Pros
Health benefits are amazing!!! I paid $12 total in co-pay for 2 dental cleanings and a filling, and dental coverage is only $5 for employees (individual)! I love all my coworkers and am friends with everyone; this particular store is known for its employees getting along so well compared to other local stores. The time-off scheduling is very flexible. I am able to get time off for family occasions, work in vacation time with the required days off for longer vacations....and management here is very respectful of our life priorities. If a family member has an emergency, whether illness or birth, we are allowed to leave to take care of home life. Since we are all friends, covering shifts is no problem. The customers are great, even if we do have a problem with theft. I have several regulars who love coming in just to say hi to us or ask me about a beauty emergency. They are really why I've stayed much longer than I'd intended. Corporate encourages us to really enjoy working there, which I appreciate. They allow us to dress up (even ridiculously) for holidays, many stores have break rooms that the employees decorated, and all in all they do a good job of making sure we know what's going on with the company.
Cons
Okay.....this particular district manager is much more uptight than others. He does not want us to decorate or relax in the break room. He had the store manager take down my displays so "all the stores in the area look the same" in this weird bulky look. It doesn't help that he does not like our store manager (it's very obvious). Our store manager loved how I dressed up one holiday and shared the pics with other managers, but we had to keep it on the hush hush since our district manager ignores corporate approval of it. Lately things have been very dramatic, and I've been the brunt of the stress. This is just my particular store that I speak of, although in this region I hear rumors of similar events. I was written up twice for two days I missed without previous approval because I was stranded out of state for reasons out of my control and I called in to let them know. EXA did not tell the store manager I called, so he did not believe me when I said I'd called in before. More problems with EXA that literally everyone has had, but I am the one being blamed. It took almost crying to finally be believed, only slightly. This district manager has zero marketing skills. Maybe very, very few, and it's hurting our potential sales due to each store being in a different neighborhood with different customer needs.