Pros
Dealing with fun retail categories. New store formats are pleasant to shop and have potential. The last toy store standing. Serving some of the TRU loyal customers. Finding their niche product they couldn't get at Target. Interacting with the kids.
Cons
TRU drives its' bottom line on sales of worthless paper...credit card bounty from credit card companies, buyer protection insurance add-ons. Sacrifices service and holds transactions of these items as a golden carrot to entire store. You are required to query numerous batches of data to report sales metrics. Scrolling through electronic journals to find correct information. Very redundant and a waste of stores' time. You spend more time manipulating metrics than being a merchant and working with customers and store's team. Pay rates for hourly associates are low and very few full timers within their staffing plan. To the point where you rely on many hourly associates that can't pass a drug screen elsewhere, or were terminated from another big box. Recently rolled out additional cuts to staffing structure. Very similar in nature to Circuit City 2007, eliminating some of the best producers in the stores. Very little incentive to be a long term hourly associate at TRU. Very few full time positions, very small yearly raises, no incentive bonuses, no incentives for driving sales of their BPP and instant credits....Except for perhaps getting a few more hours a week than a non-performer. Tools you work with, outdated store systems, scheduling, none work with each other. Store schedules for all associates are budgeted extremely bare bones and corporate continues to find ways to decrease budgeted hours. Must spend hours updating worthless information on when running weekly schedules. Very outdated system. Register systems extremely dated. Not at all user friendly. Excessive gimmick driven ads that are never backed by having correct inventory levels. Constantly out of product immediately when ad would break. They will not put any money into existing stores as they have a dream to once again be listed publicly after multiple bankruptcies. Also trying to roll out a new combo store format and letting old stores die.
