Pros
Offers benefits for full time employees. Some opportunities for cross training. There are a few gems in the ranks in both department and regional management. The managers who were promoted based on merit stand out from the rest and are fantastic teachers. The most competent of them have the ability to form tight-knit teams that regularly crush sales records. Being a part of one of those teams feels satisfying and fulfilling.
Cons
If you already have the skills for your chosen department, it isn’t worth it to work here for more than 6 months. If you don’t already have skills or experience, it can be a good opportunity to get paid while learning something new. They hire new employees at $1-2/hr over minimum wage, but the pay isn’t good for long. Even though there is a performance review schedule with opportunity for a raise, the rate that they provide raises doesn’t match the growth of minimum wage in CA. Within a year, your pay will be at or $0.50 above minimum and you’ll learn about new hires getting paid more than you. The position you interview for isn’t likely to be the position the director hires you for. There are countless stories amongst the current employees about how they interviewed for one position, but get forced into another position that they never asked for and didn’t want. There are inexperienced and unqualified shift leads and overwhelmed entry-level employees as a result. Many departments are thinly staffed, but the store director expects higher sales and higher production than what is physically possible for the staff to accomplish. Rather than giving the employees the resources they need to match his expectations, the store director punishes the staff when they aren’t properly staffed or equipped to meet those expectations. It’s very easy to get your hours reduced. You might get the hours you need when you are new, but the closer you get to your 90-day and 6-month reviews, the more excuses upper management finds to not give you the hours you expect. The only people who get paid actual full-time hours are shift leads and managers. Full-time employees get between 30-37.5 hours to discourage OT. If you use your sick hours or are late because of circumstances outside your control, you get your hours cut and the store director insinuates that you’re flaky and less deserving of hours, even if you’ve been a positively-reviewed employee for the duration of your employment. He often gaslights hardworking employees into believing that their work ethic is poor to keep them satisfied with settling for less than they’re worth. As a result, there can feel like there is no incentive to perform well since you’ll just be punished either way. The irony is that if the staff with good work ethic was treated respectfully, compensated properly, and given the resources they need to succeed and grow and keep up with demand, sales and profits would go up and actually match the lofty expectations. While not explicitly stated, there is a heavy bias in male employees’ favor. Women and female-dominant departments are treated much more unfavorably compared to their male counterparts. In some instances, the male employees or new hires will be assumed to be more knowledgeable than their female counterparts and the female employees won’t even be given an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge or skills.