It was a far better place when the store was a franchise; once it became corporate, it really went downhill!
Pros
When we were a franchise, all of the co-workers felt a sense of teamwork, respect, and family. We all worked together to get the job done. Also, they have an "open-door policy" in which you can go directly to a manager (even the store manager) to express your concerns. I actually enjoyed going to work just about every single day.
Cons
New corporate policies made it very difficult to do our jobs efficiently; as a direct result, morale has been very low for the past couple of years. The feeling of respect, family, and teamwork has died since corporate doesn't want people from different departments to help other departments during busy times, as we did in the past. Also, the policies made it more "customer unfriendly". A lot of times, the co-worker is painted as the "bad guy", even when the customer yells at or threatens the co-worker. In the case of this particular store, despite working very hard to advance, I was always passed up. Unless you are part of the "Old Girls Network", you can pretty much forget about moving up! There was too much favoritism.
