Pros
There are really no Pros to working for Advance. They promise bonuses and raises but those only come if you somehow make the impossible sales goals they have. Oh and have a position that is bonus eligible. Ok one benefit is if you are a thief, the company could care less if you are taking thousands of dollars out of a store, they have no clue you are doing it. I work with someone who is somehow gets blocked from returning items, because the system says he has too many returns without receipts, yet he still has not been fired. He knows he needs receipts for returns yet never has them when he does returns in other stores. Odd he can't do the returns in the store he works in, especially the store he works in is 10 miles closer to where he lives. An anonymous tip about the possible theft went completely ignored. One employee was finally let go not for theft but for not showing up to work, the fact he was selling parts online had nothing to do with it. So if you are less than honest this is a good company to work for.
Cons
It's about sales, sales and did I mention sales. When I first started you had an Sales Per Hour goal and Dollars Per Transaction. Which is fine especially if you are in a decent store. Now they have UPT as part of their "caring for the customer" campaign. According to the paper pushers caring for customers is selling them products they don't know they need, so a customer comes in for an air freshener you have to attack them with every sales pitch you can come up with to get them to buy, rags, fuel system cleaner, project packs and anything found on the counter next to you. Oh don't forget to push the Speed Perks rewards program because it brings the customers coming back. Advance has "training" videos and tests you need to go through, depending on the position you are hire for depends on how many videos and tests you will have to take. Most of the sales positions have about 30+ higher Manager On Duty you have more like 50 videos and tests. These videos go through everything from cleaning a vehicle and how to kind of take apart a transmission. So you get all this info where only about half of which might be useful. The tests will ask you questions never answered in the videos and unless you have someone in your store that has automotive knowledge, you will be taking a lot of these tests over and over. Knowledgeable people are few and far between in the company, with stores on every corner it is expected, also the knowledgeable people do not get paid better than some kid fresh off the street. If for some reason you still apply and get an interview, do not believe what the interviewer says. They promise the world, then completely forget what they said a few months later. Do a great job and you will receive more work and less hours. Yes for all your hard work and sales you will not receive a bonus, because that changes on a monthly basis and they cut your hours. HR is a joke, they do what they are paid to do, protect the company from the "trouble" employees. Have an issue with a boss and ask for a transfer to another district and you will be sent to a trouble store in the same district. If you move and ask for a transfer that is closer to where you live and you will be ignored. A fellow employee had to move to help take care of his ailing mother, nearly 50 miles away from where we worked but the company would not transfer him, so he traveled that long for over a month while looking for another job. Me I am being transferred to another store, I found this out from people at a restaurant near our store and from fellow employees. I am being transferred to a store 10x the distance I travel currently and to a store that has a lot of trouble. Don't expect a promotion, ever. Well unless you are an assistant manager, which the company is hiring less and less of. You will stay at your job title from beginning to the end and they will add on more and more duties and never promote you or give you a raise. I never wanted to get into a corporate company, I just knew the kind of issues I would have. But the small shops were closed up as the big boxes put 20 stores within 7 miles of each other, yes there are more stores in the area the I work in than customers. For all my knowledge, good hard work and time put in I have not seen a raise in two years. Again no compensation for the work I put in. Oh I did get some compensation, I know get 5 or more less hours per week. As Advance keeps cutting work hours in the stores, we get less and less pay. So a store that is open for 160 hours has only 140 work hours. So at any given time you may have 3 people on to handle, commercial and retail customers, answer phones, pull parts for online orders or store to store transfers, delivery of parts to commercial customers and put away a very large store order from the warehouse. Don't forget though you need to sell 3 items or more with every sale because when you don't your District Manager will question why you are not doing so because it has to be your fault a customer isn't buying 5 items when all they wanted was an air freshener.
