Vantaggi
It's a fun place to work - there's always something to do, a new challenge with product, customer, or visual presentation. There are occassional perks with free products. Company to employee respect is relatively high; for retail, retention is ok and employees aren't openly treated like chatel. With the exception of placing too high a value on semi-anonymous customer feedback, employees are regarded well at B&BW
Svantaggi
It's retail, which is a tough place to be right now - people are holding their money close, which can be stressful when you're doing your best to seperate them. Customer behavior has also changed with the economy - people are getting angry more quickly and are sometimes harder to satisfy (they just want more for their money). Also - the policy of letting an employee go if they receive more than one complaint in a 6 mo. period is harsh. While it's unusual, there are people out there who complain, not because of an actual situation, but because they perceived it (not always an employees fault - if someone has social anxiety disorder, for example, their emotions escalate differently and it won't always be possible the employee to fix or adress it, either because it isn't apparent or because that person doesn't want to be soothed - and there is no way for a customer service rep to recognize this over the phone). We also have customers who have learned that there can be perks to complaining.