Pros
Generally, the co-workers are great, and the store management is pretty good (on a personal level) as well. Pay was good before minimum wage went up. Customers are often laid back.
Cons
Lack of advancement opportunities. It feels like I would have to wait for one of the supervisors to die before I would even have a chance at a promotion. No pay raises. High employee turnover means that you deal with a lot of new people who don't know what they are doing. GM often disregards availability and schedules full time hours for college students. There is an expectation that you will LOVE Cost Plus unconditionally, or lose your job. Personal life is almost verboten. Stockroom is incredibly unsafe. I'm very surprised no one has been seriously injured at my store yet. Wide variety of SKUs and outdated inventory system make finding items for customers a real challenge. Very variable stock means that you end up telling a lot of customers "Sorry, it's been discontinued." Very few organized systematic processes to handle things. Everyone has to figure out their own way to do something. High expectations relative to pay level. Management/corporate wants you to try and sell customers on three or four different items just at the cash registers. Low sales are halfway blamed on store personnel, ignoring economic fluctuations, etc. Low payroll budget means that there are never enough people around to get things done, and those same people have very few advancement opportunities. There are also a lot of advertisement problems. Corporate is very coy with sales, confusing customers by offering deals on very specific items.