Pros
You earn Paid Time Off. That's, literally, it.
Cons
LEADERSHIP Management is sickening. They tell you "whoever gets the most sales gets the most hours" for nothing more than a stick-and-carrot ploy. After working your back off to make the sales, they pull the rug out from under your feet by giving the hours to someone else. When asked why they respond, "well they have unlimited availability." So employees are slapped in the face for being students, having families, having two jobs, etc. Anything that prohibits not being at the beck and call of these slave drivers means they change the rules constantly to slap their employees in the face. Or. Another one was, after getting the highest sales and not getting the hours, questioning management yielded the response "I don't owe you an explanation." Managers lie to get what they want with no regard to how they absolutely demolish morale in the stores. The above stick-and-carrot nonsense is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg of employee insult by the managers. Managers are like script-fed zombies when it comes to sucking up to corporate leadership. "The CEO doesn't take a salary" they'll say in the CEO's defense. Well they're all drinking the same Koolaid. The CEO does take a salary. The CEO owns more than fifty percent of the stock of Sears and it pays to the tune of more than $5m per year. But they just mindlessly repeat whatever they need to to keep the status quo. PAY They force their cashiers to now be stock organizers and floor merchandizers but still pay them bottom dollar. Cashier hours are based on "credit achievement" meaning the number of credit cards you get people to sign up for is how many hours per week you get. Also, the company gets around $50 per credit card from Citibank but they only pass along $2/$4 per credit app to the cashier IF that cashier gets 5 or more per month (and we all know how leery people are nowadays about credit cards (ultra-high interest rates, identity theft, etc) so the give and take is so unbalanced it's insulting. Next we get to their grand idea of P3 eligibility for sales employees. This is their idea of getting sales associates "commission" or "bonus" money. How it's earned is you have to have so many sales per hour, so many attachments per hour, so many protection agreements per hour, so many credit apps per hour, all in the same month. In essence, it's next to impossible to get because: 1. Their stores are so dead I was working with 1 maybe 2 customers in my 4 hour shift before I shuffled off to my second job so sales per hour is out the window 2. without sales you can't attach anything (i.e., electronics sells TV's so an attachment would be an HDMI cable with a TV or an antenna, so on). 3. We ALL know that 9 times out of 10 a "protection plan" is a waste of money. Yes. 9 times out of 10 usually nothing goes wrong with your purchase so that "protection plan" just turned into straight profit for the company. People know this and avoid them. The company has also put a "freeze" on giving raises so things like perfect attendance or consistent performance are no longer rewarded. HOWEVER, managers who take demotions sure enough get a raise. You can go from the ASM Operations (number 2 in command) down to an ASM Hardlines (3rd in command) and because you moved to a different "manager" position you get a raise. But someone who hasn't called in once in an entire year, no raise. Hypocritical from a company that preaches its vow to return to profitability yet does not reward it's front line defense but does reward managers who take demotions. HOURS Everyone is part time now with the exception of existing managers and newly hired managers. The company put a freeze on promoting an employee to, or making any employee, full time. Even Lead positions (which are considered part of the "management" team) are all part time. That means 30 hours per week or less and absolutely no benefits whatsoever.