Avantages
In 2007 I joined Rite Aid for my first job in retail as an "Associate." Associates in this company are required to be jacks of all trades. Cashier, stock person, cleaning service, facing (blocking), customer service etc. Plus any other ridiculous thing that corporate wants you to do. My starting pay was $8.00/hr. Raises come once a year, and you're LUCKY if you get 20cents. After two years I was moved into a Shift Supervisor position, which came with a whopping $1.00 raise. As a Shift Supervisor I took care of managing Associates, irate customers, cashing out registers, bank deposits and change runs plus other tasks. I was stuck in this position for the next 5 years, though did have an opportunity to apply for Assistant Store Manager after moving to a new store. However, there was so much going wrong in that store and so many terrible customers that I could never have handled the stress and abuse that would have come with the position. Coworkers tend to be pleasant to work with, though sometimes you get some really dumb people at work. Or in the case of my second store, a new assistant manager who had no social skills whatsoever and insulted everyone in the building with rude and condescending comments. I really don't have much to say in the way of Pros for Rite Aid. Which is pretty sad considering I was there for 7 years and worked in two stores, plus covered shifts in multiple other stores.
Inconvénients
There are a lot of awful people that come to the register that you will have to handle, but there are nice people to balance it out. The only problem is that the company's policy is "The customer is ALWAYS right (even if they're wrong)." Alot of customers know this and will use the threat of calling corporate on you to get you to do whatever they want. Be it returning stolen items, trying to buy tobacco or alcohol without ID, or just expecting exorbitant service. One example of this was when we had printer ink on sale, but didn't carry the specific number the customer wanted. We called all Rite Aids in the area and none carried it (by the way, if you want to store transfer a product for a customer, someone from your store has to pick it up from the other store or vice-versa). It turned out that our distribution center did not stock this product. We were told to go to another (non Rite Aid) store with money from our store deposit to buy the ink cartridge the customer wanted then resell it to her for our sale price. We ended up losing money on that sale but hey the customer was happy! Something similar happened in my second store, where a demeaning customer who always demanded her 20% discount ontop of sale prices (something which is against policy, even the associates don't get that) was looking for the Blu E-cigs. At that time Rite Aid did not sell this brand of e-cig. She wanted us to order it for her. We cannot order a product that Rite Aid corporation does not stock in any of it's warehouses. But she kept insisting because she was such a good customer and so important that we needed to get them to order it for her. In the end, we had to send a Shift Supervisor to another (non Rite Aid) store once a week to buy a stash of Blu E-cigs to sell to this one particular customer whenever she came in. Benefits are minimal, raises are minimal, vacation hours are minimal. It is a very "corporate" company. Associates and customers are just numbers to the higher ups, and they will try to squeeze whatever they can out of you without compensation or care. Your working hours are either cut back so much you might as well quit OR you get stuck working incredibly long 10+hr shifts, stretches of 7-12 days in a row without time off. The store prices are jacked up so high that your Associate discount of 20% sometimes doesn't even bring the price down to other stores' regular prices. District Managers will never give you a "Green" on visits, or compliment you on things you do well, only tell you what you're doing wrong. And they will ALWAYS find something wrong.