Pros
-If you’re someone coming from a traditional retail environment, scheduling is a lot better overall. Most districts complete their schedules 30 days in advance. Most people have a designated off day that rarely changes every week in addition to Sundays off. You won’t have to worry about working a bunch of days in a row without an off day because this position is hourly and the company doesn’t want to pay out a lot of overtime. -The hours are a set 930am-6pm Monday-Friday and 9am-530pm on Saturdays. Work/life balance is a lot better as opposed to a traditional retail environment. It would be nice however, if the hours weren’t geared towards a mid shift. A better time would be to open at 8/830am and close at 430/5pm - at least on Saturdays. -Little micromanagement: Maybe this is just in my district, but I really feel like I can do my job without another manager breathing down my neck. -Chances to work other properties and rapid advancement: The company is constantly growing so they need highly motivated Assistant Managers (AMs) to become Store Managers (SMs) to run the new properties. As an AM you typically get to go to run another property a couple of days out the week. Some people may like that and some people may not. An AM can typically get promoted to SM in less than a year.
Cons
These are some of my personal cons, but overall Extra Space Storage is not a bad place to work at all. -No extra help: If you’re running a high occupancy facility or a new facility, the likelihood of having extra help is higher than a property that is lower occupied. Needless to say, there are times that highly occupied facilities are single covered too. If you’re running a property by yourself, you have to work with another property to cover your off day/PTO, do lock cuts, or any other activities that may require two people. Also, working by yourself all of the time can be challenging since you are maintaining the entire property with no help whatsoever. -Routined job: If you’re not renting units or making delinquent calls, you’re basically the property janitor - cleaning units, picking up trash, blowing leaves, cleaning toilets, etc. It gets boring quickly. -Dealing with rate increase complaints: sigh. -No chance to rotate weekends off: This may be just a district issue, but it would be nice to be able to have a rotating weekend off without using PTO. -Bonuses are kind of bad: Store Manager gets bigger bonus no matter what. Bonuses are usually pretty low anyway. - Favoritism: It exists. In my opinion, the district in which you are placed will determine the experience you will have. The District Manager(DM) and District Team Leaders (DTLs) set the pace and morale for the team. If you have an engaging upper management team, overall the rest of the site managers will also be engaged. If you have an upper management team that is not engaging, then more than likely that district will be less engaged.