Pros
- Discounts are excellent, often better than employees of company products you can prodeal - low pressure job - great coworkers - customers are a huge step above Walmart customers - excellent health benefits for 20 hours average - very minimal politics at retail sales level, corporate - another discussion - customers value your expertise very much so!
Cons
- very low pay - your hours can be cut enough you might find yourself homeless - seems like the longer you work at REI, the less they "like" you, I get the impression that store management doesn't want your advice, your expertise, and would rather you be that $10 an hour beginner employee they hired some time back. - minimal value given to expertise from store management - 2nd Level store management (regional) is a joke, they play numbers games with revenue and budget to get their bonus, everything else discussed seems like they actually don't have an interest in. - Very Poor in-store on going communication to employees. If you happen to work on the day a manager decides to communicate - great! - Off that day, its word of mouth or osmosis. - very hard to get an honest discussion about career with store management - store management seems to be always in a hurry, very little time to listen like you would expect someone in management to do as part of their job. my theory is store management really wants minimal, non-thinking employees, that will just smile and help customers, not challenge the status quo nor ask too many questions. - I would recommend trying REI out, but don't stay too long, you will wear out your welcome.