Pros
Great place to work if you have no clientele or are just out of school. Also, Great Clips salons do not do hair color, so if you have allergies to hair color products, or if you prefer to not do hair color, this is beneficial. Income for a stylist is usually pretty decent.
Cons
Management treats employees terribly. If you come to work say a 9 to 5 shift, and a manager is scheduled to work 10 to 6, you will often have to work a longer shift and the manager will go home before your scheduled time to leave. This happens often; if you are a single person, it might be fine, but for someone who has a babysitter or a family, this might be a bit of a problem. Also, manangement will often sit in the office all day, yet take their breaks before the employees. A manager may come in and "work" for an hour, then take a break, while a stylist can be on the floor for 4 or hours before the manager will give the stylist a break. Sour grapes? Maybe. But the management (and owners) will not close the shop due to extreme weather. We had a severe winter storm here, the local grocery stores and the drugstores were all closed. Not Great Clips-- they will make their employees drive in hazardous conditions. If you have to call off, you need to call another employee to cover for you. If you cannot find someone to cover your shift, they more or less threaten to fire you. I am not one to call off, I like making money, but if I am sick, what are you supposed to do? The management also will sit in the office all day, in the Summer wearing little short-sleeved blouses, with an air vent right above their heads, and say 'it is cold' when it is horribly hot and humid outside. The stylist, wearing smocks, actually working, with hot hair dryers going righ in front of their faces, get overheated. Management does not care. Owners do not care. Owners show their appreciation to the employees by giving a $3.00 bag of candy at Christmas. I have worked at many hair salons almost 30 years (started right out of high school), been at most salons for many years at a time, and never been treated so badly as at Great Clips. And I have worked at 2 Great Clips locations: Adams Shoppes in Mars PA and the Hampton Township Pa Great Clips. The Hampton shop was not near as bad, but the Adams Shoppes Great Clips was horrible. Now, I do think the Mars PA finally cleaned house and got rid of the bad management but the owners still do not know how to run a hair salon. They also want you to push products and basically make you feel like your job is threatened if you do not push products, they review you each month and if your product sales are not huge, they will definitely 'tell you about it'. Again, I have worked for many hair salons and had many friends work in hair salons in almost 30 years of doing hair (started right out of high school), and never have I worked at or known anyone to work at salon that treats their employees so horribly. Oh and the Hampton shop was so short-staffed that they began scheduling 'split shifts,' where you would work 9 to 1, and have to come back and work 5 to 9. So, again, if you have a family or need a babysitter or have any other obligations, it might not be a great place to work. If you do not mind a split shift, that probably will not be a problem. Although working split shifts does get old and tiresome after a while and makes planning things difficult.
