Pros

They are flexible in their scheduling, makes it easy to book time off for educational or personal reasons. Their are pretty great bonds formed amonst co-workers as well, it's almost like a family--that is why people tend to stick around for quite a few years, even in the part-time positions. In fact, the flexibility and the people are the only reason I've stayed as long as I have...

Cons

We are constantly understaffed, and forced to cut hours from our schedule basically every week! This leads to extremely angry customers, as we tend to have long line-ups at the front check-outs due to staffiing shortages. However, district managers and head office still expect us to provide the same level of service to our customers-- NOT POSSIBLE. When we are consistently understaffed, and the CSR's and Front End Managers are running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to deal with the sheer volume of customers, it is ridiculous to think that we are still going to be to provide our customers with undivided attention and "service with a smile". Furthermore, management tends to take advantage of those employees who actually do their jobs and work hard, piling more responsiblities on an already stressed out workforce.

Advice to Senior Management

Quit cutting back hours! You may think you are saving the company money in the short-term, but in the long term, you are losing valuable customers due to consistent understaffing. I can't tell you how many people have told me that they would never shop in our store again because they've had to wait 15 minutes in a line-up... we simply do not have enough staff to serve them all in a prompt manner. Management's response is that the busyness and line-ups are "not reflected in the sales". Our customer service has always been something that set us apart from the competition--sadly, this is no longer the case.