REI Reviews

Pros

Great work environment and the managers/leads are very caring.

Cons

Nothing to say about cons

Pros

Great environment Feels like a family

Cons

Hours are not set and often fluctuate

Pros

The people I work with are pretty rad

Cons

❌ LOW PAY: Raises are few and far between EVEN if you’re a top seller and in a leadership position. For the amount of pressure they put on retail workers to sell memberships, there are no tangible incentives. It’s work harder for no extra. ❌INCONSISTENT HOURS: If you’re not a sales lead, your hours depend on your membership sales, and if you have an off week, you will get fewer hours the following week. ❌TOXIC ENVIRONMENT: Leadership treats their employees like children, often times giving band-aid solutions to gun shot wound problems. They’re very good at blowing smoke and side stepping questions about pay increase. ❌GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES ARE A JOKE: They’ll skimp on your raise and tell you it’s so that you have head room for future raises. It’s unlikely that you’ll ever get a raise that will be impactful.

Pros

They walk their talk about life/work balance. They care about the customer. They provide excellent training, good benefits and nice perks in terms of employee discounts. Their products are really good although a bit on the expensive side.

Cons

Like any retail job you are dealing with the public. You have to like interacting and helping people. Retail anywhere is hard to find a living wage unless you stay at one place for a super long time. The economy affects retail businesses a lot. Even though it seems as if there are always people who want to have fun outdoors, they need to be employed to buy products.

Pros

Mostly super cool co-workers Pro Deals are awesome

Cons

Literally everything else. REI has created this mirage surrounding its incredible culture. The reality is that you will spend all of your time competing with your co-workers for hours and growth opportunities. You will be overseen by a management team that puts absolutely zero value into anything other than your ability to sell memberships. In my store we literally have a racist employee who profiles all the customers and he still gets more hours and acknowledgement from management than far more deserving employees, and it's because he sells tons of memberships. Priorities in this company are completely off the rails.

Pros

You get 30% off everything in the store and 50% off REI products.

Cons

The people there were hard to get to know. I felt like I didn’t belong most of the time and it was hard being myself in that environment. The retail manager also didn’t observe us that often and took feedback from other employees and didn’t see what was actually going on.

Pros

For starters, REI provides and extensive and ongoing training program that educates you on products and customer service. Plus manangment is always available for questions and guidance. I would say that 80% of the customers who came into the store were buying gear for a trip so it was very interesting to find out where they were going and how I could help them.

Cons

Spending time on my feet on hard, concrete floors

Pros

Staff tends to be great. People that come and work for REI have experience in the field… there’s room to improve and learn new skills. From clothing, equipment materials and construction of diverse items the store sell. Perks that come with the benefit of multiple vendors that enjoy and promote a life outdoors.

Cons

Pay is not great. Tends to be slightly above minimum wage for their own state. Definitely you work in REI because you love what you do, not because of the career.

Pros

Some co workers are just awesome humans! Pro deals are pretty neat. The employee store is fun!

Cons

Every manager is metric driven, don’t waste your time asking them what the metrics mean, how they are calculated or metric improvement….. Their stake in the metrics is summit payments which translates to harping supervisors to exploit their associates so management can get the biggest summit payout. Pay structure and incentives are heavily invested in senior management and network management and boy are they so not in touch with reality they truly believes buying an associate a cookies is a job well done! How about coming out of your ivory towering and answering difficult questions versus making sure your car batteries are charged. My favorite part is when network leadership creates a new pointless report and the direct waddles out to the production floor and tries to explain, lol! The culture, oh wait there isn’t one. HR is the worst, depending on their mood, how made they are at their spouse the same situation will be handled differently. Our policies are one huge grey book open for terrible interpretation by a power hungry person that is very mean.

Pros

Great paid training, good retention, decent work culture and sick leave policies, easy resources to keep customers happy, supportive management.

Cons

Customer service sucks, you’ll get yelled at in your own home, but your managers support setting boundaries with bullies. It doesn’t pay enough for the stress or keep up with living wage expectations despite the rhetoric around work/life balance. Perks only go so far when you’re living on a barely surviving wage. All work and time is recorded and quantified in a system that you’ll be nitpicked about and criticized for in meetings with supervisors.