Pros
If you work hard and have a good attitude and demeanor, you will always have a job. Being retail, you have to be willing to work most weekends, including Sundays, but the shops are closed on the major holidays. Pawnbrokers now get a small commission, which raises pay to well above minimum wage. Hour lunches are good, but make the day longer, which can stretch from 9 am until 8 pm, with a max of 40 hours per week. You get to see a lot of merchandise and get some sort of discount, which can be very subjective. Vacation and personal time are granted early on, but don't roll over if not used. 401(k) match is standard. If an hourly employee works hard and can motivate others, promotion within the shop is almost given, as most folks don't have the aptitude for any type of management position. Most of the people working in the stores are great, but overworked.
Cons
Pay, long hours, vacation and personal time don't roll over, badly conceived and partly irrelevant training program, inconsistent employee discount (no system). For Shop Managers plan on working many more than the 45 hours that are "planned." 60 - 70 hours are the rule. There is a ton of admin to be done, as well as picking up the slack left by running understaffed. Extremely difficult to attract hourly employees with next to no support from corporate. Attracting, screening and hiring new people is expressly the responsibility of the shop. You're supposed to go out and talk to people in other businesses and get them interested in changing jobs. Really? If you're understaffed, how do you leave your shop to drive around to talk to people who are on the clock at their workplace? That is silly and ineffective. Cash America is a billion dollar company which just cut dozens of tenured admin and field people to satisfy stockholders (upper management being among the stockholders being satisfied) and they won't budget a few people to look for support for the shops, where the money is made. Training for pawnbrokers is uncoordinated, the training manual outdated and the timeline not logical for what needs to be learned when. Every admin task is tied to a deadline that most be met, or else. The core values are irrelevant, because it's only about the money! For many managers, the work-life scale is tipped decidedly in the direction of work. And for the amount of work, the compensation is too low and the bonuses small, being dependent on factors that cannot be influenced to a large extent by the shop management, especially when understaffed. Besides focusing on the core pawn and retail business,the shop staff has to post items to sell on craigslist as well as on EBay, which takes staff away from live in-store customers. In order to attract more business, how about paying for radio advertising and on-line banners to make people aware of the great deals to be had in the shops and to attract more employees?