Pros
The schedule is very very flexible. You can pretty much choose when you work, within reason. There are times (Christmas, Valentine’s) where things need to be done on certain dates, but your weekly service visits are up to you. All territories are different, but in mine, each RM is assigned between 1 and 5 stores to service weekly. Each store gets a set # of hours per week and a required number of visits. For example, you may be assigned a CVS that gets 6 hours per week and needs to be serviced twice weekly. So essentially you’d service on Monday or Tuesday for 3 hours and again Thursday or Friday for 3 hours. That’s really up to you and often depends on when the orders arrive. You get a phone that logs hours and has everything you need to do your job in the phone. Very convenient.
Cons
Hours are extremely light if your territory has a lot of merchandisers. The hours are not as consistent as I’d like, because the store’s weekly allotted hours vary depending on the time of year . I’ve worked 30 hours in a week and then not at all. When seasons come and need to be set, it’s a lot of work if you service a few stores. My territory has recently become quite strict with corporate allotted hours. Before we were able to work as much as we felt we needed to so that the store was “retail-ready.” Now we need to clock out before our time is up or we are scolded. Sometimes, things can’t be done because of the strict time limits. Also, my state requires that I work minimum 3 hours per day... which is inconvenient with a job like this because sometimes I need to do a quick 20 minute straighten and I can’t because of the hours.