Double-edged sword/Bit of a trap
Pros
Get hired straight out of school, lots of immediate hands-on experience, good quality tables provided, lubricant and sheets provided, free massages, camaraderie of other MT's, discount on liability insurance and online CEU's. In some cases (not mine), help with costs of initial licensing, VOLUME without having to genrate i yourself.
Cons
Pretty bad pay rates, top-down management by people with little understanding of massage, they treat MT's like children, franchisee ownerS tend to come from areas completely unrelated to massage due to the large aount of cash needed to ge started, and they can be horror-shows, an atmosphere that tends to put pressure on MT's to work when sick, a front-desk system that tends to put very young people with no massage knowledge at all in a position of booking appointments and therefore controlling your income, and they tend to get rotated @ every 6 months, so as soon as they start to have a clue, they're gone, a tendency to not understand the potential for injury and/or not care, and either push people to do more work than they can handle or allow inexperienced therapists to do way more work than they ought to-- saw MANY people out of the business and/or in for carpal tunnel surgery within 6 months of employment. NO HEALTH BENEFITS WHATSOEVER.