Pros
As a GM I write my own schedule. No one in my store burns vacation hours for life's little one day happenings.
Cons
1) Most District Managers are recycled from other retail companies. Most of them have never run a small retail outlet and come from Big Box retail. When you come to them with your problems they simply reply with the corporate speak that the Senior Management spews. 2) Labor department slowly whittles away at your labor slowly. They have continually cut labor. they use a cookie cutter approach to giving labor hours to stores. This results in many GMs needing to work 60+ hours to overcome corporate caused labor shortages as GM bonus is lost if he/she uses just 1 hour more than given. 3) SOP states no less than 2 employees must be in store when it's open for business. Labor only gives most stores hours to have 2 people in the store after 7pm at night. This affects your ability to perform free services for customers. If you do go outside to help customers and something happens in the store you'll get in trouble. If you refuse free services due to bein understaffed for them and customer calls in a complaint you get written up. Lose / Lose situation for managers. 4) GMs hours are part of stores hours given to serve customers which makes it difficult to perform administrative duties. This again results in GMs working 60+ hours to do their job. Job description states GM works 50% on floor - 50% admin. Bullox. 5) They say they want you to have quality time with your family and then make decisions which will insure that a GM sees his/her family less and less. 6) They are more concerned with high pressure sales than actually helping the customers. 7) Team setting sales goals can't grasp the correlation between a bad economy and auto parts sales. Used banner year of fall 2009 through fall 2010 to set 2011 targets. When economy started rebounding no one hit these targets in Q1-2011. 8) Company has changed GM bonus 3 times in 2011. The company saved money on GM bonus due to changes. Underhanded plan to cut operating expenses. Less than 20% of GM bonus budget has been paid out this year. It took them bleeding good GMs to make the changes to fix it. 9) DMs hiring non-retail managers and giving them new stores to run. Not smart. No retail background and we give them a new store? Wow !!! Prediction - Continual labor decreases will result in loss of more good GMs. All they'll have left are rejects from other companies or AMs that get promoted to fill holes even if they aren't ready for the challenge. 10 months ago I would have recommended this as a great place to work. Now, I'm actively seeking employment else where.