Pros
Wal-Mart for me isn't as bad as it's reputation. They pay above minimum wage in Illinois, where minimum is high. They never tried to get me to work off the clock and in fact seemed very against it now. For an 8 hour shift you got two 15-minute breaks and an hour breaks. They never tried to screw me out of a break. They trained me well and took responsibility for training me. They always posted the schedule a week in advance. They never altered my time clock records. They gave me an employee discount. As a cashier things were low drama. I was responsible for my lane and taking care of the customers that came through and that was it. Very clearly defined. They also gave us free donuts and fruit on Fridays.
Kontras
Wal-Mart went through a major remodel while I was there. The remodel was highly disruptive to shoppers and a lot of them were mad. It took 6 weeks to complete and probably could have taken 2 if they shut the store down, but of course they won't. During and after the remodel sales were down, go figure. They pressured the cashiers to be robotically friendly in an effort to make up for lost sales. Cashiers were always friendly and this wasn't the reason why sales were down. I believe they asked too much of us and treated us unfairly in evaluation of our "friendliness." I believe there was favoritism and I wasn't one of the favorites. Being a cashier is a mentally draining job. It is like being an assembly line worker except you have to deal with screaming kids and customers who are in a bad mood and who want to take it out on you. I quit Wal-Mart because I didn't like the nature of being a cashier, not because I didn't like Wal-Mart. I asked for a change on position and was told to go ask someone else by at least 7 people. I was finally told I would be a allowed to go to the toy department. I waited, and along came more hoops to jump through without anyone really explaining to me what I was supposed to do, when, how, etc.
