Pros
I love the actual work I do. I get to talk to people, find out what's going on in their lives, and recommend what would work well in their life. Most of the people you meet in this job are friendly. Some are downright fantastic to spend time with, the type of people you'd like to sit down to lunch with. Even excluding those, the vast majority are simply people either in a rush or not willing to express their personal skills. Something I haven't taken advantage of yet, but you get some great benefits right off the bat. Within a few weeks, I was told I'm allowed to go into a 401K (which, let's be honest, I'm working a job just over minimum wage so obviously I don't care about that right now), there's some minimal upping from government healthcare, and just two weeks in I was told I have a full week of paid vacation per month. If you need time off, you can take it with enough advance warning. Even if you don't manage to get it off, the people around you are willing to take, give or trade shifts. The weeks I was busy I could give shifts to people. The weeks I was free and just needed money I could get shifts from others to get me just shy of 40 hours (any more than that you're in overtime, and if you're part time they very much frown on that... in fact it's more like a growl). The employees that stay there more than a month tend to be people you'll like and be able to depend on for help while you're training. Your fellow employees are (almost always) great.
Cons
You are not paid enough for what they are expecting of you. For eight dollars an hour, who on earth would care about the store's monthly sales reports? Yes, I get why the store manager cares. But why should I care? If we sell an extra laptop, but I don't get any sort of commission because I wasn't able to sell the customer on a Product Protection Plan (aka PPP, aka warranty, aka a waste of money in almost all cases), what is it to me? Of course you're going to get a few awful customers, that's par for the course in any retail job. The big issue with OD is the manager's (I'm sorry, L.O.D.'s) obsession with reaching the numbers. We need to have an 85% satisfaction rating in our customer feedback surveys. This means that getting a 4 out of 5 is actually bad for the company's score, yet you're expected to give feedback cards to every single customer. It's a double edged sword. If you only hand the cards out to customers who you feel will give you a great review (you made a wonderful personal connection, they had a problem that you spent a lot of time on and managed to fix, etc) you get trouble for not handing out enough survey cards. If you hand out survey cards indiscriminately, your name could be attached to a survey that is less than perfect, and you're noted for that as well. Our store has all these goals: reach X amount in tech sales, reach Y amount in Copy and Print, etc. And there is absolutely no incentive for any employee to help reach those goals. Hell, if you sell a giant product in technology and they don't buy a PPP (Product Protection Plan) you may not even get a commission. And the commissions you do get aren't life changing (this is, of course, assuming you're in tech sales, the only department that actually sells things that make commission. If you're in Copy and Print, no such luck). Your store WILL be overstaffed for the slow times, and overwhelmingly understaffed for the busy times. There's one manager on duty at all times, VERY RARELY two at the same time. This may not seem like a big deal, but consider the possibilities (all of which I've actually experienced): the technology person is busy with a customer, so the manager is forced to cover the next tech customer. I've been in one of these sales that has lasted nearly two hours, and since customer satisfaction is number one, we can't bail on a sale. So our manager may be indisposed for a long time. We need managers and their codes for such trivial things as returns over a certain price, coupon discounts over a certain amount (even if the coupon is something they have in their hand), any issue a particular customer has, etc. As far as the social environment goes, maybe this is just the store I work at, but while we're allowed to be nice to each other, if we manage to stand together long enough to strike up a legit conversation, most of the managers will try to break us up to do work that isn't even work, even if there's no reason to move. C'mon, let us have some down time.
