Pros
Management easy to work with for the most part. Expectations were usually made clear and no one was made to feel dumb for asking how to do something or where a certain street was. Plenty of hours to be had during school year, especially on weekends and during in-town sporting events. Coworkers easy to get along with. Freedom to work independently most of the time.
Cons
During off-season (summer/holidays for a college town), hours were slim. During these times, many shifts were often intentionally filled with extra staff for emergency only. This meant even if you signed up for 40+ hours in the summer, you would probably rarely see a week with more than 25 hours (usually less). On the flip side, during the busier times of the year, employees would often endure harassment each week from management to take on extra hours the upcoming weekend, even if you were already scheduled to close all three nights. Paychecks were often withheld until such a "conversation" took place with the GM. Changes in store policy, especially employee related (dress code, what qualifies an employee meal, etc), were often coming down from somewhere in the management chain, sometimes with an explanation, sometimes without. A lot of communication issues between managers as well, which usually led to confused employees getting mixed messages. During my time at JJ's, management was constantly changing. Shift managers were usually gone within a few months, and there were 2 GM's fired within a few months of each other. Shift managers seemed to have unrealistic, sometimes impossible, expectations put on them, as far as labor percentage and delivery times (hence the reason behind employees not getting the hours they signed up for). You will not get a raise unless you ask over and over again. Be prepared for a list of reasons/excuses why you can't get a raise at this time, every time you ask. Drivers never get raises, per explicit policy. If you are a delivery driver, you will not get compensated for gas, and you will not receive the delivery fee from any order (except large catering orders, provided the manager that placed the order remembered to manually add it in--hint: they probably didn't). You will make a flat $5.25/hour, whether you are on the road or working in the store. This includes any after-close cleaning; another unspoken policy was sending the in-shop employees that made $7.25+/hour home after close so that the drivers could clean the store for less than minimum wage.