Pros
Free lunch on Fridays to keep you at the counter working, just like a bunch of other shops. Honestly I would say the pay would be above average for an independent shop advisor role in my ten years experience which is what makes it so enticing in the beginning. On my first pay plan I cleared 8k on the regular and a couple times cleared 10k a month but then they switched the pay plan in December and slashed 35% pay. Which still isnt terrible for an advisor role in independent but thats not really what you are. You have all the responsibilities and roles of management without the authority to make changes or the pay and benefits. It is a great networking opportunity I guess , I worked with 9 different advisors and 20 different techs in 10 months if you see that as a plus. The place is a revolving door.
Cons
Your pay plan and the people you work with will change often. Just to give you some idea two days before me our parts girl was fired, then I was fired for asking for the monthly bonus I was promised if they couldnt deliver a car count of at least 425 cars which they consistently fall 100 cars short of, two weeks later the other advisor, two techs and a gs all quit. So they lost 6 employees in 2.5 weeks. There were already talks when I was fired of another new pay plan which would make 2 new pay plans in 10 months the first came with a 35% paycut by taking our base pay and unachievable store bonuses at their current car count. New policy change is instituted almost daily so prepare for lots of tone deaf emails from absentee management that truly beleive they are present in day to day operations. Management is focused on expansion and everything is secondary to that, including actual store management. So you will be expected to be both an advisor and manager, even though you will not be compensated for it. There is also an expectation of spur of the moment, same day, unpaid after hours meetings and staying after 6 to get work finished. Which I had started refusing to do or attend in the last few months as I wasnt getting paid hourly on the new pay plan. As well a the fact that I am already there 60 hours a week with another 10 hours of commute. The techs I worked with were great, and the culture of the shop is great, until management pulls up and then the mood of the shop changes and everyone dreads being there. You will be 150 hours buried in sold work, and for some reason that will seem like the right time to pull the shop foreman from his work and put side steps on the general managers truck for 4 hours. Things like this will happen frequently. If something breaks.... figure it out because if you tell management nothing will get done and you will have to address it. When management tells you "they will handle it" what it actually means is that client will call you for weeks looking for resolution that you cant provide because "they are handling it". The projection of blame is very high here, advisors will be the scape goat for everything, especially car count. The front is always to blame and management will not take any accountability. They will tell you they can turn the marketing up to as many cars as you can handle, but when they dont deliver on car count they will make you the scapegoat for not delivering the cars. Your phone calls will be recorded and whenever you have a gripe or concern about anything they will cherry pick 1 non perfect call out of 50, and call you to the office so they can dismiss your concern and write you up to ensure that if they eventually fire you they won't have to pay unemployment. Everyone has multiple write ups in the company for this reason. All in all I loved the shop employees and customer base, but the management is terrible and it was a very high stress posistion for that reason. The stress level and responsibility outside of the advisor role especially without compensation is higher than an average shop that is well managed in my experience.