Pros
You learn lots about clothing and merchandising. You learn shopping behavior and habits as well as seasonal patterns during transitional phases. This is really valuable knowledge for yourself as a consumer because you learn how retail reaches out to the consumer. The experience will make you a more informed and savvy shopper. You are challenged to think and manager your business (meaning your sales floor area assigned to you). A lot of your success depends on getting results through others, so learning how to motivate and inspire others to do great work is critical. Building positive relationships is paramount. The key is to figure out how they want to be rewarded and recognized.
Cons
Stores are very lean and the workload is extremely heavy, so maximize your productivity to manage your area or you will live at the store and work long hours and even on some of your off days and off time. The training is low quality and inadequate. You are not given adequate time and resources to complete the required on-boarding and training to properly ramp up for your job, so you will have to make up for that later on by learning as you go. Lower ranking employees who disagree with your decisions will often appeal to higher levels of authority (without your knowledge) to get their way, and there's very little you can do about it except learn to deal with it. Employees at all levels engage in a fair amount of office drama, politics, and gossip so you must be prepared to deal with that. There is a high level of turnover within the assistant store manager and store manager ranks due to store performance frustration and job burnout.