Pros
You always get a manager title, ragardless, so it does look good on resume. I was able to get a few interviews for solid positions after being able to put "relief manager" on there. The pay was $12 in my area, and 10 in most others around my are. It's decent pay for an extra level position. The DM was cool, although company expectations were ridiculous for a non commission job. You could tell he was just doing what he was told and wanted to simply do his part and get his check--I respect that because he did his part well, and I understood where he was coming from when he pushed sales non-stop, or came in in a bad mood.
Cons
Well, I'm not entitled person, or someone who expects jobs like these to offer a whole lot; however there were things that even I was very disappointed with. If you are not familiar with what the job entails then you may not understand some of my complaints until you are working there. Firstly, the job is very sales oriented, so much so that you may start to wonder why you aren't getting commission. They do offer bonus's once a year based on performance, but it is tiered, and it does not compensate for lack of a commission structure. The GM will spend his day bugging you about each transaction, and begging you to sell more box's or locks until you feel compelled to cheat customers by charging them without them knowing. All the while you are not being compensated at all for this. There are scripts that they expect you to follow with no room for improvisation. These are some of the most robotic scripts you will ever see, and rely on customers being idiots in order to properly work. Any mistake you make, such as missing an empty unit on your lock check, is dingged and appears as an alert on the company software system, and you are expected to give a full written explanation. Furthermore, the software alert system(and company as a whole) is not employee friendly, it is very customer first type of business, which is fine except for when it is 100% their fault. If a customer leaves a unit without checking out, and they continue to to be charged, it falls on us, and we get an alert, the managers get frustrated and you feel like crap. While I understand we were supposed to do lock checks and catch things like that, it wasn't always so simple on our end. It's too much details to go in a full explanation, but can you just move out of your apartment without telling your landlord? Then get mad because he charges you? On another note, there isn't much room for growth. You can become a property manager, and that comes with a free apartment, but it's on the property, and accepting that position will essentially keep you dependent on the company for more than just work, thus keeping you stuck there, since, how can you beat free housing? overall it is a stressful job and the compensation does not match it. There is a lot of paperwork, you are expected to also make appointment calls, late rent calls, lien calls, and calls to tell people your are selling their belongings because they haven't paid. You will be dealing with a lot of emotional people because, well, YOU'RE SELLING THEIR STUFF! I could go on and on about the position. As A young guy with high aspirations, and wants to move up in this world, I was not excited to wake up for this job. If you're not worried about too much and just need a decent job while in school, then you may not mind it. Or if you're older and just want to make some decent money then may be ok. Just know it's a tedious job.
