Columbia Sportswear reviews

Could go on for hours.... personally was incredibly frustrated at the lack of trust across the levels, lack of investment in areas of growth and development, lack of transparency, lack of accountability, lack of action where it would have mattered (eg managing people out)... I left before the c suite changes began so things may be different now but if you had asked me a year ago where I thought the company was going I would have said it represents everything that’s wrong with retail today - slow-moving and resistant to change, for instance in undervaluing its direct business, which is the only area that had scale. Wouldn’t recommend to a friend unless they wanted a place to mentally check out at the end of their career.

Literally everything. Terrible Hours = They will schedule you all over the place, one week you might have 29 hours, the next week you'll get 5. One week you'll have three days off, the next you'll have one. There is ZERO work life balance, they just schedule you like it's pulling numbers out of a hat, they don't care about your needs and requests...if you need a day off or time to handle something, you have to let them know 3 weeks in advance...that's not for a vacation, that's just for a regular day off request. They have ABSURD and inhuman policies that humiliate you and treat you like a worker ant with no say so in anything. They actually check bags of employees and treat you like a criminal when all you're doing is coming in to work. If you bring in a lunchbox and put it in the employee fridge, they will check your lunchbox on the way out...that is so rude and so unfair that it's just stomach wrenching. These are your employees! Not thieves! The biggest con is the management...it doesn't exist. The store managers just live in their own fantasy world, they don't know or care what's going on anywhere, they don't follow the rules they preach to employees, and they don't train. Literally...No training program. They hire new people and just throw them on the floor and expect them to know everything, their first day. There is no process or program to training, there are no checklists or achievements in training, you just walk on the sales floor and try to look like you know what you're doing. People will ask you questions and demand things but you won't know what to say because you haven't been trained in anything! The managers at these stores are clueless and have ZERO people skills. The entire atmosphere of these stores is just dry, drab, dull, and lifeless...nobody working at a columbia store is happy, they are all upset and frowning and not happy to be there. The managers are unhappy and shiftless, the workers don't like it, the entire thing is just sad...you'll find more cheer working at a mortuary, seriously. The corporate stuffiness is truly outrageous...from employee bag checks, to name tags, to a pesky little checklist for EVERYTHING, from the absurd month-in-advance time off requests, and the scattered, unpredictable schedules...it's just bad. What can you say really? It's a clothing store for middle aged boring people. Boring clothes and boring jackets for boring middle aged people...how exciting and thrilling can you really be? How do you sell something so boring and uninteresting without being bored and lifeless yourself? There are bad, boring retail jobs...then there's columbia. Yikes.