Pros
The retail store environment was always fun and upbeat. I loved talking about our products: incense, hookahs, masks, and etc. You meet a lot of fun and interesting people working at the "hippie" store. I loved the stores products and customers.
Cons
At my store we went through five general managers in three years. All but one person I started with was either fired or quit by the time I left to move to another state. Store sales goals were often missed and this pushed the more experienced sales people to fight over customers to fulfill the personal sales goals we were assigned. This created a tense environment to work in. Training materials were pretty bad, only giving vague descriptions of products. Lastly, secret shoppers were used as ways to scare / get rid of employees. Secret shoppers are supposed to be used to ensure people are doing their job, instead, management used this as a tool to try to get rid of employees. By putting one person (the employee the want to fire) on the floor and expecting them to serve an entire store during a busy time of day and then telling the employee that they didn't give the secret shopper enough attention. Basically purposely setting the employee up to fail.
