Vantaggi
One does learn some valualbe skills in retail, such as sublimating one's contempt for the beligerent, quasi-sentient hoards of customers. If you have a pulse you can get hired. There is a fair amount of upward mobility in management by virtue of the simple fact that turnover is so high. Some departments (like the Bakery, or Starbucks) seem more autonomous than others, in these one only occasionally has to deal with Meijer management.
Svantaggi
Meijer has the bureaucratic inefficiency of a much larger company. It takes forever for upper-managment to approve the replacement of any broken equipment, regardless of how much money it costs the company or the embarasment it brings. However this penny-pinching is not evenly and universally applied to all aspects of business; indeed some departments waste thousands a day because of inadequate inventory control systems or communication breakdowns throughout the supply chain. Much of the management at the store level are cast offs from Wal-mart (if you ever wondered, yes, in fact, one can go lower than Wal-mart). One of my bosses is functionally illiterate, and he's not even the worst one. I don't mean to give the impression that everyone working in management is inept. I found some exceptionally bright and hardworking people. But these were few, and they were mostly bitter and exausted from the stress of carrying their far less capable counterparts. As for the other employees, what's to say? When you hire people at barely over minimum wage, you're subject to high turnover rates, and all the inexperience and indifference that comes with a workforce that knows they are replaceable. It's hard to watch these people listlessly shuffling through their florescent-lit purgatory waiting desperately for their next break like it's the sweet release of death. Oh, and the Union is beyond useless. It makes it impossible for employees to get performace based raises or tips, which eliminates any incentive for most employees to perform. It also makes it nearly impossible to fire some worthless employees that have mastered the subtle art of doing exactly enough work to not be fired. As a department head (I won't say which one) I write employee schedules for my small department, and I can't tell you what an annoyance the senority policy is. One has to grant preferential scheduling to the employees that have been around longer. It doesn't matter if you have five years of seniorty or five days, you have to give the senior employees whatever shifts they want. Policies like this lead to some serious acrimony between employees.