Pros
- You may sometimes get to taste leftover chocolate or damaged goods that may otherwise be discarded. - Bonding with fellow part-timers over the poor working conditions. - You learn quickly within a short amount of time when you're made to run a store all by yourself. - You get to hone your communication skills through interacting with customers. This is a job for vocal and outgoing people who are not shy about aggressively selling products to customers. - 20% staff discount. - The best part of the job is the training period. After that, it all goes downhill.
Cons
- Extremely anal management, nitpicky lady boss who will not tell you outright what she expects you to clean (e.g. dirty marble slab), but will instead hint at it and expect you to get it. Management is also generally out of touch with its employees, a lot of whom are angry, tired and frustrated. Low morale among staff. - Management structure is generally flat - what this means is that they can get pretty cliquey, biased and judgemental. If a manager likes you, good for you as this means you may get more shifts, or be 'left alone'. If they don't, word gets around quickly, you get gossiped about by other managers/staff and are highly surveilled. - Constant surveillance, high number of CCTVs in each store. They always, always know what you're up to. HQ staff will keep tabs on you and report back to the upper management as well. - Very long working hours for a salary that is below market rate, especially considering the many expectations and responsibilities that employees are saddled with (no sitting down in the stores in spite of long hours spent on one's feet; also having to wear make-up, and look and sound chirpy all the time is plain ridiculous) - They keep finding new ways to pay you less while ensuring that they squeeze every ounce of labour from employees in order to maximise profit for their business. - Benefits are almost non-existent, full-time staff are treated poorly and often anxious, overworked and stressed out. - High turnover rate and part-timers are expected to be on standby to replace a staff that has quit at the last-minute or simply neglected to show up for their shift. - Extremely profit-driven at the expense of employee welfare. This company plain does not care about its employees. - The staff discount isn't much when they keep raising the prices of their products.