Pros
Great discount - 50% Managers are only required to work 40 hours/week and can typically choose their own schedule as long as you're hitting goal. Personally my DM was very attentive and would work with me on just about any issues, although I think I was lucky, not all DMs were as supportive. Bonuses are good (when you get them). My staff was amazing, however I groomed my staff over 3 years, and weeded out a lot of bad employees. Merchandise is pretty cool although not always of the highest quality.
Cons
Store goals in the last year I worked with earthbound went from a 5-10% increase over ly numbers to 15 to close to 30% making bonusing nearly impossible and cut the bonuses quite a bit since we rarely made much extra over goal. This chained tons of coaching of even my best employees who were fantastic sales people. With the selling techniques that are expected not only of you but every employee makes the pay ($8 to start at my location) ridiculously low and the possibility of a raise (in my last year there I got a 1% raise and that was with my DM fighting for it) pretty unlikely for managers and sales associates alike. Almost every day I would leave work feeling defeated despite my DM assuring myself and other managers that we were great managers. Upper management, with a few exceptions are really just plain snotty and awful to be around, one relatively recent addition as an RM in particular. With the typical small close knit family feel of my store and neighboring stores having her come on and be so cold to everyone was quite a shock. But when dollars are more valuable to you as a company than tenured staff, definitely how the company is leaning, I guess it shouldn't have been all that shocking.
