Pros
The people who work at penneys are very nice, and are usually willing to help out a new employee. The 20% off employee discount was always nice to have, especially during their 60 and 70% off clearance sales. The senior management sometimes were helpful, but usually had needless tasks to complete and were usually never around, which made it necessary for sales associates to make executive decisions. Because of these decisions, it appeared that the management did trust us, but unless you had the appearance of a yes-man, your privileges were very small. Employee moral was once deemed too low at the store because of this reason.
Cons
From what I can see, this small text box will not be able to fit all the downsides about penneys. Their (then) new "going back to basics" seemed to insult the intelligence of the worker rather than make it easier. Explaining the pricing of the clearance and sales seemed to never end. The fine print on those signs were a little too fine. This particular store went through a store manager transition when I started, and it just settled down about 3 months ago (two months after I had quit). It took almost a year for anything to get accomplished other than ridiculous policies and never-ending meetings about new training. The manager who approved time-off never seemed to get the memo about the TO until it had been pushed out of the system. The new manager re-organized the whole managerial system and did a poor job doing so. Their lack of understanding of how that particular store worked went against them in a serious way. Sometimes, it seemed like the store actually ran better without a store manager during that month period.