Pros
Incredible employee incentives (for full-timers); tons of room to grow and move up -- higher starting pay than average across all departments. Great outlook if you're a people person willing to put in the effort to get ahead. Free stocks, 401k, healthcare, holiday bonuses, retail bonuses, paid vacation, discounts on various attractions in Florida (Disney, etc), to name a few. The people range from awesome and pleasant to horrible and annoying (and everything in-between). How you deal with them is the biggest factor in your success. My advice to you is: Treat everyone with extreme kindness, go out of your way to assist people, and never talk about someone behind their back. They will 100% find out about it, I guarantee you, and you never know what kind of connections in the store that person has. It could really screw you over. Be nice to the people you hate -- it'll pay off.
Cons
Part-timers get the shaft in the long run. Full-time employees enjoy an enormous amount of benefits, but part-timers (who often work just as many hours as full-timers) don't reap much benefit from store performance, stocks, etc. If you're planning to make Publix a career, and you're SERIOUS, and you know how to handle all different kinds of people, you will probably retire filthy rich. If you're not good with people, time management, or work ethic, you're just going to stall here and never get anywhere -- hard work and politics is how you get ahead in almost any career setting, and Publix is no exception. The sooner you accept that, the better your experience will be. And for god's sake, do NOT accept a deli position. It's the worst position in the store and everyone knows it. Too stressful, and far too much work for their pay scale. Seriously. In addition, the company may have started out as a family-like business, but George Jenkins has been dead for a while -- it's a corporate enterprise now. You will have to answer to the big guns pretty regularly, as your district managers will often tour the store in order to find problems, and your immediate superiors are constantly pooping their pants trying to meet fairly unrealistic standards mandated by corporate. Typical status quo type stuff.