untrained and drama-loving management
Pros
Discounts especially prodeals (buying directly from companies with a massive discount). The sales associates are usually pretty awesome people who love the outdoors and want to help.
Cons
Terrible management, subpar pay, lack of training, and a fake positive culture. REI used to be a great company to work for. In fact, if I was filling this out 5 years ago it would be a completely different review. These days, my wife and all of our family and friends refuse to step foot into the place for a couple of reasons. *clears throat* First things first, Management is terrible. I'm not sure when it happened but REI started rewarding drama-loving untrained children with management positions. As you can imagine this has developed management teams that will step on quite literally anyone to make an extra dollar an hour (I know they make a salary, I'm just making a point) and these children are usually the least "outdoorsy" people in the entire building. meaning they know the least about how to use a product or what is best for the customer. Management teams are so obsessed with making their next step in management that they will stomp on you or me or their grandparents or even a puppy to get there. it is what happens when you try to make a nature-loving community into a massive organization. The people who don't care about power don't pursue it, and the people who crave power abuse it. I worked at REI for almost 10 years before I left so take some advice if you want it. Make friends with the associates most of them are awesome people but stay away from management they are not your friends no matter how much they fake it. just trust me. The second thing is membership sales. Don't get me wrong if you shop at rei you should be a member it is very worth it. But selling people multiple memberships is stupid and goes against the very core of why the co-op exists. think about it like this, managers are scored by corporate on their "Conversion rate" essentially how many transactions happened that you convert a non-member into a member. which sounds great right. But this is when big business and algorithms get a little funky. Take salt lake city a relatively small city with one of the largest reis in the country. what happens when your market is saturated with members? Well if you are a power-hungry manager that wants to look good on paper you start telling your associates to sell multiple memberships to people. At this point, you lose credibility with the outdoor community. which is what's happening to REI in the outdoorsy states. The longer I worked there the more I noticed that I stopped seeing the pros come in the store and then my friends and now lowly ole me. I would rather spend an extra three bucks and not get a dividend than try to be sold something I don't need.