Pros
Overall I had a great experience with my co-workers and the teams that I worked with, great people, great fun and I learnt a lot about myself, the 'star in the making' booklets about product knowledge are full of useful tips on how to advise.
Cons
It was hard to ever progress anywhere, I even got the opportunity to become a team leader but my manager never bothered to train me, I was lumber with the responsibility of approving refunds, exchanges, dealing with awkward customers, being in control of the shop floor and the sales advisers but without the wage or the correct training to do so. Head office always expect way too much of sales advisor, being expected to sell an amount of a certain product each week but without any motivation to do so, no benefits, no bonus, no commission. The pressure is quite big to sell and provide the best customer service available but as I said with no motivation, just minimum wage. They have mystery shopper 4 times a year, with unreal exceptions of that as well, asking if someone would like a bag then if they had a beauty card then if they didn't have one asking if they wanted one and THEN asking if they wanted to try the 'star buy' of the week, realistically it just holds up queues and annoys customers no end. I worked for several managers in this company and the majority of the time if you weren't on their good side you wouldn't get any hours or even any acknowledgement of your existence, luckily I was on the good side of most but some of my colleagues suffered. Most of the stores I worked in were understaffed yet the company wouldn't give the stores more hours, head office would expect you to be able to have 100% customer service with the bare minimum of staff and no one available to talk to customers on the shop floor. Often I would work 6/7 days a week due to being understaffed and covering peoples holidays.