Pros
There was a high turnover in the company, so if you were talented enough you could ascend through the ranks rather quickly. The Store level employees were awesome, there was a swath of very capable people sacrificing themselves in their time and energy to achieve daily excellence.
Cons
They treat their managers like incompetent trash. Zero and I mean zero work life balance! 70 hour weeks are the norm if you want to stay in the owners good faith. If you want to have a family and be a good spouse, you can pretty much kiss those aspirations goodbye. There is an expectation that the Store comes first no matter what, at the cost of your life and family. Corporate has become a meat grinder that is hemorrhaging human capital at an accelerated rate. Corporate decisions are never fully fleshed out, and usually it is store leadership that has to pick up the pieces. Or a bad decision was made at the corporate level and now it’s your fault for erroneous results. Be expected to be set up for failure constantly, then chastised for failing because of poor strategic planning. Corporate leadership has lost its trust in their store level teams and as a result overall morale has dropped even further. Nepotism is infectious throughout the organizational structure, there are several key positions filled by unqualified family or friends, whom add to the bad decision making. It really has become a toxic work environment. I think their only strategy in employee retention is exploiting their staff’s fears that they couldn’t find something better. It used to be a good company to work for, but the negative symptoms are self evident.