-Without extensive outside experience, or maaaaaaaaaany years on the job, you kind of hit a ceiling at the store manager position if you are trying to work your way up from the bottom. After store manager there is the district manager position where you get the company car, the company cell phone, the great salary, the respect, etc. But it's a very narrow door with a lot of people trying to fit through it. Expect to stay store manager pretty much forever unless you have extensive outside experience or equally extensive educational qualifications.
-Given the nature of a retail job, especially a diverse and demanding one like this, employee turnover is high. So if you want to accel and be a great employee, expect to be taking on an absolute ton of work and responsibility sometimes because generally speaking, your store will be understaffed, or at the very least undertrained. If you're on the counter with just 1 or 2 new guys, you basically have to run the store by yourself because it takes a new employee a few months to be of any real use in a place like this.
-Training is VERY "trial by fire" at essentially every position in the company. Basically you get hired, flip through a 3.5 inch binder of "corporate policies," take some useless "training modules" on the computer for a shift or two, and then you're put on the counter and you just learn everything as you go. Your first few weeks will be very demanding on you, and even more demanding on the one veteran employee who has to run the store by his/herself while you stumble your way along.
-Corporate "culture" if you want to call it that, can be exceptionally lame at times. I'm all about team spirit, but you have a couple of store meetings every year, and you have to recite stupid cheers and spell out "AutoZone" letter for letter with your body, and listen to ridiculous rap videos about answering the phone and providing customer service. Seriously. You will want to pour battery acid in your eyes. Day to day it's fine, but on those rare ocassions that you have to do that garbage, you will question yourself if it is worth living any longer.
-There is a "dress code" not a dress "uniform," so you have to provide all of your own stuff, which sucks and can get expensive, especially if you live in a winter climate, because you will be out there in the snow changing batteries and wipers and whatnot. Even a basic uniform will run you a minimum of 50 bucks. Black shoes, socks, belt, sturdy pants, plus your shirt, which is about 12 bucks for a polo, and 20 for a button-up. Add in the winter, and now you need an "AutoZone approved" jacket, hat, gloves, whatever. Plus if you get even a few drops of battery acid on your shirt, there will be a hole burned in it the next morning and you will have to buy a new one. Get a stain from a greasy car part or leaking oil bottle? Snag your shirt on a shelf fixture? Too bad. Shell out another 20 bucks.
-I understand sales goals and selling programs, but sometimes the bar is set unnattainbly high at AutoZone, and you get zero margin room for having a store that just lost a valuable employee, or a store where half of your staff is still in the training period, etc. Upper management is VERY report based. They have no idea who you are or what is going on in your store, they just look at spreadsheets every morning and call around to yell at everyone. You can be struggling just to have enough staff to keep the friggen' doors open and you will still have relentless pressure to hit some high sales goal for whatever the product or program of the month is. It can get very tiring when the management method employed is all negative reinforcement, and what is actually going on at store level is never taken into account. Sometimes it feels like the only motivation to drive selling programs and push product is just to not get yelled at over the phone every morning, which works short term, but is a terrible long term management strategy.
-The worst customer will often be treated better than the best employee. For example, the return and warranty policy is highly abused, but as a sales manager, when you try to enforce the rules (not returning something that was used for example) just watch what happens. That customer can merely call the district manager, whine, and then you will get a call from your DM that you're a piece of **** who's failing to provide "customer service" and order you to look that ******* in the eye (this customer will now have a smug look on his face of course) and "apoligize" about your "mistake" and give that person free money. It's horrible, and it's insulting. AutoZone will always cut their employee's off at the knees as soon as any customer disagrees with them for any reason. If you don't want us to enforce a policy, don't bother having it in the first place.
-The pay can be pretty low considering how the company makes money hand over fist.
