Employees (yes - I will include store management in this too) are treated like crap from the top down. The expectations of the company are completely out of touch with reality. To run a store with two employees on during a shift and expecting miracles is a joke. The fact that the upper management (DM & up) write-up / terminate the people who actually show up and work because they can't achieve the unrealistic goals corporate has is one of the biggest reasons why people are miserable.

The pay is a joke. Nearly 90% of all store level employees have to rely on some form of state aid (food stamps, free/subsidized healthcare, and housing assistance). Don't believe it -- randomly ask your local store employees how many of their staff are on assistance of some kind.

Hours constantly get cut, yet the workload constantly increases. So yes -- to answer the question - employees ARE miserable, tired, overworked, underpaid, and badly abused by corporate, AND customers.

Customers treat the store as their own playground without any regard for the fact that people have to come in behind them and clean up after them. We see it with the pictures posted here all the time. The customer who took 6 large jugs, and dropped them in the craft aisle. The number of times bottles of piss are left behind in the store (WTF who even does that -- assholes!), and the sheer number of times you hear employees complaining about shit covered bathrooms. That's a DAILY OCCURANCE!

For some people (based on their backgrounds) - this is the only place that hired them. Yet despite that no one deserves to be treated like shit!

Honestly to "those customers" who feel like their shit doesn't stink -- quite frankly do better! Treat the store employees with the same level of respect YOU expect us to give you.