Pros
Easy to get starter job. Lets you know real quick if you like to work fast pace environment. Have the opportunity to advance if you can do all the jobs well and put on a happy face and speak of your desire to become a shift leader (beyond that good luck- have to wait for someone to quit which luckily is highly likely within a 6 month span). It can be fun, if you're working with the right people. You get to try out some seller skills and learn to work a cash register. A lot are open 24 hours so you have the opportunity to fit in some hours when you normally couldn't. You see upper management a lot as they do their inquiries.
Cons
The drive-thru set-up is horrible. One person is forced to take orders, take and give change, make drinks, ask if the person at the window wants sauce, make sure they're order comes out right, all while you have the person ordering rambling in your ear. Which is okay until you throw in a refund, not enough money to pay, a card you have to type in, the pop-machine runs out and you're the only one available to fix it etc.... The person is timed and unable to deliver quality customer service because they only have 42 seconds if that to get everything done that i mention above me. A lot of times they dump you into training and aren't able to teach you what you need to know so when you make a mistake it's a huge pain in the rear to employees and customers alike. Turn over rate is high. In the store I worked at a regular full staff was 24 we were down to 15 at one point and there were only 9 constant employees in the 8 months I worked there. My hours were often cut dramatically when new employees were hired and swapped around all the time. Sometimes hours were swapped around and the person who got my hours would call in sick several days during the week or leave early and I would be called in to cover the shift. At some Taco Bell's you can expect to be making a little bit more than minimum wage but not the one I worked at. I saw extremely competent reliable employees who worked there forever being tossed around hours working 12-16 hours shifts. A lot of bad employees were hired which puts strain everyone else because they had to take over two people's job. Because the store is so concerned about meeting time, and deleting things off the register ( which is annoying if you think about how many ask for their total then change their mind) the overall customer service is sunk because you can't feel overwhelmingly burdened by extremely strict measurements of performance where one customer could cause mass chaos. We often ran out of things we needed to run the restaurant because of poor management which was eventually terminated. There are no benefits. Working at Taco Bell is continual drama from bad employees, bad hours, never expecting a raise, to bad performance ideology. You get reduced meals by half if you want. Generally the management was nice enough to allow you to get something for free if you worked over 10 hours or covered someone else's shift. Generally the management I had tried to be has humane and respectable to their co-workers as they could. If you're looking for a start, it's a good place to look. Don't expect good wages, although you can try to make up for it in hours, you don't get overtime until you exceed 40 hours in a week with no paid breaks, even if you're there for 16 hours. In all positions you can expect excessively long days and constantly have to try and get done too many jobs at one time where it feels like one more person on staff would make a huge improvement. If you are ADHD go for it. I was ready to be done by the time I left to go school.