AutoZone Reviews

Pros

Great group of people to work with at my store. I've worked at the other stores and the people are not nearly as fun to work with.

Cons

The District managers are forced to make you sell items the customer really cannot afford nor need. I'm not going to lie to my customers.

Advice to Senior Management

Give actual rewards to employees who sell items such as "check out challenge" and "witt", not dress code items that should be provided free of charge already.

Pros

Salary and benefits are good

Cons

People are cool to work with

Advice to Senior Management

Hiring better people to work in departments

Pros

If you're not an idiot you can get promoted to Sales Manager pretty quickly, I did so at 19, meaning you can make roughly $10 an hour, which isn't much but that's a pretty big deal when your other options are minimum wage and you're trying to go to school. Breaking into management early in life is huge when you consider the leadership experience and resume potential that it has. At 19 I very often would be running the store by myself supervising thousands of dollars changing hands, maintaining inventory, solving problems, and calling all of the shots with 1 to 6 people underneath me. That's stressful but the responsibility and experience is cool. Hours are flexible; you can work mornings, evenings, and weekends so even during college you can essentially hold a full time job there. Also, you can start at Autozone knowing next to nothing about cars but after a year or two there you will actually be pretty handy under the hood. You won't be a mechanic but you get tons of free training. This will save you a lot of money later in life and women appreciate a guy who can get their car back on the road. It's retail so your job responsibilities vary and while never glamorous, at least you get a change of pace every few hours. Decent job security. If you don't like Autozone you can easily transition into one of the many similar jobs, Advance, Napa, Carquest, Pep Boys, etc. Sometimes you'll have someone desperate come in who's stranded in the middle of a road trip and Autozone gives you the tools and encourages you to go above and beyond to help them, which feels good. You hear lots of interesting stories too from old timers about various cars and projects and whatnot they've had over the years.

Cons

You're still talking about entry level retail, so the common stuff applies. Rude idiotic customers, rude idiotic coworkers, not much in terms of serious career advancement (after sales manager there is assistant store manager and store manager, but to acquire those positions you will usually have to move and theyre still pretty crappy jobs. Store managers are salaried but they work 50+ hours a week and the pay isn't much) and your pay generally sucks even though the guys at the top are making an absolute fortune. It's a mega corporation so you have to deal with the red tape and all of the irritating garbage that rides along with that. Autozone is also more "customer service oriented" than say a Napa or Carquest would be, so you get the majority of the idiots who expect you to provide them with parts but they don't even know the year or engine size of their car. Expect to go outside a lot (which is rough if you live in a winter climate) to change car batteries, wiper blades, light bulbs, etc. You will repeatedly have to attempt to explain simple concepts to some moron. You will be insulted by ignorant people on a fairly regular basis as with any other retail job. Etc. It's retail. Also, you see very few attractive women in an auto parts store haha. Sounds stupid but I would generally consider it a downside.

Advice to Senior Management

Every year AutoZone tells me about how sales are up 4 to 5% from the previous year! Awesome! So how about you give raises accordingly. If your business is on fire while most of the economy is in a recession, the employees should be getting some of the kickback for their hard work.

Pros

Great opportunity for learning and skill-set development. Creates environment where innovation and organization is recognized and rewarded - though necessary to be successful. High committment to customer service is at the foundation of a deeply instilled Corporate Culture and consistently recognizes those who achieve high performance levels.

Cons

Culture of thrift sometimes limits resources and much needed support in some departments. Departments that do not produce revenue are sometimes provided with a lack of required resources, which creates an environment in which either necessary work is not done properly, or excess stress and pressure are placed on the individual responsible - even for the most organized worker.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue nurturing the Corporate culture but change the Appraisal process and consider relaxing the mandatory 15% ROI in a few areas so necessary resources can be obtained. Even if a department does not produce revenue, it can still be financially beneficial to the Company by saving unnecessary expenses by providing a better product than under current conditions.

Pros

Great job through high school and transferred with the company to college.
Pay varies dramatically by city.
As part-time they are very flexible with hour.
Gained a lot of valuable job experience

Cons

Awful Customers can really make for a bad day.
Compensation can be really low in some areas, especially a college town.
You don't deal with the brightest group of people and it can get very frustrating

Advice to Senior Management

Have a way to better compensate good performers so they don't leave the company.

Pros

Great benifits and opertunities for people to grow within the company. This is a retail enviorment and those who like it will do well.

Cons

Performances are not given by individual performances but on overall store sales. Awards and recognition is provided based on bottom line numbers, regardless how far you brought a store or its staff.

Pros

Working here showed me the epitome of teamwork and leadership, something I never actually experienced at school. A very fast-paced environment keeps you alert and productive all day as multi-tasking will become second nature for you, you also gain knowledge about auto parts and its products that you provide for customers.

Cons

Like many retail jobs, some customers may be difficult to deal with but it is not so bad.

Advice to Senior Management

More computers being available would help increase productivity of the stores if possible.

Pros

The push on employees to provide the best customer service.Easy to get promotions in bigger cities.You can transfer almost anywhere very easily.Great benefits...Overall I am very proud to be employed with this company!

Cons

PAYROLL! We store managers dream of the days when we can actually MANAGE our store!...

Advice to Senior Management

Give us the ability to actually run our store!We can have even better profits and better looking stores without being burnt out all the time! Can we get a real christmas party for our team????Its disgusting that the employees that we watch work so hard for us can barely even get a pizza party as a christmas bonus!And why lockdown thermosthats.....some of your employees are FREEZING in the stores!

Pros

good atmosphere,benefits are pretty good for pt job,they pay for you to get ase certified,Flexable with the scheduling

Cons

raises are very minimal,dont promote from within too often,there are no paid holidays for part time employees

Advice to Senior Management

Pay your loyal employees more

Pros

we get 20% discount and that is the only pro

Cons

they cut hours right before thanksgiving then again 3 weeks, just brefore christmas then complain that things aren't getting done. Sorry but I cant answer the phone within 3 rings, install a battery AND not only help the person in front of me but upsell them. then when i can get to the phone i get written up for being the one answering it because it exceeded 3 rings because it was another district manager wasting my time to see if im doing my job.

Advice to Senior Management

let the store managers do their jobs. dont cut hours from 26 to 10 at the holidays. stop getting everything from china, the customers complain ALL the time about it.