Pros
In our area, the District Managers really try to help their management team. They attempt to help Store Manager succeed and keep their stores running as smoothly as possible. They've been where we are and it shows in how they approach people.
Cons
Underpaid and underutilized staff make running a store with any kind of efficiency difficult. Corporate standards are impossible to maintain with a typical store's payroll. They used to have a matrix for the scheduling for a store's needs and since the math employed by that matrix proved that the store couldn't be run with the budgets they gave us, they eventually "upgraded" to a computer-generated schedule. This schedule allegedly builds itself upon a store's needs based on register data, truck scheduling, etc. However, it typically requires/recommends one person alone during the busiest business hours of the day. And, unfortunately, due to budget constraints, that is what a typical final schedule also loos like. Typically, even on the days where you do have minimal cashier coverage, the management is expected to set planograms, check in vendors, clean the store, balance the registers, review video feeds, run back-up register, process freight, recover the store, service customers on the sales floor, perform maintenance like changing light bulbs and restroom cleaning, run and file reports, put up signs, perform price changes, handle any exception transactions at the register (even something as simple as an item void), etc. With 4-6 planogram changes a week and seasonal sets, freight hammered in beyond what you need, and little to no cross-coverage, the workload can overwhelm even the most timely of managers, and the expectation is that work will outweigh life by far on the whole work-life scale. They also just restructured the expectations with regard to part-time/full time mix due to Obamacare restrictions, and the results will be less hours for part-timers and even less full time and/or keyholder positions. This will result in even less "managerial" coverage and an increased demand on the one salaried position in the store. It will also likely lead to further turnover as associates cannot get as many hours as they used to. The seasonal layouts and planograms are very well laid out, with one exception: There is rarely a proper exit strategy for goods, especially microseasonal goods and home goods. The company orders far too much seasonal, changes seasonal plans with "put in seasonal carryover or on an endcap" when every endcap is already planned out and the seasonal carryover is maybe 4-8' and what you're putting there comes from 20-24 ;. Most stores have the aisles too close together and too tall for our customers to shop properly, and during certain seasons the company sends massive amounts of "stack out" products, and then they wonder why our customers complain about the stores seeming cluttered. As if all of that were not too much to begin with, last year our region received a visit from the corporate officers. The Districts involved spent more than five times the normal payroll budgets just to get the stores to an acceptable level for this visit. Let me repeat that. It took five times our normal store budgets to get the stores to a level that was acceptable for a visit by the bigwigs. Then the regional team told the store managers and district managers exactly what they were to say during this visit. They gave them scripts of what was acceptable and unacceptable to say. So much for valuing honesty. That was the day I started looking for new work. Still looking, bad economy.