Pros
-Freedom during shift (to listen to music, to work at your own pace) -50/50 shot of a good coworker. -$15 worth of meal every night -$10.00/hr (which is great for someone who could only get minimum wage jobs before, even with a degree) -Some of the bakery managers actually work as hard as you do which is a boost for morale -Free life insurance -Fairly affordable insurance (for the time) -You meet some very nice people
Cons
(much of this may just have been my store.) -Wage is just barely worth the amount of work you have to do - and there is a LOT of product to be made. I work for Covelli enterprise ($10/hr starting) and I've heard that Corporate pays $13-14/hr - however even if you're being paid less, you're expected to work just as hard and make product look just the same. -Tyrannical managers can add more pressure than there needs to be and that there should be for that wage. -Night bakers get blamed for a lot of things (by day managers, by food cost people, by GM's, DM's, co-workers, everyone) and threatened for even more. 90% of it will most likely be someone else's fault but you'll have to initially pay for it until proven otherwise. -Since the bakery managers are out and about traveling to other stores during your shift (or sleeping through the shift since they're salary and can get away with not having to clock in and say they were at a meeting when needed), if you need vacation or anything from them, you leave them a phone call (or text if they're informal), and pray it gets done and not forgotten. -Many promises of raises, promotions, or transfers - and none of them come through (even if the manager TELLS YOU you're the best for the job or worthy of the transfer/raise). Good luck getting promises in writing. Bosses tend to forget to do paperwork you may need. -Management changes VERY often in both the bakery sector and the store sector. This leads to a high instability factor where the kitchen and rules changes way too often for anyone to keep up. -Covelli Enterprise is extremely stingy. I was first hired in promised 40 hrs/wk, soon after training all the stores were cut to 36.5 hrs a week to cover the possibilities of "accidental" overtime during high bake days, holidays, busy weekends, etc. So if you manage to get actual planned overtime, you'll only be getting about 2-4 hrs of overtime on your paycheck. Also, over the years, more and more of the benefits have been revoked. What you can eat, how much you can eat, insurance premiums got higher, shifts get hacked away at, how much overtime an individual can have, and a few more. -Undertrained people training new trainees who are trained to be just as undertrained if not less, and the cycle continues. Some of the coworkers can be very... unintelligent, or not care if they do things right or make things look nice. Many coworkers take advantage of the freedom and lack of supervision - not pulling their weight so someone else has to pull it for them. It's quite unfair at times. (On the flip side you might get a wonderful coworker) -I know a woman who's worked as a baker for 15 yrs and only makes $12/hr. Don't expect it to get higher than that in covelli enterprise. -There is always an agenda in the works. Politics and ass-kissery. Beware.