Since the cons to working at Michaels stack up much higher than the pros, I'll try to keep this as short as I can in list formation:
- You are grossly underpaid for your value: a mere 8.25$ to start. While it is more than minimum wage, it is vastly underrating your value to this company and how much work you actually need to do on the job.
- Speaking of which, you will be performing the jobs of three or four people: sales associate (which you were hired for), cashier, replenishment, and an additional sales associate which they didn't care to schedule because it isn't in their priorities to staff their store appropriately.
- Customers are constantly expecting a bad experience and a slow checkout...which makes them grumpy at you. They have very little patience for errors in pricing, signage, and slow lines... all of which are frequent at this location - all of which will be blamed on you.
- You only get 15 minutes of break unless you work more than 6 hours a shift.
- You will likely have to work on holidays...only to find that the store is practically barren at these times. For example: Thanksgiving night. Until midnight. In a barren store.
- You will constantly find yourself fixing replenishment's mistakes or recovery mistakes that you did not make because someone did not have the time to do their job properly.
- You are more likely to be enthusiastically criticized for a mistake in your work than gratefully applauded for doing your job well.
- Closing shifts involve a lot of panicking and scrambling to try and do the jobs that no one else could finish during the day.
- Corporate, aka "The Support Center", is constantly butting into your job and telling you how to do it, even if their way reduces your productivity for no practical reason.
- You will be patted down and your bags will be checked after every shift as if you are a criminal that cannot be trusted.
- You will be blamed for "shrink", i.e. theft levels in the store, even though there are very few reasonable preventative methods you can take to actually reduce theft that the company will allow. For instance, if you see someone leaving with a box of candy without having paid for it, you cannot tell them to "stop", "halt", or call them out on their behavior. You can only kindly suggest that they approach the register, as it is over here to pay for their candy, or simply exclaim, "Why, that's a lot of candy you have there!" How useful.
- Beware of short-term availability changes, as they will often go unnoticed and/or ignored until you say something more than once. Leaving notes for management and speaking with management directly regarding a temporary change in availability due to a doctor's appointment or otherwise may not prevent you from being scheduled during the exact time you need to be out. In addition, management will place the responsibility on you for getting a shift switched, rather than simply correcting their mistake in the system. Also, they don't provide you with your fellow employees contact information so that you can make these arrangements more easily.
- If you are new to retail, the training program is practically nonexistent here. You will be eaten alive, while being yelled at by the manager who was supposed to train you for not doing your job perfectly. Even if you are not new to retail, expect little to no help in getting to know the store layout.
- Asking questions due to your lack of training, as previously noted, is discouraged, as the training manager is likely to berate you and yell at you for your incompetency, or otherwise ignore your inquiries.
- Speaking of which, depending on the manager of the day, you will or will not have good management help when you need a manager for a customer, for a void on the register, to answer a question, etc. You may also receive unnecessary attitude for asking questions or requesting assistance.
