Pros: fast paced, easy work, easy to learn, medical benefits, short shifts, friendly staff, pays above minimum wage
Cons: short shifts, not student friendly, demanding hours, lots of meetings and nonsense, no employee discount, repetitive work, demanding schedule
As a cashier, THD makes it so that your first (and depending on the time of day, only) priority is taking care of customers and running their transactions through and keeping you focused on that. It's a refreshing change from jobs that not only want you to wait on customers but also to clean and do this and that and the next thing. It's nice to be able
– more... to focus on people and not have to worry about everything else going on in the store. This is a very busy location and the job is very fast paced. Working mid-morning through early afternoon is the busiest time. These shifts go by pretty quickly, especially on weekends but, when it is slow, because your duties are limited as a cashier, the time can really drag and it can be very boring just standing around waiting for someone to check out. Evening shifts are generally slower, customer-wise, and they require you to do a bit of light cleaning but nothing too demanding - mostly sweeping floors, changing garbages, dusting and general tidying up. The staff and management are very helpful and friendly. Almost everyone is willing to help you if you have a question or if you don't know how to do something without making you feel bad for not knowing. I have a lot of cashier experience so I didn't necessarily learn any new skills and adjusting to THD's way of doing things and how their tills work was very easy. They have touch screen POS and they have nice large, clear screens and are very easy to use, even if you've never used a register before. Management was okay, as an associate on the front end most of the higher up managers stay out of the way and are usually busy with the various departments. For the most part, the front end basically runs itself. There are head cashiers that act as supervisors for the front end and then a front end manager. Head cashiers are almost all very helpful and friendly and great people to work alongside with. They do things like tend to most issues that come up, get you change if you run out, and such. Front end manager was also good to work with. The hardest part about working at THD is how demanding it is. Although I was a part time employee and worked 25 hours a week I still had to be at the store five days a week. I believe this is an issue about breaks. They don't like to give cashiers anything longer than a five hour shift because at six hours you require a half hour lunch and anything over that it's an hour lunch and they simply don't want to bring in extra people just to cover breaks...Because of this it forces part time employees to work five days a week in order to get their minimum hours. As a full time university student I found this very frustrating. THD boasts that it is student friendly but my university recommends working 10-15 hours a week with a full time schedule and THD refused to let me work anything less than 20 hours/week. Managing both of my school and work responsibilities quickly became very stressful and tiresome. Scheduling is done weeks in advance so it is hard to have your schedule adjusted if a mistake has been made such as being scheduled to work when you're supposed to be in class. Scheduling issues and errors are basically left up to you to sort out on your own. When October rolled around cashiers were told that THD was no longer accepting requests off for December, which was a huge issue for me as December is when my exam period takes place and exams are not scheduled at the same time you have regular classes. I spoke to a member of management about the issue and they basically shrugged it off. This is when I decided to leave THD, as school and work were at odds... I was paying thousands of dollars and living in Peterborough to be in class, not to work at a hardware store. If I didn't have commitments to my university and my education, my experience with THD would probably have been a very different story. This is a company I wouldn't mind working for again, when I have the time and energy to take on the amount of commitment required. – less
