Pros
Pays more than other supermarkets (but you will be worked twice as hard). My store didn't open on boxing day. Customers were 99% friendly and disgruntled customers are easy to deal with as it all pretty much boils down to they want a refund but don't have a receipt or they misread the price label.
Cons
Where do I start? Working at unsocial hours and not having a fixed rota. Some days you would be working 5am until 3pm, the next day you could be working 2pm until 10 or 11pm. You didn't get a say in when you work 99% of the time. Sometimes I finished at 10pm and was in the next day for 5am. I was constantly tired as the work is physically demanding and my sleeping pattern was all over the place. I could justify unsocial and tiring hours if I worked in a job that actually did something beneficial for society (e.g. police or ambulance driver) but I wasn't going to waste my life working unsocial hours for a supermarket so I left. You can only have a work/life balance if you work part time. If you want to pay your bills you'll need to work full time there and that means the unsocial hours will destroy your social life. They try to make themselves look good in the public eye with how much they pay. Actually, everything considered the pay isn't that amazing. You can get paid the same or more to work Mon - Fri 9-5 in an air conditioned office (which is what I do now and I don't regret it one bit). Teams are small and there's never many staff scheduled in (it's one way they keep product prices down). The downside of this is as an employee if anyone ever phones in sick on your shift you can bet you'll be finishing work later than expected. If someone phones in sick and it's your day off expect a call from your manager trying to pressure you into coming in even if it means you would end up working 10 days straight. The work is physically demanding. They give you a 7 feet tall pallet and expect you to clear it in 20 minutes. Realistically you need 40-60 minutes depending on the products on it. You're shifting heavy boxes of product about and they expect you to do it far too quickly than is good for you. If you use proper lifting technique you will be too slow and get pulled into the office. People end up using bad lifting technique to and subsequently injure their back. Their own training video shows a demonstration of how to lift products and it actually shows someone using bad technique (lifting something off the ground by bending over at the waist rather than using the legs). The pension is worthless. The employer contributions are next to nothing and it's unlikely you can afford to make higher contributions yourself unless you are a manager. The area managers are not hired from existing staff. They are hired as graduates. Therefore you have these fresh out of university 21 year olds on a power trip who have no sense of what it's like working on the shop floor. I believe one reason Lidl does this is so that the area managers will enforce new rules without sympathy. They typically burn out after a few years. Career progression depends on whether your face fits. For managers: you basically do the same work as a store assistant plus a little bit of managing. And you will work 50 hours per week minimum. I must have heard the same jokes from customers dozens of times a day. It's a small thing but it gets tiresome eventually.