Pros
Colleagues in branches are good people and good sense of comradery
Cons
Expect to be worked way past when the branch closes, long hours with lots of complaints that are out of your control. Understaffed, much of the time with not enough people in the office to do required tasks and serve all customers with higher management baring no reference to this in their judgement. No upward movement. Being promoted from Branch manager to Area manager is an anomaly even at top performance so expect to be run into the ground running a branch. Sideways movement is equally difficult. Management will actively block you from leaving or taking on other roles if they don't like it and can be aggressive in doing so. Employee benefits have slowly been degraded and previous incentives were slowly stripped as higher management has such an obsession with the bottom line they forget people work for them. Must have one of the highest turnovers for employees in the UK