Pros
Pay can be very good if you get it when you come in, the raises have been very poor since the recession despite high performance for the company. If you are hoping for good raises/ good salary bump from promotions it is unlikely. Example, they reduced the store management bonuses by having inventory every other year(so you miss out on an LP bonus every other year) and reducing the number of mystery shops per year thereby making it more difficult to hit bonus for customer service. Interesting mix of merchandise, discount is not great but good deals do go on the monthly incentives(every month a different small selection of merch is available to associates at basically cost) can be very useful to collecting a nice houseful of useful items Company is completely sound financially, no debt just rolling profits back into stock buybacks which isn't bad for managers being bonused with stock. There is a current mini exodus of senior level store management, ASM's and SM's, in Chicagoland in 2013 so there is some opportunity to jump on board. They do enable you to really take care of customers/ go beyond normal expectations which is great for the customers and can feel really positive for you if only that same attitude applied to employees.
Cons
Antiquated systems, everyone says this but this company really takes the cake. Internal computer systems like JDA that are DOS based and materially haven't changed in almost 10 years. Redundancies and inefficiencies are almost boundless throughout all; JDA, bednet/portal, estore finally got just got improvements so that caught up to most other retailers from 5 years ago. Culture became progressively more abusive over the years in management. Over-reliance on claimed operational efficiency improvements to reduce payroll and headcount over the years, some of it is real and did actually make an impact but a lot of it boils down to the reality that cutting a cake 6 ways or 12 leaves you with the same amount, the slack is picked up by managers working more/ pushing already over-tasked associates for more more more which is just burn and churn. The risk of getting a poor mystery shop score/ customer complaint is like having a knife being held over you at all times, if you're in management and either of these things happen directly related or mentioning to you it will negatively impact your review/ result in a possible write up etc. BBB stores are done with major growth so the opportunities for advancement have greatly diminished as now its more about who you know, who gets fired or quits, more chance than ability. Store level management autonomy and authority has steadily been decreasing over the years, to a point now that even simple things like having a formal conversation with a minimum wage associate needs an HR review beforehand and you have a district level nanny for everything; district manager, operations trainer, HR, LP, customer service. Its like being in High School where every teacher thinks that their subject is the only one you have.