Low pay, pressure sales, micro-managed from a district level!
Pros
Usually learn something new everyday. Met some cool people.
Cons
Low pay. I'm a PSM and have been with the company for 18 months and I make about 50 cents more an hour than the newly hired red shirts. I have been promised a raise for the last year, but have not seen it yet. Pressure sales. Performance is based on up-sales. They like to call it "WITTDTJR" (What It Takes To Do The Job Right), but it's no different than the cashiers at McDonalds asking if you'd like to upsize your value meal. Sure it is a good idea to recommend brake lube to customers who are buying brake pads, or inform a first-timer that they will need brake cleaner to remove the oil from their new brake rotors before installing them, but don't cut my hours because they refused. It's one thing to offer additional products to customers that may not know that they will need them to complete the job, it's a whole other story when you pressure your employees to pressure the customer to purchase items they don't need. Someone explain to me why anyone would need to buy 5 packets of bulb grease to go with their 5 packages of 194 or 168 bulbs? Pressuring me to sell them these is basically asking me to rob a trusting customer. As managers, we are expected to complete all of the daily tasks as well as do price changes, complete planograms, pull overstock, front face the entire store, all while there are only two people working and the phones are ringing off the hook and customers are upset because they've had to wait for a long time to have their parts looked up. This is in addition to the reports we have to call in to our district manager multiple times a day that require us to go through every receipt for the day and calculate how many WITTDTJR bats/hits we've had and oil change bundles, air filters, checkout challenges, rewards cards we've swiped. Plus they only give us 15 minutes after the store is closed to complete these tasks before we are supposed to be out the door. I was in the Army for 9 years and spent 3 tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. I'm used to long hours in poor conditions with extraordinary expectations for little pay, but this job is ridiculous.