Pros
Working at Half Price Books will provide you with a (superficially) quaint, personalized version of the usual retail Stock Shelves ~ Answer the Same Question 50 Times Over ~ Ring Folks Up For Hours routine. You'll also get to move around a lot, which is nice compared to, like, Kohl's or Kroger. Expensive, low-quality benefits are available if you are full-time and you stick around for three months--again, better than Target or McD's or Hot Topic, I guess. If you are applying for a part-time position, don't; it'll be a year or so before you earn a chance at moving up. If you're applying for a temp-to-permanent position... good luck?
Cons
You're part of a big, ugly machine that's killing off local bookstores across the nation, and guess what--it's not even going to be that fun. I'm not totally sure what working there looks like after laying off 75 percent of its staff, but it can't be any easier with only three people on the floor at a time in addition to crowd control/sanitation duties. The workload was always overflowing due to horribly incompetent management while I was there; I can't imagine it's gotten any better, even with limited buying hours. Either way shoving books around all day is going to wreck your thumbs, obnoxious customers--who are somehow both indignant about how you price books and aggressively pleasant/conversational when you're utterly overwhelmed with work--will haunt your every step, and management just won't be able or willing to help you. Shift leaders are pleasant but horribly trained; managers are usually nowhere to be found. You'll get assigned sections pretty quick, which basically just gives you something to be upset about when it inevitably fills up and you can't do anything and you have to painstakingly go through every book looking for something that you can just throw in the trash so you can put up another copy of the same thing. That's basically the job nine times out of ten. One of the most bizarre employee cultures I've ever been a part of; drama is everywhere, but everybody's kind of too shy and backward to really address it. Everybody was fun to hang out with in their own way but you get the sense that there are a lot of jilted pseudo-intellectuals in denial about working in what's essentially Pier One for gifted kids; when most of us got laid off we never spoke again. A lot of people come into the company thinking it's something they could legitimately do for years, but it's genuinely just a waypoint in between whatever you were doing before and whatever bigger thing will come 5-12 months down the line.