REI reviews

This company has changed so much from when I started working for them nine years ago. They no longer provide benefits such as health insurance for part timers, employees no longer get first pick of returned items, and "Work/Life Balance" is no longer a touted REI ethic. They used to provide great training that translated into great customer satisfaction but now the only training you will get is on how to sell memberships. And you'd better sell memberships or you will not get hours. Most people who were trained under the old REI are gone now, they were being paid more than REI wants to pay so they either left or were fired for one thin reason or another. If you take a job in one of their stores you can expect it to be a WalMart kind of experience.

Some managers do not have good interpersonal skills and are very condescending to employees. Hours are based on performance- so if you do not meet your sales goals you aren't getting many hours. Some of the goals are hard to meet. Pressure on employees to sell memberships!- customers hate hearing about ANOTHER membership from ANOTHER store. You have to have availability on both weekend days. Not really balanced. Hard to move up because of favoritism. This is a retailer who returns used crap and has trouble saying NO to customers! There is a lot of abuse of the return policy by customers and if it continues the company is going to face some major financial issues. I returned a USED $1000 kayak from 2007 in 2013. The customer just no longer "needed it." The return was approved by a manager. That was a nice blow in profits for the day....not so smart.