Pros
My coworkers and managers are reasonable and really fun people. We're a team and we're all getting kicked around by corporate together. I can be open with managers about problems, we even have conversations. They do enforce reasonable rules still they aren't just acting like friends or bad managers. They are reasonable people while still being good managers. They generally try to put cashiers/floor workers in places that need the help, so support is there. It's an easy job to get even if it's your first and it's way more fun, interesting, and laid back than the food industry.
Cons
Terrible pay, you will be on minimum wage and will never see a raise. Your first few promotions have no raises either, and the managers hardly make any more. The corporation sucks as well, it's run by Sears. They push the rewards obsessively to the point where our store manager is telling us to sign up customers for email so they can get a rewards account. The rewards lie and mislead customers so the few who use it get angry and refuse to ever shop there again. If a customer has a bad experience I encourage them to complain and boycott Kmart, our stores are closing and the reality is the corporation is terrible with customers and cheap with employees. Low pay is one thing, but Kmart is even cheaper than that. Their computers and their training videos are from the 1980s, I'm not kidding. Every new employee has probably lost the company a few hundred to thousands of dollars in stolen merchandise because there is no training on loss prevention and no training that is relevant to our needs as associates. There have been times when I was written up for things that I didn't know and was never trained on. Furthermore, your first 2 days of work are spent watching hours and hours of completely useless videos that have no relevancy. You would do your job best if you ignored or even did the opposite of what the videos say. Our prices are always off and we constantly call for price checks; the prices and sale signs are confusing and inconsistent. Customers get angry about this often, when I buy an occasional item I always have to ask for a price check. Price checks often take 20 minutes or longer. When regional or out of store managers, aka corporate, come in, they obsess over us doing things in tune with corporate policy, but if we are rejecting corporate policy Kmart should be happy because we're giving better customer service. The regional/corporate managers push us to do things that make customers want to leave the store for good. I try to make the best of the system for customers, and I can only do so much. And our regional managers don't do anything to improve existing problems.