Pros
Like most people say, it varies franchise to franchise. Had a great relationship with the franchise owners which made all of the cons of the job worth it. We were a tight knit family. Small business owners who took care of the workers they trusted. But be wary, the owner you end up with a different work ethic you may not agree with. If you don’t like one franchisee, you can always find a different store as it may have a different owner. Good opportunity to learn new skills, like certifying in being a live scan fingerprinter or being a notary public. I enjoyed learning how shipping logistics worked. There were plenty of things to learn to stay busy through out the day. It paid well for a retail job. I got a nice raise after getting certified but it may be different store to store. I enjoyed the mailbox customers, most of them are small business owners and having connections with aspiring entrepreneurs helped me with finding a job after college. It enjoyed knowing the neighborhood folks as well as our regular drivers from the other carriers we worked with. Even though they worked for other companies, they felt like co workers to me. As much as we dealt with a couple of bad customers, there are many of friendly people we talked to regularly.
Cons
There’s high turnover because most workers are either in school or using it as a second part time job. There’s no career growth. Unless you see yourself owning franchises. “UPS” and “The UPS Store” are separate companies, and many things that “UPS” customers complain about are out of our control here at “The UPS Store”. You’ll find yourself explaining that all day over the phone. There’s no benefits if the franchise owner doesn’t have enough employees across the locations they own. Most likely you won’t get any. I think the franchisees can agree with me on what was difficult about the job, but at least we were in it together. There’s A LOT to learn, in terms of the services we provide. It’s not some regular stocking job. But once you get most of it down, the service can be fast, and that’s what customers look for. Get ready for the difficult customers, eventually you figure out how to handle it. You’re talking to ALOT of customers per day, it can take a toll on you at some point. You’re dealing with a lot of people’s personal information, so don’t be surprised when someone is very pushy with you. But 80-90 percent of the time. Customers are easy going and the transaction is quick. I think the most common difficult customers I dealt with were Amazon return customers. It’s the easiest part of the job but also the most annoying part when the customer has no consideration for the directions they were given, coming unprepared and blame you for it. Be ready for that. You will deal with it many times per day. It’s important to educate them on their options and how the process is a case to case basis.