Pros
The only nice thing was working with an assortment of interesting products. Also being able to talk with a few work colleagues that were supportive as they were living the same hell, also battling to keep up with the unrealistic work load.
Cons
As a store director I worked 65 to 70 hours a week and had no life. I would get home after 11:00pm after working a 14 hour day and have just 4 hours sleep before having to get up again to be at work by 6:30am. I've worked in retail management for years and was always very successful in my career, but this was a no win situation from the start. You will never come across a company with such a tiny payroll. They expect you to run a store of 120000 square feet with three people. This includes the evening shift where we had from 5:30pm to 10:30pm to clean and condition the entire store with three people, as well as cleaning the break room and restrooms, emptying garbage etc. The customers really trash the store and a department can be immaculate in the morning and totally destroyed by the evening, needing hours of work to get it back into shape. The same applied to the operations staff who couldn't keep up with the amount of freight coming in and were in a permanent state of exhaustion. The convenience store at my local gas station has three night staff! Temporary staff are paid minimum wage and once they see how much is expected of them and the work load they leave. The staff turnover at this company nationally is in the region of 200% a year - that speaks for itself. But they still won't see or admit to the error of their ways. Every season you have huge store resets, and displays and end caps are changed out regularly, all planned by head office who have no clue on the realistic labor required. As store manager you just have to get it done. There was no light at the end of the tunnel here and my personal well being and sanity was more valuable to me. The previous two managers before me also crashed and burned for exactly the same reasons- no big surprise there. I was willing, capable and able to do everything I needed to do, I just didn't have enough staff to do it all.
