Pros
Compared to other retail at the same level, CVS offers decent pay and to my knowledge has always paid employees on time. There are certainly worse options for a (temporary) part-time job.
Cons
The past several years have seen CVS make a focused effort to cut payroll hours across the board leading to severe understaffing at every location I am familiar with. Front store employees are expected to do countless tasks (planogram resets, inventory management, photo station, UPS drop off, MoneyGram, online orders, passport photos, biweekly sales tags, etc.) with little, if any, training or direction. CVS as a company continues to try to add new services while paradoxically cutting the hours and the staff for most locations leading to many employees having no idea how to do the many tasks that are being shoved onto them. Accordingly, turnover in employees is also a huge problem: store managers rarely lasting in one location more than a year or two (and in some instances even less than six months), and regular front store associates not infrequently only lasting weeks. The constant push to sign up customers for rewards programs is contrasted by how poorly designed and unreliable the CVS coupon system and CVS app both are. These coupon issues in addition to locations being pushed to rely on unintuitive and frequently malfunctioning self-checkout machines add yet another series of responsibilities to the already long list for front store employees. CVS has the culture of a company being rotted from the inside out by corporate executives trying to make a quick buck however they can and both customers and employees suffer daily for it. Turnover, overwork, and cutthroat corporate stinginess prevent any meaningful chance of store teams being able to build any unity or consistency and any chance of employees being able to develop familiarity or comfort for the customers. While CVS is a valid option for part-time work on a temporary basis, it is in no way a long-term career nor does it offer lucrative or reliable enough opportunities for upward momentum. Store managers are nearly universally overworked and exhausted with many being so burned out they are willing to let their stores fall apart. The company itself has been on an obvious downward spiral since even before the pandemic. Only take the job if you plan on getting out at some point.