Pros
The employee discount is pretty awesome at 30%, on top of current sales. It was also nice to be in a job where I sometimes had to get creative with framing something special. There is also a very lax dress code, framers wear pants and collared shirts and there's no rules against colored hair, piercings, or tattoos.
Cons
The job was kind of 70/30 split between selling frames and building frames, but it was impossible to achieve the balance in a day they wanted. I could spend an entire day with customers because they just come in back to back sometimes and make $1000, but still get in trouble for not having made any frames. Same could go the opposite way, I could build 6 frames in 4 hours and get in trouble for not being out on the floor, when the manager had told me that morning to focus on building for the day because we had a huge number to get done before their due date. The catch with this is that I wouldn't get in trouble for days like this until the next week, when the manager would come to me to "talk numbers" and point out that my sales/production was down last week. When I would defend myself and say that for example, on Tuesday there were so many customers I couldn't leave the counter to work in the shop, I was told I had an attitude problem. I was also put in charge of stocking the pre-made frame aisles, and they scheduled me for 8 hour shifts on Saturday and Sunday to do it. Meanwhile I worked 4 hour shifts 2-3 days during the week. Worst schedule ever. And why is a framer doing it when they have people who's only job is stocking? Overall, I think Michael's asks FAR too much from their framers. They want high sales numbers, frames built quickly, and stocking done, all in 15-20 hours a week at 9.25 an hour. Its impossible. There was always something I did wrong or couldn't get done, no matter how much I accomplished in my workday.
