REI’s made some headlines recently by deciding to opt out of Black Friday, choosing instead to pay their employees to take a day off and work off the Thanksgiving coma they had no doubt fallen into. With that kind of publicity, it should have been the perfect time for the company’s CEO to get on Reddit and do an AMA, right? Wrong! Instead of making friends and inspiring others to join the co-op, Jerry Stritzke actually got told off by former employees who had a horrible experience working for the company.
Indefinitely Wild reports that the AMA started out okay, with fun questions about REI products and what Stritzke would choose if he had to battle someone in the store on Black Friday. But then the conversation took an unexpected turn when former employees started getting real about REI’s allegedly draconian policies when it came to selling memberships.
Here’s an excerpt from the most upvoted comment on the AMA, which Stritzke didn’t respond to for a very long time:
Over the course of a year, I received top marks in my check ins, was eventually cross trained in every department, helped out with inventory preparations, stayed overnight to assist with store moves, and trained new batches employees in multiple departments. For a brief time my membership sales stagnated, but my quality of service and product knowledge continued to excel. It was like somebody flipped a switch. I was denied a promotion because I did not sell enough memberships. I had my hours cut from 30 hours a week to less than 10 because I did not sell enough memberships. Additionally, I was not allowed to pick up shifts from people that didn’t want to work because I did not sell enough memberships. Similar things happened to some of my most authentically qualified co-workers as well. Finally, after moving across the country with the assurance of a transfer, I was told by the store in the new city that I did not sell enough memberships and therefore they did not have any room on the payroll for me. I was not even given the courtesy of an interview with the store to assess any of my other skills, just a brief email wishing me good luck. I lost my health insurance, a source of much needed income, and any potential co-worker friends in a new city where I knew no one. It seems that management would rather take on the expense of hiring and training someone new than risk a lower membership conversion rate from a reliable and cross-trained employee. I liked my job and hope this is an isolated incident, but my experience involves two stores of very different sizes in two very different cities.
And it just kept rolling downhill from there. Other former employees chimed in, letting the poster know that they weren’t alone and sharing their own stories of being steamrolled by the company. Here’s another popular comment, posted in direct response to the one above:
Former employee here and can confirm this. How many memberships you sell is the ONLY metric by which you will ultimately be measured. Product knowledge, customer service skills, overall work ethic are worth ZERO if you are not selling x number of memberships per shift, (which was spelled out very clearly by management on a regular basis, including being told that any customer complaints about an employee being overly aggressive in trying to promote the membership would result in said employee being rewarded in terms of scheduling/perks) and if you are placed in a department with less than optimal customer facing time it will not be factored in. Just hope that you get some shifts working the registers as opposed to cleaning out the changing rooms or else you’re likely to be sacked, regardless of how much positive feedback you get from management. As an outdoorsy person with a successful retail management background, working at REI, which regularly makes the top 20 “Best Places to Work” was one of the most profoundly disappointing experiences of my life.
Sounds like all the prospective employees and good will Stritzke might have been hoping to gain from this AMA went up in smoke as more and more people paid attention to the horror stories and not Stritzke’s answers to the more fun questions he was asked. One former employee even went so far as to question the store’s motives for closing on Black Friday.
REI corporate looks forward to Black Friday each year. There is intentional efforts across the company to get ready for Black Friday because it puts the company from the red to the black. The old notion was that Black Friday and the holiday season would always put REI in the black. Each year, priorities shift, teams change focus, and corporate begins working with customer service, brands, and in-stores to make sure everything is ready for the holiday push. So, when REI announced this, I felt it was because they can’t afford to invest in loading up on inventory, paying for extra employees, and making a big marketing push to justify staying open this year. Yet, they found a way to spin it publicly in a very different way. I’m calling bullshit on this entire effort.
Dang!
If one good thing did come out of this, though, it’s that Stritzke has vowed to address the issues these former employees are bringing up. And he even responded to the original negative comment, apologizing for not replying to the post as quickly as he should have and agreeing that the company may have lost sight of “the bigger picture.”
Will this bring about change for current employees? No telling yet, but at least the public is aware of what’s going on at REI this holiday season.
(Via Indefinitely Wild)