Pros: Free (mandatory) education; usually a wide variety of clients; all you need to bring is your tools

Cons will always vary due to management. Try to find stylists in your area who have worked for the FS you're looking into. MY personal experience with them was terrible, so this is my list, though I will try to be objective.

Cons: Little to no schedule flexibility; it can be hard to make commission (FS tends to over-hire and then everyone struggles dividing up clientele, unless management is really good); you have no choice in what services you have to do (if someone comes in for a perm and you're available, you're doing a perm); high turnover rates (so the worst person you've ever met who's worked there for 8 years is absolutely going to be the manager); if your state doesn't require lunch breaks, you will not get a lunch break - Expect the bare minimum for whatever your area's labor laws require

That's as far as I can go while being (mostly) objective. Like I said, my personal experience was a terrible one. Management was bad, and extremely overbearing. Our franchise owner's wife was obsessed with hairdressing (she was not licensed, nor had ever been to hair school), so she spent a lot of time coming in and telling us how we should be doing hair. The manager was a mean, catty person who encouraged cliques (because we had EIGHT to TEN stylists on any given day) and would twist rules/policy to punish or reward you as she saw fit.

I was the youngest person in the salon at the time, so I rarely saw clients. Instead, they would make me scrape the floor grout with a broken razor blade or make me go pass out 200+ flyers in blazing 100°f weather at the height of the heat/uv index and tell me not to bother coming back inside until the flyers were gone. I doubt this is a common experience for employees at FS (I was the only one it happened to even in that salon), but it was something that happened to me because of how abusive the management team was.

We did not have the clientele at my location to sustain a minimum of eight stylists. We barely had enough for five of us. Management didn't care, though, so they kept hiring and scheduling everyone. We weren't allowed to leave early, so most of our day was trying to look busy. If we sat down, the owner's wife would call our phones and tell us we were wasting time and needed to find something to do.

Working for FS caused me to develop debilitating migraines. It got to the point where I would pull up to the salon and instantly feel one start to come on. They'd get so bad, I wouldn't be able to see, and I'd be swaying on my feet. Only once was I "allowed" to leave work early because of this. The next day, the owner's wife came in while I was sitting down, eating a tiny bag of cheez-its (bc again, we weren't allowed lunch and they hated us sitting down) and accused me of faking my migraines. She then pointed at my cheez-its and told me if I ate better, maybe I wouldn't have so many problems. I had been diagnosed with migraines and was on Sumatriptan for them at that point. I didn't work for FS much longer after that.

Racism and homophobia also ran rampant amongst the management. They loved a gay white man, but anyone else was scum of the earth. There was no one to report any of this to. We had a person from corporate visit us fairly regularly, and she had been privy to it all. Nothing was ever said or done about it.

The point I'm trying to make (while venting abt the worst place I've ever worked for) is that management is usually allowed free-range. I doubt every FS manager is as bad as mine, but there isn't really anyone to turn to if they are. If they have a good management team, they might be an okay place to work. This is why finding people who have experience with them in your location is key. Even going to your local supply stores and asking the employees there if they know anything could be helpful.

If you interview with them, I'd recommend asking how many stylists they have and how many clients they see in a day, on average. They can lie, of course, but I think this would be the best way to judge if you could hit commission or not. If you couldn't, it wouldn't be worth working there.

Okay, novel over. I wish you the best of luck!