Pros
You receive a 20% employee discount. The union that most employees are a part of work very hard to demand better wages and benefits.
Cons
This company will do everything they can to pay you less than a livable wage. Even though prices are inflating and rent is increasing, management will claim that learning about how to be "civic" makes up for not getting paid enough. At the time of writing this, Union contract negotiations are still happening and, although Union members are bargaining for an additional dollar raise each year, Kowalski's wants to keep employees at their current rates as much as possible. The "civic business" model is a big selling point for new hires but most people in leadership positions do not practice what they preach. I've worked at all of the 11 locations at one point or another and I've witnessed "leaders" berate their employees to the point of tears due to personal or political beliefs. Those unprofessional people are still "leaders" in the company to this day. Despite the message being that "everyone has equal voice in decisions" there's also still a corporate hierarchy and you'll be expected to carry out the decisions of people "above" you. There's not truly equity if there's also a hierarchy. There's a considerable amount of employees who speak English as a second language and yet the company still wants them to learn the overly complicated "civic" language in order to be deemed a good enough employee. However, they don't provide their learning documents related to civics in any language other than English. That's one very easy way to provide equal opportunity to groups of diverse employees and give them the proper tools to succeed... and they don't do it. A majority of the people who move up in this company are straight, cisgender white men despite being a woman-owned company. Nepotism plays a huge factor in choosing people to promote. Candidates from outside the company are often chosen over current employees who have put in the work and have the qualifications. Stores do not have an HR person and even the technical "HR" department cannot be relied on to help employees in situations. Transgender employees have been discriminated against numerous times by their peers and no effort has been put into changing the workplace to be a more inclusive and accepting environment despite entire campaigns from employees asking for said action. Customers are extremely privileged. Employees have been verbally and literally physically abused by customers. Employees have also been sexually harassed by customers and leadership dismisses requests for help when these cases are brought to their attention. There's a lot more that could be said, but I digress.