Pros
Money is good for warehouse work. Simple for people with no qualifications or just looking for relatively decent pay while searching for better work. The 4on/4off shifts are mostly bad but they can be handy in some situations, eg. you get time during the week to look after the kids, and if you book 4 days holiday you get 12 off.
Cons
Shift pattern. The 4 on/4 off rotating day/night shift pattern messes with your body's biological rhythms and makes you fatigued and run down. The 4 days off sounds nice, eh? Trust me, you'll need them, you are on your feet 10 and a half hours a day/night doing physical work. The first nightshift is always horrible. You're lifting boxes at 4am and your body is screaming for sleep. And when you come off nights the first day off is basically a write-off because you either need to sleep, or stay awake feeling wretched to try and reset your body back into dayshift mode again, which takes a few days during which you never feel 100%. Good luck sleeping well during the day in a hot summer. I've seen this shift pattern take its toll on people's relationships at home. Work culture for pickers. Extremely busy and target-oriented. You are a robot not a person. The team leaders/shift manager are watching you all the time. Just picking the expected amount is frowned upon, and the ones who break their backs exceeding their targets become the golden boys. There's no bonus for exceeding targets, so fast workers basically get exploited by the team leaders/manager. However, camaraderie between pickers is generally good. The company is not lenient on sickness or lateness at all. No chance in hell of getting unionised. Health and safety. Management are happy to turn a blind eye to unsafe practices to get the orders out of the door. I personally witnessed managers being raised up on a pallet by a forklift to check stock on the higher racks. If all the forklift drivers stuck to the safety rules the warehouse wouldn't be able to meet its targets. Work/life balance. Not much. The 12 hour shifts only give you about 2/3 hours outside work to do anything, including cooking and eating your dinner, and you're usually knackered anyway. Yeah you get 4 days off which can be useful sometimes, especially if you have young kids, but some of that will be taken with overtime. And you'll be working at least one day of the weekend for 5 weeks out of 7. Most of the time you'll be at work when your mates are off, or stuck at home watching Loose Women when everyone else is at work. Management have no respect for your wellbeing at all. You will be guilt-tripped into overtime. If you ring in sick they will sometimes try to convince you to come in anyway "just to see how it goes". Career prospects. The pathway to management is narrow and the journey can be slow. You can work your way up, I've seen it. If you brown-nose the manager, play golf/become drinking buddies with them you will become team leader easily. But there is rarely a vacancy for management. Shift managers tend to stay in their positions for quite a while, because as management jobs go they're quite cushy. If you're breaking your back on the shop floor hoping for a promotion you could be waiting a long time unless you're good at kissing posterior. Occasionally admin jobs become available, and that's your best chance to get off the shop floor if you have half a brain. Environment. It's a refrigerated warehouse. You are given adequate clothing. However, there's no escaping the cold. You are literally working inside a gigantic fridge.