Pros
As a commissioned sales associate, you can actually make a halfway decent amount of money. You often end up making more than the managers if you're good at what you do. The managers were always very flexible with time off (unpaid, for part timers) and with scheduling if you're part time. The work environment is relaxed and the people at my store were very nice. I got quite close to my fellow employees.
Cons
The place is pretty much a joke. There was no management over the age of 25 except the store manager, who came around to curse us out for not doing our jobs well enough and make bad decisions like keeping the store open for an extra few hours without any prior notice to the employees. The turnover is extremely high so we were always training new people, who screwed up orders and left us with more unhappy customers than satisfied. The turnover among managers was also extremely high, so we often had managers who didn't care about anything except meeting goals for warranties and credit. Many of the employees had been at the store far longer than the managers but were unwilling to take a pay cut for more responsibilities. There was almost no opportunity for advancement- I saw many people go from sales associate to lead, and then back to sales because they were simply making much more off commission! Very few people stayed with the company long enough to advance even to assistant store manager. The standard for products has gone dramatically downhill and we could barely keep up with returns and unhappy customers returning the same items that constantly broke or didn't work as promised. The customers, as well as the employees, were left wondering "what happened to Sears?" The acquisition by Kmart changed the culture immensely, to something more of a budget "get-em-out and get the next one in" type mentality. They violated labor laws constantly, shorting us pay and working us illegal hours (for example, did you know that as an hourly worker, your shift can't be changed without 12 hours notice? I didn't, and they sure took advantage of that). Getting paid was like pulling teeth. If they paid you an incorrect amount (which happened a lot) it was impossible to get it corrected before the next pay period. In addition, the company is constantly in financial trouble. It's been speculated for a long time that Sears will fold soon and unless something dramatic happens, I'm still anticipating it happening within the next few years.