Pros
I think about the only thing left would be the earned time off that you can (supposedely) use whenever you want. (Of course you have to convince management that it is in THEIR interest to do so.) And, at least in my case, I am blessed with dear friends, most of the full time staff are really wonderful at my location.
Cons
Where to begin? First off, we're lucky to get our schedule for the next week posted on Friday, which makes it close to impossible to have a life of any kind. If you have something come up that messes with their precious schedule once posted, you'd think the world was coming to an end to change it, even though posting it two weeks in advance would eliminate about 95% of their scheduling problems. They have a computer program do their schedule, and they can only do so many edits because if they do too many, oh my god, their "effectiveness" rating might go down and they might get a phone call telling them what a bad boy they are. They make the full time staff work most all the crap schedules, while the part time people (these people "supposedly" hired to work weekends and nights) request all of them off. Every holiday is me and most of the full time people working . . . Management takes the holidays off and manage to get their weekend off a month, while the two key holders in our building have to work every weekend, get no help scheduled with them when they are scheduled to close during the week, and do all the management stuff, and cover a department on the floor, and are expected to have it all completed. It's like pulling teeth trying to get a little bit of recognition for the hard work you do. A simply "thank you" or a pat on the back is pretty much nonexistent here. It doesn't pay to go out of your way here, so the majority of us don't anymore. Why bother? Our raises were cut to the bone this year, most of us getting less than half of what we might have otherwise, because of the recession, but the company managed to find the millions of dollars to buy 4 different internet companies in lieu of all of that. They are now integrating Babies R Us and Toys R Us, and it is a micro-management hell now with a bunch of useless clipboards and even more useless "routines" that will pretty much run BRU into the ground before too long. It's pretty obvious that the company doesn't care about it's employees anymore, all they are worried about is the bottom line. Their medical insurance is the biggest joke of all. It's expensive as can be, doesn't cover CRAP, and their prescription drug coverage is the most horrible I've ever heard of.
