REI reviews

- Useless, utterly insulting store-level management. Apart from the day-to-day complete lack of leadership, there was all manner of corporate double-speak and bureacracies. The real kicker came when a co-worker was accused of stealing. Apparently management had, in their infinite wisdom, decided to put a hidden camera in the stock room(!) to combat huge shrink numbers. They used the footage to fire said co-worker for theft when they saw him "moving things around" in back. Needless to say, "moving things around" was part of the job, and the whole thing just came off as paranoid and nuts. I left soon after that. I heard later the manager got REI's version of 'employee of the year' a few months later. - The pay is pretty terrible. Granted, I haven't worked there in a couple years, but I really doubt it's magically jumped up to the living-wage range. Benefits are available to part-time employees after a certain amount of time, but the health coverage was negligible and I don't think it even included dental. - I had open availability, but had to pick up shifts my co-workers dumped because I only got scheduled for 25 hours a week. Somehow, people with other jobs/kids/school were still scheduled the same hours week after week when they dropped shifts. - Not much room for upward mobility. There are a couple supervisors per store, a store manager and his/her asssitant. If you want decent hours and pay, you'll have to shoot for one of those spots, which will probably involve a transfer.

Hours within a retail store are always going to be difficult to get, especially during slow times of the year. but if you can with REI as a part time job it is excellent. Product quality is going down hill fast. Price are rising even though they are finding cheaper ways to make their products.