Pros
FYI: This is Value Village in the NW US, Savers elsewhere. Value Village is a feel-good company to work for if you really aren't too hot on the business concept only (i.e. just making a profit). The company purchases all merchandise from charity partners, including items donated at the store. The company obviously, by being a thrift store, is recycling used merchandise, but it also keeps millions of pounds of recyclables that it doesn't believe are good enough for the selling floor out of the waste stream by sending items to a recycle warehouse and recycling the product elsewhere in the world. The majority of the people are good-hearted and you have contact with team members and customers from every walk of life you can think of. There are tons of long-termers with loads of experience and you can learn a great deal of skills if you are willing to take the steps and take charge of your own training. I really enjoyed my time there and went from having zero retail experience to basically being able to run a store on my own. I will always appreciate what I've gotten through my time at Value Village and I will always shop at Value Village, it is a great company with huge potential (particularly during a recession).
Cons
The company has shifted from a collaborative management style to a top-down style where decisions are taken out of the hands of the key players in the store and placed in the hands of upper management (far above the store level). Store managers cannot even hire their own supervisors without complete approval and interviews by HR and upper management, meaning store managers do not have the final say. The company is using fancy internet personality surveys to determine if people might be good enough for even the assistant supervisor positions (which I saw them use 8 years ago with minimal success). The company is making decisions about potential supervisory candidates through phone interviews! The company will only hire 2 levels above, so for example if you want to be hired as an assistant supervisor, you basically have to have obvious store manager potential. You can imagine this is leaving the stores starving for leadership, as what person of store manager caliber wants to be an hourly supervisor and start at $11 something an hour??? The store I left, for example, had no Production Supervisor since last May, I did the work without the title because there was noone else to do it. I frequently did projects that were the Store Manager's responsibility, as well. We had no Assistant Supervisors in Operations for something like 6 months last year after we lost two Assistant Supervisors in Ops. and my Assistant (same title as me, but had been around for less time) had to do that job and try to help me. We also went through two main Operations Supervisors in the last year and a half. We've also had 4 District Managers since October! My main concern with the company is that it is poised to do great things, but not making good decisions about the store leadership roles.