Most employees are part-time (10-15 hours per week) which is great if you aren't actually trying to pay any bills. Very few people work anything close to full-time.
It's basically a dead-end job. Management positions are supposedly awesome, but the reality of working your way up the ladder is slim to none. Management positions get eliminated, and the people in management positions never leave.
Turnover is high among sales specialists. Well, it is retail after all, but there is a lot of frustration at the bottom. Everyone is trying hard to impress the managers because they all want to be a candidate for a management position themselves whenever one becomes a available. At my store, there was a lot of two-faced back stabbing going on. It was kind of like high school all over again but with less acne and at least you could hide in the sleeping bags for a while.
Selling memberships seems to be the only metric for measuring success, and trying to sell them is painful to say the least. Most customers already have a membership. The people who don't, generally don't want one. I could up sell anything, but memberships weren't good for me. If you do want to work your way up, be sure to perfect your membership sales pitch and get ready for irritated shoppers... especially when you are the third or fourth sales specialist to say the "M" word. Good luck.
