Pros
If you're a fresh graduate from art school with no aim or direction as to what to do next or else working a low-paying retail job and looking for something steady and a free warm meal every day, then Swank may just be a company to look into working for. You will get insurance benefits and paid vacation which you will never get to take since you will be working so much. If you are lucky enough to be employed in the state of Illinois, your vacation will even roll over from year to year up to 120 hours. No thanks to Swank, it's Illinois state law.
Cons
Oh wow where to begin? I will use bullet points since there will be so many items... - Swank, as a company, and except for in a couple of states where the law specifically prohibits it, utilizes a loophole in federal labor law that allows them to classify their ordinarily non-exempt payroll employees in a special category whereby they are told when they are hired that they will be "salaried" and subject to the "fluctuating work week" overtime calculation which allows Swank to pay their employees a VERY small amount of money for any overtime hours worked. And believe me, there will be a lot of overtime worked. But the really vile thing about this arrangement is that it is clearly against the spirit of the Federal Labor Standards Act which was created to protect ordinary laborers from being taken advantage of by greedy employers, establishing the "time-and-a-half" overtime calculation Swank has cleverly skirted. In fact, one could argue this compensation method is central to Swank's ability to remain profitable and competitive. When you are forcing employees to work regular 60+ hour weeks and 6 day weeks for almost no extra money you can see how juicy that could enhance Swank's bottom line. - Promotions are given (or not given) based on seemingly no standard of performance, job knowledge, or merit. Some are held back promotionless for years even while clearly being relied upon with a large and increased load of responsibilities in their area while watching others get promoted to top positions who are not only unseasoned with a small amount of experience in the industry but also in some cases severely lacking technical skills. - While waiting for promotions or other advancement opportunities, employees are routinely lied to by Senior Management and led on as to plans on how their career is supposed to develop and even lied to about specific dates when hey will be promoted. And this was not just me - many others have shared similar stories with me. - Compensation for the same job title in the same region varies greatly and for seemingly no discernable reason. - Not only will you work a crazy amount of hours but your shift times will make you think you accidentally joined Marine boot camp. You may work a twelve hour shift ending at 2am and then be asked to show up again at 6am at a job site that is 30 miles from where you live. People have gotten into car crashes on days like this because they fell asleep at the wheel. I persoally worked up to 19 hours on one of those days I just described. - You may be told in the middle of the week that on Saturday which was your scheduled off day, you now have to show up at some hotel for a twelve hour tech job. Now you're working a sixth day for free. No one ever thanks you. This has happened to me many times. - Morale is terrible because everyone feels taken advantage of and cheated. It can be really depressing at times. It's no surprise that there is such a high turnover. If you do stick around you will constantly have to train new hires who know next to nothing. - Techs can be left to to rot for hours without breaks and never get a chance to eat anything for over ten hours at a time. I'm not exaggerating. - After they make millions upon millions on our backs, they don't even have the decency to throw a holiday party once a year. We have to throw and pay for our own holiday parties. - The training programs are for the most part laughable. If you are lucky enough to even get accepted into one, you will likely never use what you've learned because you will never be assigned to a tech job that you would use that skill.