Pros
- Management was very good about giving needed time off - when I had a conflict, as long as I mentioned it a couple of days beforehand, I was able to get time off. - The other employees were friendly and pleasant, and usually worked pretty diligently. - They want to keep the customers happy, and empower the sales associates to do so. As an associate, you can give whatever discounts you want in order to keep a customer happy. That's damaged? No problem, with a few keystrokes you can give 15% off, without having to bother a manager. Since you're on commission, you don't have incentive to give unnecessary discounts, but you can often save a sale by offering a decent discount (which is good for everyone).
Cons
- Management doesn't listen to employee suggestions. I worked in the shoe department, and our stockroom was always terribly organized. It took ages for us to find anything, and customers were frequently frustrated when we came back empty handed. We wore dress clothes daily, so while we tried to organize during downtime, it wasn't hard as we had to avoid getting dusty. We offered to come in on a slow day (e.g. Monday) in casual clothes to spend the day reorganizing everything, but management refused. If the shoes had been in order (as they were supposed to be), it would have cut down our search time dramatically, but management didn't seem to care. - You have to get people to sign up for the crappy credit cards. No matter how good of a salesperson you are, if you don't convince people to sign up for the 23% APR JCP-branded credit cards, you'll get scolded by management. I always cringed every time some uninformed shopper agreed to my monotone "Would you like to sign up for a JCPenney credit card today and save 10% off your order", because I knew if they didn't keep on top of it, they'd be in it deep pretty soon.