Pros
Fantastic holiday entitlement, even from the start I got more than most people in the country. Before they updated their personnel systems it worked out at around 25 holiday days, PLUS four if you worked all the bank holidays, PLUS whichever premium bank holidays you work (i.e.; boxing day, news years day, easter monday). Also unless you worked at a petrol station you were guaranteed christmas day off and easter sunday, as the stores were closed on those days. So if you worked all the bank holidays you could make it to 29 holidays and four days in lieu time, which is just excellent. Furthermore, back then you would get triple pay for premium bank holidays as well as a day in lieu. Chance of progression in the company isn't that bad - After three years I was promoted to team leader and was ensured if I kept up with it I could make the next step up within a few years to Team Manager. If a Team Manager wanted to then go on to manage their own store, they could go on an elite management course known as the co operative way. I never wanted to get that far, though.
Cons
Rate of pay is quite low, and after the co op made substantial losses after the Bank mucked up most employees lost their annual bonuses. Further to the cost cutting, shops were expected to do more work with less bodies; when I started at one of the larger stores we had close to 65 members of staff, with at least half of those full times inc. management. By the time I finished that number was more than halved, and only about a third of those were full time. Some employees retired and they weren't replaced. Some got fed up and they weren't replaced. Some got new jobs, and they weren't replaced either. I think for a time we only got a new member of staff after three left, so it's was pretty hard on everyone. This is part of the reason I left the co-op after seven years. Back when I started we had an employee for every job. There were till staff, who served customers. There were shopfloor staff, who filled the shelves, and there were the floaters, I was one of them. General dogsbodies, we did everything. We served customers, filled shelves, did price reductions and date checks, dealt with complaints, relaid shelves. It wasn't that demanding because most of the jobs were allocated to the dedicated members of staff, but we were always available to fit in when needed. Sadly, the high ups decided that everyone should be like a floating staff, so all the ladies who worked the tills retired as they couldn't do the manual shop floor labour, and now all the shop floor fillers spend their entire time on the tills. Us floaters then had to spend our time between tills and shelf filling, leaving us less time to do the other jobs. The range of hours you had to work were a pain too. Shop opened at 7am, closes at 11pm, and you could end up working at any time in those hours and even starting at 6am. it leads to an erratic sleeping pattern as for a long time I was available for any hours.
