You will never be promoted, but to be fair this is communicated from day one...your boss got their job from starting as a district manager, and those positions are filled straight out of college (never from store managers). Forget about having personal relationships (friendship or otherwise) with your coworkers unless you knew them before as this type of thing is not just frowned upon but actively discouraged. Training is very regimented (as is everything); falling behind is not accepted or helped. You are given a large amount of autonomy from an early time but not a lot of support, and you must deal with a lot of competing interests and deadlines. They are slower to embrace technological advances than any other company I have ever seen...they just got email company-wide 2 years ago!
None of this is necessarily "bad", but just realize that you are working for a German company and the corporate culture is VERY different from that of American-based companies. You are there to carry out your assigned tasks and ruthlessly eradicate your competitors, not to make friends or have a good time. If you come expecting to have outings and United Way fundraisers and casual Fridays, you will be SORELY disappointed. If all those types of things drive you nuts, you will probably be very happy.
