Pros
The benefits were nice. When I was first hired they were free, which as amazing as it was, didn't last long. Still, the pay for a basic plan is minimal, and coverage is pretty great. I had pretty good health throughout my career, but many of my coworkers who needed more regular medical care seemed to be able to afford much of it without stress. Paid vacation and sick time is a good perk as well, though just recently they've decided to cap it. If you love books, music, or movies, you'll enjoy the huge range of stock both incoming and outgoing every day. Also you'll learn quite a bit of interesting research on how to reasonably move product, and even some history on pop culture, and how that effects product. The customers are generally pretty fun to work around. The dealers can be demanding, but more often than not, the clientele are genuinely passionate people who love literature and share that with the workers. The pay is just above minimum wage, which is a nice perk to start with. Raises can also be somewhat regular depending on performance.
Cons
Management is quite awful depending on where you are. No place or person is perfect, of course. When I first started, there were problems, but many were minimal and involved things like keeping up with paperwork, or addressing poor employee performance, and our location was hugely successful, with numbers consistently growing. Several years in, a new store manager took over and the store has suffered because of it. Nearly all of the original staff have left because of the conditions of the overflowing inventory and dealing with the manager's micro-aggressions. Other stores sometimes fare better, but unfortunately mine suffered as the grievances with the manager went unchecked, and this ended up affecting operations at the store and staff morale. There is a constantly changing and demanding schedule. You know this going in of course, but it can be a con if you have a family. You can be working full weekends during sales, week-long stretches before having a day off, and shortened lunches when it's really busy. There is also favoritism shown in which employees get vacation, when, and for how long. There's quite a bit of favoritism across the whole company, from the stores, to the warehouses and above to HR. This can heavily effect one's ability to be promoted, despite their qualification for the job. It can also leave a lot of legitimate criticisms largely unanswered and thus create worse problems at a store level. These problems more often effect booksellers or temp employees.
