Avantages
Believe it or not, I actually really liked all of the "cheer leading" at first. I drank that kool-aide so hard because I appreciated working for a positive company with a happy, cheerful, mindful mission statement for its employees as well as its customers. I've worked in companies where negative reinforcement was the only feedback and TCS is a refreshing change of pace. The customers in our location are generally happy to be there, they love the store and love the product. The facilities are good. Clean, well-maintained break room with vending machines, lockers, ample space to hang our jackets. They refuse to open their doors on Thanksgiving Day and open for reasonable hours (9 to 9 in my location) on Black Friday... for now. The best technology of any company I've worked for with access to the company website available at any computer and touch screen registers with credit card and email look-up of customer transactions. Decent PTO benefits. Competitive pay for full-timers. Matching 401k available. They got rid of those god-awful blue aprons.
Inconvénients
Alas, it's still just retail. Any store is only as good as its GM. Some days can suck when your GM's version of giving "feedback" and "training the new hires" involves publicly calling them out over the walkie. Awkward. Crazy demanding inconsistent hours. The workload required for some campaign changes is just ridiculous. Also for a company that proclaims to care so much about its employees, they don't hesitate to force half the staff into working multiple overnight shifts in the days directly before and after Christmas to set up the elfa sale. They need to start that sale either a week sooner or a week later. Even working apparel retail and in beauty/cosmetics, never did I have to work overnight shifts during Christmas. But I guess they figure they give you Thanksgiving off so they can get away with this treatment of employees every year. Merchandise deliveries can be hell when they send you a full truck but you only have a staff of 8 to get it done. Unreasonable and unrealistic goal times are implemented to finish merchandise deliveries, especially considering truck team consists of 95% women in their 40's. The sheer physicality of the process along with the aggressive time goals and constantly being short-staffed, have resulted in numerous injuries and competent people leaving. There has to be a better way to get merchandise out of a truck and onto the floor! Lots of talented, energetic, and willing people are stuck indefinitely in part-time ("prime-time") roles with little to no hope of ever moving to full time. It seems like we lose so many great people to other jobs willing to offer them more hours. The existing part-timers must have open availability 24/7, which is completely unfair and unrealistic and often results in retaining only the less-than-spectacular talent. An overload of feedback and communication. Seriously, I know "Communication is leadership" and all, but there are more emails, voicemails, memos, visual direction, new promotions, flash sales, and other "white noise" than a person can keep up with in any given day. Don't even get me started on the monthly employee/supervisor one-on-ones. Constant observation and micro-managing from the managers must be endured by all. Incessant questioning of employee decisions and "what are you doing?" happens in my location. Calm down and trust us, we take pride in our work and will do the job you hired us to do if you just give us the chance. If fewer company resources were allocated to unnecessary "feedback" and "communication," I wonder how much cost savings the company would have. And how much more efficiency from managers and full-timers would result. Too much playing favorites and too many store politics.