Pros
-The employees are generally upbeat, funny, smart people. -They emphasize training a lot and it helps quickly integrate newcomers into the work culture. -The customers are usually fantastic, compared to many other retailers. -If there's ever a small problem with a customer or maybe you made a mistake, your manager always backs you up, which is great. They have a lot of faith in their employees. -It can be a really interesting/fun environment, especially since there's a lot of jobs you can do: unloads and merchandising (the best because it's fast-paced, physically demanding, and the managers aren't there yet), order processing (another good job because you're in the back room away from customers with just a couple other employees and you cut and file metal), cash register (not so great but at least you're chained to one area so it's less pressure), the floor (can be fun if you're able to connect with customers and help them figure out organization problems, but if you're not good at that you'll just feel tons of pressure from the managers to talk to people). -You don't work on commission, though a lot of customers think that's how it works (I guess because employees tend to be genuinely helpful and very attentive to customers' needs, so it seems like money must be motivating them). -40% discount! I now have more containers than stuff to put in them. -Products are generally good quality so it's easy to be truthful with customers, which management encourages actually. Or so I remember... -High pay for a retail store.
Kontras
-You're required to work one weekend day every week. -There's SO much stress on Foundation Principles (the values that make Container Store unique) and everything being perfect for the customers that it can get aggravating. -Sometimes the managers expect too much of every employee. It's only a bad thing when they force you to do something that you just don't feel comfortable doing because you're not good at that specific task. They don't take into account how differently people learn or how differently peoples' minds work. For example, I just don't understand math-based and architectural concepts very well, yet I had to try and I just kept failing but they didn't understand how awful that made me feel. -Micromanaging. At least where I worked. Made me feel like I couldn't improve at anything and had to always depend on people and didn't have the capacity to be more autonomous.