I would *not* recommend taking a part-time role at a Trek store.
-I was underpaid even at the top of the payscale for my role. Rivals like REI pay more.
-Management is incentivised to limit your hours as much as possible as they are judged on a metric that pits sales against hours worked. At the same time, they expect engagement, commitment and loyalty! This is what really got me. So you're paying me minimum wage and constantly cutting my hours, but you want me not to take a couple days off?!
-Corporate culture fosters more of a competitive than a collaborative atmosphere between employees, with little to no opportunity for training or mentoring other than what's available through Trek U.
-Only one person I met at the two stores I worked at really rode or liked riding. No group rides were run out of either store. And how can you like bikes if you're looking at sh*tty spreadsheets and targets all day?
-Neither store I worked at had a Service Manager when I was there. The Trek service model, with a 'Production Tech' who sits in the back working on bikes, just doesn't work efficiently without a Service Manager who can be present five days a week and be a boss for the tech. My store manager didn't know service, which made it even worse.
-For some reason everything is done through Outlook and there are no group chats. It's dumb,
-The kind of part-time role I was in would really suit either (a) a high-schooler who doesn't need money but likes bikes or (b) a retiree who knows bikes and is looking for a way to monetise spare time. For everyone else, it's simply not a viable or sensible way to make a living. Even the junior roles require quite a lot of expertise that Trek just doesn't make it worth your while to gain. I milked the employee discounts for all they were worth, but it still didn't make sense in the end. I'm glad I'm out.
Note: I would warn people off the SoMa store in particular. It's not making money and probably set to close. Management is out of its depth and not coping. It's a grim place to work.
