Vantaggi
I had good associates many of whom I am still friendly with. There were a number of customers that usually made my day suck a little less when they came in.
Svantaggi
Pay stinks less than you would make at CVS or Walgreens. Benefits are getting worse. Only Aetna health fund is available now. Raises are abysmal 2% a year is an insult. The cost of the health insurance goes up more than that every year making the raise pointless. District management varies from district to district. I felt that the DMs were more yes men to certain RVPs and would only stick their neck out so far for their managers. In my case I was fired for poor performance (working 55+ hours at the time). Basically I was "unable to get the store looking the way it should" in the insane hours I worked. A month earlier when "bonuses" came out my DM told me that I had the best bonus in the district because of my store's great CSI scores and EBITDA. So basically they fired me even though my customers were happy and I was making a decent profit. To make matters more insulting I was fired on the 8yr anniversary of the date I started with Eckerd. Out with the old in with the cheap I suppose. They recently made low volume managers hourly and "demoted" assistant managers back to shift supervisors and cut their pay. I was fired literally the weekend before this was supposed to take effect so I can't comment on how it affected sales/profitability in the store. I can't imagine it helped very much if at all.