Pros
Employee Discount, opportunity to talk to health conscious customers, keeping up with new innovations in the industry, the pluses are few.
Cons
The numbers are the only thing that corporate cares about, it isn't always what the customer needs but what GNC need them to buy. They encourage the wrong things to customers, oh don't worry about your cholesterol levels, take a fish oil and multi-vitamin, dont worry about your weight take the same thing we told the guy with high cholesterol to take, and buy a bag of this protein we need to sell to to help with your weight loss. Often you would never hear an employee encourage a better diet and they only talk about working out if the customer brings it up. They are a prime example of what wrong with the supplement industry, its turning into what all other industry is, greedy. A health supplement company should encourage better things and make their supplements with more natural ingredients, not lake red #40 and sucralose. It's about price efficiency, not the customers health. What I enjoyed most was helping customers with herbal alternatives for their ailments, but even that is a shrinking part of GNC's inventory. The management thinks about the employees the same as the customers, expendable. I put in my two week notice to begin working at a local gym and pursuit a personal training certification. on day 4 after I turn it in my manager informs me they found another employee and GNC wont pay for both of us to work at the same time, so i am "excused" from the duration of my last weeks. There was no warning, they jsut let me come in thinking I am working that day and then I get to hand my key in and not work for the money I had planned I would have. GNC is pretty much the worst company in the healthfood supplement industry and if you want to shop for supplements, order them online or go to a locally owned supplement store. Working for them for a year didn't buy me any worth with the company regarding my two weeks, its just as if i decided to come in and say i quit without notice. They are unprofessional and they underpay their entire base of support, their store workers and managers.