Pros
Getting to know the families is wonderful. The photography experience and education is great (if you take control of your own training), and the interaction with guests can be a lot of fun. You will meet great people, and the hours of operation during non-peak seasons are pretty great for a retail driven environment.
Cons
Where do I begin? This company would not know what morale was if they took a 4 year workshop on it. Most of the time you are working in a single coverage environment, and when you are lucky enough to have a second or third person come in for a shift with you, you are too busy with guests to spend any real time coaching, developing, or "managing" your team - yet you are held to coaching expectations that are physically impossible, because you never see your staff. The DM plays a lot of favoritism in the district - so much that her star Studio Manager met her fiance through her. They will technically be related, yet HR does not see this as a reason to reposition anyone. The turn over is laughable. They must terminate a Studio Manager 5 times a year (that is basically once every other month). The DM has no actual experience, offers the district no support, and barely bothers getting to know any members of non-management. You are penalized for working overtime, yet the way they manage their labor you are unable to call someone in for an entire shift if you do not have enough appointments on your book - because you are required to work 40 hours, this means it is you that needs to stay - and in extension run into overtime. You will get phone calls at home at 9,10pm at night from other managers in the district for coverage, yet those managers are somehow the ones that manage to keep their jobs. It's laughable. They project that they are a guest service minded company, yet they continue doing things that impairs great service. They open your appointment book every 10 minutes, which basically means if one guest comes in late, or has a difficult time in the camera room your entire day is destroyed - then you get the majority of the guest complaints about long wait times, and are held responsible for that. Guests have been asking to eliminate those 10 minute appointments for years. You are not permitted to actually put your team on the schedule. You place them on "on call" shifts and they are expected to make themselves available to you with as little notice as 2 hours if your appointment book fills up for them - yet, your DM will not let you be flexible with them in regards to availability for school schedules, other jobs, etc. We expect them to be completely available for us, but then are forced to terminate them if they can not give us a consistent availability. It's part time. That is the entire reason people take part time jobs, for the flexibility. It makes difficult to keep a great team, and even harder to staff the studio. They are expected to work like animals twice a year during peak seasons, and the rest of the year they are lucky to have one 4 hour shift every 2 weeks. I'd never advise anyone to work for this company - stay far away.
