Pros
- All the team in my store (Angel) were amazing, really friendly, great team spirit. There were times I was crying with laughter, we had such good fun together and took care of each other. - Loads of freebies -- there's a box where damaged/discontinued stock is thrown every day and staff can take as much as they like. Depending on the size of the store this could be hundreds of pounds worth of stock each week - If you are valuable to your management team, they will bend over backwards to accommodate you. I was lucky enough to be given the days and shifts I wanted after I told them I wanted to leave. I ended up staying another year as a result - The pay is above minimum wage (though I'm assuming this depends on location of your store)
Cons
- Definite favouritism across all the stores, and head office. If your management team decide they don't like you, don't expect them to help you with progression, requested hours or shift changes, or expect them to give you the time of day at all - Crazy hours expected to work -- over Christmas the hours are extended which meant a lot of my team were expected to work 2pm - 11pm every day, with no consideration from management that people have lives outside of work! Also management would make the rota so that they would always do the early/desirable shifts, and anyone they didn't like would be stuck with the bad/late ones - The amount of work you're expected to do, at any level, is insane. Especially if you're in a bigger store. The company as a whole is severely understaffed as they're currently cost-cutting. In one shift you can be expected to work in the warehouse, replenish the stock on the shop floor, fill up the cupboards underneath the tables with stock which involves multiple trips with trollies from the shop floor to the warehouse and back, jump on the till whenever they ring for you, re-merchandise entire sections on your own, and still have a polite smile on your face when you get constantly interrupted by customers as there's nobody else to help you. To give you some perspective - in the space of two months, 8 employees left as they were so overworked and exhausted, and management didn't replace anybody. The remaining staff were just expected to pick up the slack from 8 people. Ridiculous - Opportunities for progression never appear until you tell them you want to leave, then they panic and try to offer you anything to try and make you stay.