Pros
- Decent wage for students - Flexible working hours with contacts and plenty of overtime to fit around your personal life - Discount card - I had a very good department manager who was understanding and got along well with (not all department managers were like this tho) - Good experience to learn about retail and add to CV
Cons
- Stressful environment with a lot of pressure from senior management at times - Can be quite demanding for the wage you are on, most of the time you are expected to do mission impossible - Full of immature older women to just look down on everyone and talk about each other behind their backs - Depending on department it can be quite a 'mind numbing' job as you are on your own most of the time (customers aside) - Some training is irrelevant, for my discount card i had to do an online test about disabled parking? and other topics that weren't related to my department in the slightest - Thrown in at the deep end, you are expected to know everything from day one, includes knowing were all items are and a 20min training session on tills (Believe me customers will make your life hell) - A lot of managers seem to have 'Big man' syndrome and seem to think because they have a tiny bit of power that they are some kind of god - Arrogant GSM who gets paid a six figure salary to basically walk around the store all day thinking they are a "god" and making colleagues lives hell, from a business point of view ... wasting money big time - Quite a lot of department rivalry - If you are que busting from shop floor then you have to deal with ancient tills which have buttons missing and can be quite confusing at first, also a lot of the "runners" are very rude and throw a stop when you ask for help - Never feel appreciated - The 'Stepping stone' programme is basically a dead end job, all though i think they are scrapping it now with the new management structure ( section leaders basically get paid an extra 60p to take the blame for everything and get shouted at constantly, known so many people who have stepped down) - Full of "Brown noses" and "Favouritism" which is very frustrating at times - Short staffed all the time, for example i work on a sunday on a very busy department and we usually have three people in unlike saturday when we have about 10 - Lack of motivation - Unrealistic budgets