Pros
You have to be very bad to get sacked from Brewers. The pay is average. Under my area manager, I was not micro managed. Their systems largely allowed managers freedom to build good customer relations and offer good customer service which made the customer facing part of the job quite enjoyable; It is first and foremost a decorators' merchant and the customers are without doubt the best part of the job. I am told that this is less the case now.
Cons
On the odd occasion that one of 'the family' strays into a branch they are always keen to tell the staff how much they care. This message is repeated ad-nauseam when managers go to the Eastbourne head office for conferences. Most of them are nice enough individuals but if they truly cared they would not build such a firewall between themselves and the branches; as with many national retailers there is very much a 'them and us' feeling between H.O. and the provinces. Eastbourne will never hesitate in mandating a pointless imposition upon 180 branches that will save a bit of time for one of them at the cost of wasting 10 more minutes every single day of every week for each of those 180 managers. There is a very collaborative vibe about head office with buzzword language and pretty young things flitting from one department to another, gaining rapid promotions along the way, because they fit in with the culture. As they rush around imposing their initiatives on the dirty branch staff that actually fraternise with customers, they forget that it is the branches that make the money! Brewers H.O. is a little like the Labour Party; they don’t like to be associated with actual working people. The firewall works by making the area managers into autonomous little chieftains; if you complain about any of the working practices such as the ludicrously bloated and long winded recruitment process, (all the best candidates have found work elsewhere by the time you are in a position to make an offer to an interviewee) you are wasting your breath. The A.Ms will not stick their head above the parapet in support of the troops; they might not be seen to fit in! After twenty five years, I resigned in disillusionment and not one of the head office managers, family or board members could be bothered to pick up a phone to ask why. I have since noticed how many other extraordinarily hard working and effective managers leave in their fifties or early sixties. When you have been told so many times by the family how much the company cares, the ‘red pill’ effect of the truth is a bitter pill to swallow.