Vantaggi
The cool thing about working for REI is that you know you stand by a great company that likes to give back to the community. The second cool thing is that all your coworkers, peers, and even your customers share one common interest: the love for the outdoors. REI sells high quality gear and people are willing to spend the extra money for it. The culture is great - picture a big group of people from young to old who are all suited in their outdoor hiking gear and you can rename them as the 'REI' coworkers. Everyone is mostly laid back, easy to talk to, and have a diverse outdoor background.
Svantaggi
Although the culture and background of REI is awesome, the company seems to have shifted to more a "sell membership" focus. Sell, sell, sell. The quality of your customer service and your skills to maintain the store do not matter when you are evaluated on your "performance". It doesn't matter if you've just helped a customer get fully decked in new outdoor ski gear - if you didn't rope in a membership at the end of the sale, your whole effort in helping the customer get outfitted for the outdoors does not count. Which is what I could consider a really unfortunate con. REI is about bringing stoke to the outdoors and helping people be outfitted correctly for their epic adventures. It's not about pushing on memberships. With the holidays approaching, management will be understanding of penny-pinching customers who don't want to pay extra for membership. They will also understand that shoppers will either already have a membership - thus making it hard to sell a membership to an existing member - or that customers who come in during the holidays are looking for deals - not lifelong commitment to REI. Then, at the end of the big holiday storm, management will ding you on the lack of memberships you weren't able to sell.