Pros
There are benefits to be had as an associate. The companies unionionized so you'll have a hard time loosing this job. You're given great vacation time, considering it's a low end corporate job. 15 hours minimum for Part-Time employees, 40 regular hours for Full-Time employees. Time and a half on certain holidays, plus payment for whatever you're average hours are for a typical workday. You'll recieve some other smaller discounts like the Associate discount, where you'll get 5% off your total purchase at the register. It stinks now because they use to offer Associate points which you could bank up and use to pay off a load of groceries worth $30 for a couple of dollars because of taxes.
Cons
Managers are hit and miss, some are okay others are terrible. Very rarely will you get one that you'll actually like. Decisions by management seem arbitrary at times, as the manager of one of their gas stations, it's hard to get things done sometimes. Being unionized means, that even if you have a subpar employee working under you, you may not be able to get rid fo them. You also won't be recieving any pay raises unless required. For me, I started off at $8.50 as a part timer. Once I went to Full Time a year and a half ago, I recieved a $1 raise. I never got anything in between the time I worked Part-Time to Full-Time and nothing more since I went Full-Time.