Office Depot Employee Review

I worked at Office Depot

Pros – They offer tuition reimbursement for full time/part time employees which is a plus, and Assistant Managers on down can earn commission. If you find the right management team you can easily put a few years under your belt and hopefully score a small raise or to. Flexibility in scheduling is a great perk - there are usually anything from overnight shifts, typical 9-5 or afternoon closing shifts, so errands can be run or school attended around work time. The company offers lateral transfer to other divisions, and since the company is still large, you can move around to higher paying positions if you play the corporate game right and navigate through the usual politics (like Warehouse Operations Managers or Business Development Managers, both $80K positions). A decent career choice if you can avoid all the riff raff of mediocre management; someone with enough initiative and hustle will fair pretty well. Management is they way to go if you want to build your resume. I've hired plenty of students who want experience and I usually took care of the hard workers in general; so if you're in this boat OD should suffice.

Cons – Senior management is very disorganized, lacks divisional communication, and is out of touch with the goings-on in the stores, from the Regional Managers and HR Managers to the District Managers. The HR managers are gender biased, and prefer to promote more females for 'diversity' but are adversely impacting males in a vauge attempt to 'level the playing field', which exposes them to litigation. Loss Prevention District Managers seem to be the most supportive and hardest working, but even they are subjected to the cut backs and are always at odds with District/Regional Managers. Too many failed programs and projects like 'project pearl' and 'streamline' that don't have a chance at success without proper staffing. Cut backs are at an all time high, with bare bones crews in stores. Most stores I've worked at have at any time 2-3 people on staff max at any given time. Back in 2005 a store that had 700 employee hours now is budgeted with <500 but are expected to do more with less (many more projects and higher sales goals). Usually 1 manager and 2 associates, both of which are on register and the other at the front door as the 'x-pert' (another failed program). District Managers do not support, at least in the LA/San Gabriel Valley area, they micro manage and ask stores to report sales by the hour and call up managers to chew them out if warranty sales aren't at their unrealistic goals.

The company seems to promote not on skills, abilities or education, but who ever kisses up the most to the District Manager or Regional Manager (retail politics at its finest). Managers get promoted from stores that produce lack luster results. The Store Management training program is a failure at best, and is only there to give the appearance of any sort of real 'career' development. They tend to hire managers who don't really understand the business - anywhere from Wal Mart, Toys R' Us or Lowes - but don't get me wrong, those are great companies and all. But just because they were a 'manager' somewhere else and failed miserably at it, doesn't mean they will come to OD and work wonders all of a sudden. The only real way I've seen people get promoted over the years are if you leave the company and return at a higher salary/position. A real downside for the honest, career minded person but rewards the back stabbers and the negligent.

Advice to Senior Management – It starts at the top. Whenever one of my stores had a sales and profit gain was when supplies sales were up. Suppiles are the highest margin items so that needs to be the focus. When Odland came aboard, soon the focus was cost cutting, putting impulse items in crates, or bulk stacks in aisles and clutter on the register counters. This isn't Autozone; focusing efforts on these initivatives are counterintuitive when the bread and butter comes from the basics - selling supplies. When my supply shelves are fully stocked, sales are up, plain and simple. Also less needs to be focused on zero-to-low margin technology items. The only way to make a profit on technology is to sell overpriced accessories and warranties on big ticket items like Circuit City/Best Buy; but OD is investing too much real estate and store hours on technology.

Also the endless string of failed program after program is hurting morale and driving away top talent. Clearance events with huge markdowns on items stacked on tables in front of stores looks swapmeet-ish and kills profit margin. There is simply not enought traffic in the stores, so the volume is not there to support such a program successfully. Also having employees stand in front of the store to greet customers is a waste of resources when that person can be selling. The dollars that were 'predicted' to be saved by salvaging walking customers will wash with the decreased traffic and clearance markdowns, so focus the hours on service and selling. I even had one District Manager tell me that even if I had only 2 people on staff, that one better be on register and the other at the front door. Are you kidding me?

Cut backs are disguized as 'going green' like having no lights at closing and in the pre-opening hours with employees working in the dark. Also trash pick ups are cut to twice a month. Along with reduced staff, hiring associates at no more than minimum wage (not very competitive), restructuring the bonus program (now it is literally impossible to bonus), and cutting every nook and cranny with no forethought is what is also killing the company. That money isn't going to giving more hours to better staff the stores, so where is it? A lot of tenured management has left the company over the last few years. Also by hiring people at lower salaries and forcing out some of the more experienced employees and management won't increase service levels. This is similar to what Circuit City tried and it failed.

So unless Senior Executives at the Corp Office wake up and change things, expect things to get worse and worse. Back in 2005 OD stock was at $18, and Odland's cost cutting brought the stock up to over $50+ a share. But now with stock at <$2 a share, there is nothing left to cut. These cuts were not sustainable, and the failed initiatives killed OD's once viable competitive advantage because they were too short term. OD once planned on opening 50 stores a year, but now what's next, store closings? Looks like Odland took a chapter out of Circuit City's book of failure. But the next chapter for OD is Chapter 11. I feel sorry for the hard working, honest people still there, and OD will always be behind Staples unless things change, and change for the better.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend