Don't care more about your work than the company cares about you
Pros
At the end of the day it's a job and a job has value. You're encouraged to learn about the products the store sells, which makes you more capable with simple home repairs. This is a decent job if you work in a large sales department or as a stocker. As long as you have no real responsibility and as long as you show no interest in anything beyond your job, you'll be left alone to quietly work your shift and leave. If you need hours, once you're in the building it's rare that you'll leave on time. The less you say and the more indifferent you seem the better for you personally, so if you want a job where you can work your shift, complete your work, keep your head down, and point customers to someone else, then downstock in hardware or morning stock are fine. Don't make a career out of it and politely decline advancement opportunities.
Cons
The company has been sued multiple times for a reason. They pride themselves on being an industry follower instead of an industry leader, and upper management brags about scalping successful ideas from Walmart, Target, and Home Depot. You will never have adequate staffing, and will be expected to pick up the slack being dropped everywhere. General Managers have bragged about engaging in corporate espionage in sales meetings, like entering a Home Depot and stealing documents from the office. Nobody in management is allowed to have a real life, and it is a fight to get time off in any position within the store. A single person calling in sick or quitting or whatever shatters the entire fragile staffing structure, even if it's just a carry out or morning stocker. Because management basically lives in the building, they're constantly flirting with each other or sleeping around. Most General Managers end up divorced either because they're cheating or because the job keeps them away from their family. Despite this the company constantly tries to push people into management. There is no compassion within the management structure. The expectation for management is to instill into the team that every shopper that enters the building is a balloon filled with your money, and it's your job to pop the balloon and take that money because it already belongs to you. This means that employees will be written up for failing "secret shops" and not pushing obviously unneeded garbage onto the person. In management, your department payroll determines a portion of your paycheck. This means that when the front end or receiving (which are tied to the store manager's bonus) have extra people, they send them to departments that can't afford the extra help just to keep their own payroll under control.
