Pros
Easy job and you get to travel to lots of cool places. Great first out of college job. Most of your co-workers are around your age and help you laugh while making a million sample sandwiches...you get to meet new people every week and learn how to be confident and outgoing in relatively any environment. It is something you can take in any role in the future. Decent pay for how easy the job is and how minimal your responsibilities are especially since you don't have a "real" boss monitoring you...it did give me the opportunity to save up money since I didn't live at home and pay rent.
Cons
Some of the downsides of Jimmy Johns (at least the corporate office traveling job): 1) Crazy per diem and budgets you had to follow: $65 per night for a hotel, $300 roundtrip flights, $29 a day for food, $0.49 back per mile, no reimbursement for wear and tear on your own car and lots of low quality hotels where you are sometimes concerned for your safety. These budgets applied for less expensive places like bufoo Alabama, but also super high end places like Seattle, WA that was very difficult to find anything in those parameters. They would budge on the budget if there was literally nothing available for the unrealistic budget. 2) Long hours and long drive times: they made you drive up to 8 hours and you were literally home for only 36 hours each weekend. Fly out Sunday night and return late Friday night. You would have to show up at the store at 7am and work until 5pm with an hour lunch break (take into consideration the different time zones you went to EACH week). All you did was help the store open, make sample sandwiches and hand them out, take lunch and repeat the morning process in the afternoon. It got real old fast as a college graduate who was looking to do more than make and hand out samples all day. They gave you 6 weeks vacation, but they were around the holidays so if you needed to go to any check up doctors appointments or really anything during the weekdays you were screwed because most places were closed. 3) No work/life balance: you were never home and had little time for your life... 4) If you ever decide you do want to leave JJ's and find a job at a different company (which they officially fire you after 3 years within this role which they do make you fully aware of...the intent behind it is to move you up, but if you want to be promoted you either have to travel the same insane amount or live in Champaign, IL) then plan ahead and expect it to take months. You can't take sick days on this job ("Jimmy doesn't believe in sick days") and most employers don't understand you physically can't be in their location if you don't have breaks on non-holidays and can't pick your vacations. Lucky if you can schedule a skype interview and then hope timing is on your side...
