Pros
Fun and friendly environment. Fun and cool merchandise. Great organizational and productivity tools to plan and track progress as well as getting the job done. If you have a great and well trained team, the store can run smoothly with only a few small speed bumps and hiccups from time to time. Lots of effort put into investing into the workers of the company. A good worker can move up through the ranks very quickly and the company is always growing, plus it's pretty stable unlike clothing retailers. It's a good company to grow with. Possible to get help when you need it. People are willing to help out at other stores in cases of emergencies or even just to cover on vacations. Monthly bonuses are some very nice icing on the cake!
Cons
Limited in hours and high expectations on productivity. When everything is going smoothly, it's quite possible to get everything done and then take on some side projects. But that depends on your team or other issues entirely. It's easy for the whole store to fall behind if just one person ends up coming down with an illness or an injury. Far too many SM's delegate and don't really train or teach their ASMs how to run the store in their absence. I've been in a lot of stores where the ASMs were clueless about their core job functionality. Store managers are expected to stay as long as it takes to get the job done. This can mean insanely long hours and pay way lower than minimum wage after it all adds up. Trucks can be disorganized and messy when unloading. Merchandise breaks, including customer orders, and you have to hope that you can find replacements in your store or a nearby one. A good driver can really help with this, but you don't always get a good driver. Although work is being put into better training. I wish there was more training time to be spent with new associates beyond just the barebones functionality. Sometimes there's too many projects to get done and not enough time to really work with everyone and show them how to do parts of their job. It's more of encountering it when it happens. Stores (especially freezer/dairy stores) have tiny backrooms and because of limits in hours, it gets very backed up and hard to move, causing safety and compliance issues. Sometimes it's a huge challenge figuring out where to put things.
