Pros
Overall, a pretty great company. Awesome Medical/Dental/Vision/Retirement benefits, including chiropractic/physical therapy and mental health benefits, really terrific core values and culture (see note in Cons below). There are differences between working as a part-time Crew Member and working as a manager of course, but at all levels the compensation is pretty good for what you do. Excellent raise structure for part-time employees. A 10% discount on your shopping and lots of free coffee/snacks while you work is pretty nice, too.
Cons
As a crew member -- As with any hourly job, you are given hours based on your availability and the store's needs. If you have open availability, and a busy store, working close to 40 hours a week and making a living is no problem. If you have limited availability, or your store has off/on busy seasons, the income may not be as steady or reliable. Also, the work can be very physical, and the high service expectations of our customers can be exhausting. As a manager -- Pretty much totally exhausting all the time. 10+ hour days on a rotating schedule or not, each store is different. Working both closing shifts (until or after midnight) and opening shifts (starting at 4 or 5am) in the same week is normal practice. You are given a LOT of responsibilities, but the responsibilities themselves are not the problem. it's more so that you are expected to fulfill them regardless of the normal rhythm of the store and the 100 other tasks you need to accomplish in a given shift. The better managers will delegate most of those tasks out, but often, there is no opportunity due to tight staffing and increasingly tighter hourly production/payroll goals. A lot of this is dependent on your Captain (Store Manager). There are some opportunities for movement/transfer if you are really at odds with your Captain, but not many, and for any move you need your Captain's approval. Great Captains fight to develop other great Captains -- they encourage forward/out-of-the-box thinking and reward performance. Less stellar Captains will want you to do everything their ways, and might ignore or even reprimand ideas/practices that are different. It can be hard to keep your head up and stay positive in that kind of environment, and even harder to be convincingly excited and happy to be at work everyday, which of course is the expectation.