Pros
Independent "Jobbers" (store owners) and people working in the DC (warehouse and office) are some of the best, genuine, and nicest people! If you get in with the "in crowd/boy's club" of the company, you'll be promoted and taken care of by the "higher ups."
Cons
Have to be willing to move out of state to really move up in the company. Since it is a publicly traded company, there is great pressure on the boys in Atlanta to always show they're in "the black" and since sales has overall been going down the past 5-6 years, lots of layoffs among the DCs (Distribution Centers) have occurred among office staff. Also, they recently did away with their entire Southwest Division and laid off most division staff, thus closed their Dallas HQ. In the corporate stores Managers work about 50-60+ hours a week and are constantly needing staff. Though the managers are told to "get there numbers up" to get more staff. The HR department has a very high turnover rate, and many DCs will have a different HR manager every year. Company focus has changed overall the past 10 years from wholesale to retail. NAPA's "bread & butter" use to be their wholesale auto mechanic shops, and had many sales reps to drive this business. Which worked well for 70+ years. But little by little they have downsized their sales and product reps to spend more company focused money of retail and oversees business. They are now trying to compete with O'Reillys and AutoZone and Advance to gain more retail walk-in business. BUT, they fail to realize the average joe wants price over quality, unlike the auto-mechanic shops who prefer quality over price. Thus they have let O'Reillys, Advance, and Auto Zone creep in on their wholesale business and NAPA is spread very thin because of it. Now NAPA has decided to enter into the oversees market very aggressively and has had to layoff more and more people because money distribution use. Their is also a big push to get one NAPA "jobber" independent store owner to own several locations, not just one. The higher ups feel it's easier to meet with 20 owners who own 3-8 stores each than 120 owners in a market. The higher ups believe it's easier to "sell" 20 people on an idea, than "120" people, but what they are failing to realize is the Jobbers will end up having more control over campaigns, etc. when less jobbers control most of the territory market. Jobbers are already meeting secretly and unionizing against corporate and in many cases selling out entire markets to NAPA competitors.