Vantaggi
Co-workers were wonderful and developed many life long friendships with fellow managers, Profit sharing checks in February were amazing after being with the company for over 8 years. Pay was decent. Many guests were cool and you really develop great report with the regulars. Full-time or Part-time team members have it pretty easy, very little accountability, so if you're a fan of dumping easy guest questions on your manager and hiding from said guests, this is the job for you.
Svantaggi
Closing and then opening (clopening as we liked to call it) left you drained. Very little sleep often less than 5 hours. Sundays I was required to work open to close (yes that's 730 AM to 8 PM) and we would NEVER be allowed to leave at close, some nights required to stay an additional 45 mins to an hour. Never ending piles of freight, Upper management seems to do little to help the store (couldn't be bothered to even face end caps or clean up register areas) Hard to motivate team members to work very hard when the store management is seen chatting with their favorite department managers for hours at a time. While upper management wasn't very helpful with assisting in store tasks (when they see understaffed department managers struggling) they are quick to watch the cameras to call anyone out who takes a few moments to rest their weary bodies and minds towards the end of yet another 12 hour shift. So tired on your days off that you literally sleep most of the day. Getting off of work so late that you are unable to have any type of social or family life. Being sexually harassed by scuzzy contractors (whistled at, asked out, out-right ogled etc.) God forbid the other manager in your department take vacation because guess what? You'll be working 6 days/60 hours that week. Regular work weeks during our "not busy time" I was averaging 45-48 hours in 5 days. No sick days, so come to work while you are ill otherwise you are putting added stress on the other manager because now they are getting called into work on their only day off. This is not a healthy/sustainable lifestyle of anyone. I could only manage 3 years of management before I realized that there was no way I could do this for the rest of my life.