Pros
Great employee discount, great benefits for full time employees.
Cons
After one year of working with the company as a part time associate these are the negatives I've discovered working at a large metropolitan store: You will be overtasked by management. There have been days where I'm doing 10 different tasks meanwhile a manager will tell me I also need to pick up the phone by the third ring and still get everything done. Advancement is a carrot on a string. Managers will not inform you, even if you ask, what positions are available within the company. And no matter how hard you work and how much you accomplish when it comes time you'll be told there's no openings. Pay raises aren't negotiable. Asked for a pay raise based on my performance. I was a part time sales support who was managing and doing merchandising roles at my store. After 2 months of checking back in with my director to hear back they told me they couldn't give me a raise. Days later a friend put in her two weeks notice and a manager pulled her aside and told her that they would do anything to keep her, money wasn't an issue. Time Off As a part time associate if you ask 2 weeks or more in advance you should be able, with ease to get unpaid time off, or change your availability. I've done both and my changed availability was rejected outright. My manager told me we'd chat about it, and I've had to cancel trips and plans I'd had for months because my manager decided to deny my unpaid time off. Scheduling. Every week someone is scheduled to work on the days they've specified they can't because of second jobs, family, health, etc. They will schedule you to be 39 hours so as to not make you full time and not give you benefits. Fulltimers as well as part-timers will experience hour cuts, one manager once cut all of our schedules by 30 minutes each 8 hour shift, and cut part time employees' shifts nearly in half. (This sort of thing tends to happen a lot) Hours are linked to store success. Often times, especially in small stores, if monetary goals are not achieved by a certain hour in the day it is policy to start sending home people. Those who stay, in my experience, tend to be those management likes. Stress Due to over tasking you will go home with a mental list of all the tasks you will have to get done the next day. The stress never diminishes, and the only way people learn to cope with it is to either just accept it as part of the job and be stressed out everyday, or to just stop caring and give up trying to have good work ethic.
