Pros
REI gives great gear discounts, generally has a fun and like-minded staff, is great about transferring to other stores if you move out of state, is good with their environmental stewardship, and has decent pay (compared to other retailers.) In the right market, it was one of the best jobs I ever had.
Cons
The quality of all of the pros for this job are completely dependent on the store or market you work in. I worked in three stores in two markets (the West and Midwest) over the course of six years. I LOVED working for this company in the Western market. Really loved it. So much so that I had decided that I wanted to pursue a long-term career with the company. All of the employees hung out, I went out for the occasional drink or bite to eat with my managers and co-workers (without the entire store being invited as formal function), at work, we worked as a team, and we all just had fun together. Work hard, play hard. When I moved I transferred to the Midwest market. Honestly, it completely ruined my interest in the company. The corporate culture was completely different. The managers were on the mean side, it was frowned on for any of the management team to do anything outside of work (that wasn't a company function) with anybody of a "lesser" position than them, tons of favorites (who were the ones that got hours), ASMs and SM would completely undermine the Supervisors, and every day we got basically yelled at because we were low in memberships and told that if we didn't have high membership sales we wouldn't get hours (this happened even on days where we were supposed to be working stock shifts.) And even though we were supposed to have a "confidential" phone number we could call about these problems, the minute anybody called, the managers knew who it was (because the HR person would tell them details, of course) and shortly after the person who called either got fired or was so under the gun they quit. It got to be so miserable I gave up on a career and left the company.