady Business/Sales Tactics
Pros
The pay is about $2.50 above minimum wage in my state. A few good people to work with(including coworkers from our host store).
Cons
-They have no work/life balance and my home life suffered greatly. Most shifts were 10-12 hours long, some days with the dreaded "clopen." We're understaffed and overworked. We should either have a 4 day work week with 10 hour shifts, or a 5 day workweek with 8 hour shifts. You're better off working in a factory, and you get paid just as much if not more to put up with less BS. - Overtime is HIGHLY frowned on by upper management(you will get yelled at), yet they want you to work your life away and schedule you right at 40 hours without regard to opening/closing duties, or time and travel for unnecessary meetings they throw on you with little notice. I was told to clock out and keep working. If you don't clock out, they still alter your time to where you don't get paid for having to work beyond 40 hours. - Our District(micro) Manager kept putting so much pressure on us to sell LDW and Benefits Plus, to the point that I was trained to breeze over them(like, not even let customers see the "optional" part of the paperwork), telling our customers these were part of the package, and I had to act as if they weren't optional. If a customer caught the "optional" part in the clause of our contract and opted out, we were treated like it was our fault. I am also aware that this is as illegal as being made to work off the clock. We're also treated like it's our fault if we fail to sign customers up for autopay. We open at 10am(during holidays we're open 9-9). Our DM wants us to have all 200+ collection calls done by 12p, yet makes us take part in daily conference calls at 10a, which can take up to an hour or longer. They constantly contradict themselves like this, then scold us when things don't get done the way they envision. They also make non-management run morning deposits by themselves(no buddy system), because they expect management to be in the store every morning for the conference calls. - Where I worked, there was little-to-no professionalism and a lot of HR rules were broken even on my first day. There was a lot of sexual harassment, homophobic rumors being spread about sales people from our host store, gossiping in general, and management who couldn't keep their personal problems out of the workplace. With little training, I was scheduled to operate the store by myself. Customers were understanding of my situation, but also displeased with the fact that somebody with little experience and "know how" was the only person they could speak with regarding questions about their contracts. -I've had over 10 years worth of being in Customer Service, but they lie when they say you're going to be a CSR. This isn't a Customer Service Representative position, it's sales and collections, as well as blatant lying(when signing people up for contracts). I wasn't helping people; I was taking advantage of those in poor situations, and then deceiving them out of the money they barely even have to begin with. It's a lawsuit waiting to happen. -Benefits: the insurance is expensive for a worker and their spouse, and increases for those who have children. Just for two people, you're looking at spending at least $100 a week, and this year the cost is increasing. -Paid time off: A coworker of mine had to travel several states away for a funeral and was going to be taking three days of paid bereavement and one day of paid personal leave. While they were gone, our DM called our manager and stripped my coworker's bereavement pay, and then said they could only have three unpaid days off, so they got paid for none of it. My coworker then had to pay out of their own pocket for a flight back just to make it to their shift the next day.