Pros
Great coworkers (mostly), decent benefits for retail, 30% employee discount
Cons
-There is no work/life balance. It took me 4 months to even start recovering from the burnout....burnout which I have personally heard the CEO, COO, regional manager, and VPs all claim is not real because we do not work hard. If you are a manager, the only way to protect your underpaid team from the dysfunctional company management is to take it all on yourself.
-I have permanent injuries from this job which I was subsequently punished for when I needed to take time to treat.
-The only way to get ahead is to play politics, which leaves the competent managers to clean up the messes of those who prefer to spend their time kissing up and then take the credit for any successes.
-Employees don't even want promotions to management or positions in Central Office anymore because everyone can see that the company is going downhill. When I was first promoted to management, I was up against 9 other qualified applicants, but now they are promoting people before they are even in the manager training program because there is so much turnover.
-If you are salaried, you are expected to be on call all the time and regularly work 60 hour weeks, and then not be able to take your "recharge" time before it expires because stores are chronically short-staffed and you are expected to fill in the gaps.
-Systems are constantly changed with little to no training, and once they are finally learned, are changed again. The same is true for policies, which are often so vague that they are difficult to enforce.
-When store-level employees complained about not being supported by Central Office, instead of making any real changes, they merely changed the name to "Central Store Support," which started a trend of renaming things instead of fixing them.
- The company claims to care about employees/ mental health, but little is done to protect it. I and other coworkers have been assaulted by customers who have faced little consequence. From the inside, programs like the Mindful Leadership program, which are not created with the input of mental health professionals, are often harmful to anyone who has experienced trauma, yet managers are "encouraged" (forced) to participate. The word "gaslighting" gets thrown around a lot, but it is truly the culture of this company.
- I have seen multiple people who are known for bullying and/or sexual harassment get promoted into higher positions of power. It is rarely punished, and, it seems, often rewarded.