FedEx Office Reviews

Pros

Good people, good learning experience, benefits. If you have good co workers then your experience will be better, if not you're up the river without a paddle.

Cons

Stress. Customers don't take no for an answer and want everything done now. Little to no praise from upper management and little room for advancement.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop implementing changes before we have the kinks worked out, when our software can't even work half of the time, it makes us look unprofessional.

Pros

Pros?

- You will learn (if you have not already) how to sink or swim when it comes to dealing with nasty, impatient, disrespectful customers who treat their cell phones like additional limbs.

- You will get a lot of experience (if you jump right in) in high-level multi-tasking.

- Depending upon your tech familiarity when you come in, you might also gain some knowledge about office and print equipment -- if you hound co-workers with questions.

- The benefits package is decent. Tuition reimbursement, health care, dental -- all the standard stuff you should expect. You do get an employee discount, which is better for the shipping end of things than the print products.

Cons

There are a lot of cons to working at FedEx Office.

1.) No scheduled lunch. Often, no lunch at all. Stores tend to be chronically under-staffed, and so when you ask for a lunch (which you will have to ask for every day), it tends to be looked down on. You are expected to rush through your lunch and get back to work as soon as possible. Management, of course, gets lunch every day.

2.) You will have to stand on your feet for 8+ hours, depending upon your shift. There is a no sitting down policy. Even if there are no customers in the store, you are expected to stand. Management, of course, gets to sit down.

3.) The training is abysmal. If you want to learn -anything-, you have to hound over-worked co-workers for training opportunities. A lot of co-workers are miserable and impatient, and don't really have time to teach new employees. Management couldn't train if it wanted to, because management tends to know zilch about actual day-to-day operations. I had a manager who had worked there 5+ years and still didn't know how to mount a poster. Pathetic.

4.) The customers are given free reign. Even if you have a dozen huge orders due soon, if a customer comes in and says, "Give me 1,000 color booklets" in X hours, you HAVE to accomodate the customer's request or else be "disciplined" by management. Even if you follow written FedEx policy, and the customer is unhappy, you WILL get a "talking-to" by management. The customer is always right at FedEx Office in the worst possible way. This breeds an "employee vs. customer" atmosphere, where the employees end up not wanting to help customers at all because they are bitter from very poor management.

5.) You will have co-workers who don't do work. They charge their cell phones in the shipping closet, take at least 10 bathroom breaks a day, disappear when customers come in, go on Facebook, etc. As long as hardworking employees pick up the slack, management doesn't do anything about the bad employees. Management doesn't care about employees -- it cares about "the store" and performance. So if Rosa does all the work, and Sal and Hank do nothing, but everything still gets done, management won't say anything to Sal and Hank. If Rosa complains, Rosa is viewed as having poor relationships with co-workers.

6.) So much gossip and co-worker cattiness it's unbelievable. You can't tell anything to anyone without it getting around.

I could go on, honestly, but you get the idea. FedEx Office is a terrible place to work, from my experience. I would only work there if you -absolutely- need the job, which is the position I was in. Once in, though, never stop looking for another job. Get out as quickly as possible, because it will drain you.

ADVICE TO NEW EMPLOYEES:
1.) Be assertive. If management asks you to stay late, or work days you normally don't, and you feel obligated... guess what? DO NOT FEEL OBLIGATED. Say no and stick to it.
2.) Stay out of the gossip. Anyone who talks about someone else to you, will talk about you to someone else. It's better to just stay out of it altogether.
3.) IF you want a promotion, take ownership of your training, because the training won't come to you. Also, take ownership of your promotion. Be assertive and ask for it.
4.) Ask for your lunch break! It is your right. Don't let them bully and guilt you about taking it.
5.) If you have a problem, and management doesn't do anything, write HR. I found that HR would get things done that management wouldn't, but every district is different.
6.) Ask for more money after their initial offer, because they will offer you the lowest rate, hoping to get away with it.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn how to do things in your store. Treat your employees how you treat yourself. If you get lunch every day, let them get lunch every day. Spend time on the floor. Don't nitpick. If an employee isn't working, but others are working hard, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Don't try to get away with paying people lower than what they're worth, because they will be unhappy, work less, and move on to greener pastures.

Pros

Flexible with school and personal life.

Cons

Overall bad management!! There is no chance for growth/advancement if you work inside a "shipping center". Apply for "print center". If you get stuck working at a "shipping center", then get ready to take printing orders even though you don't know what you're doing, since all you really do all day is just shipping. Management does not care to listen to your innovative ideas on increasing revenues. Management can be very impersonal to employees and they tend to just focus on the negatives never the positives of the store.

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of the "shipping centers"!!! They just confuse and irritate customers!!! They also are meaningless to keep, since they don't provide the full printing services to customers and they are a terrible facility to properly train "shipping specialists" in the printing services. Also, "Printing" managers don't know anything about shipping and have no business running "shipping centers"!!! YOU CAN'T ADVERTISE PRINTING SERVICES OUT OF A "SHIPPING CENTER", SINCE ALL THEY HAVE IS A COPY MACHINE, FAX MACHINE, AND LAMANATOR!!! IT'S CALLED FALSE ADVERTISEMENT!!!

Pros

FedEx Office has good benefits and relatively straightforward daily routine. The products that we offer are popular and the general public appreciates what we do for them.

Cons

FedEx Office is not a place to work if you're creative or entrepeneurial. You are expected to follow every procedure without exception and you will be audited regularly for compliance (that's a favorite word around here). You spend more time ensuring that you're prepared for audits that driving business. And even when you beat your sales plan significantly, if you're not also doing well in whatever promotion is current you're on a "list' for poor execution.

As for bonuses, they can be up to $3000 per quarter. The only problem is that its structured such that even if your Center meets the criteria, there is still a District profitiblity gate that must be met. So no matter how well you've executed during the quarter, you're dependent on the District results. And that means likely you're out of the running for a bonus.

Finally, even though they hire managers with varying degrees of experience, they don't allow them to use their knowledge and experience. You don't have the ability to hire for open positions without Managing Director approval, your DM has final say on your hiring, and you have very little discretion when it comes to running your Center.

Advice to Senior Management

FedEx Office has an outstanding product and potential to own their market (which they should). But inspiration, trust, and positive support are simply non-existent. Until there is Senior leadership that can set a vision and then get out of the way, we'll never reach our true potential.

Pros

Not stuck at a desk
the work is fun your making posters and signs it's not boring
There's a lot to learn about printing
part time gets great benefits
very stable job

Cons

pay not good starting out

Advice to Senior Management

focus the training not just on customer service skills but technical skills with using the equipment. Make the trainings half customer service half technical abilites that will make employees well rounded.

Pros

Great pay, benefits, and team environment.

Cons

Waiting for a promotional job can take years.

Advice to Senior Management

provide significant raises if an oppurtunity for promotion is unavalack unavailable due to lack of openings.

Pros

The people are sometimes nice, depending in where you work, you can form a bond with co-workers. Good benefits, ok pay,

Cons

Extremely little yearly raises, ( I'm talking 15 cent raise) , impossible to get a bonus, senior management does not seem to care about employees at all. Constant ridiculous changes on a monthly basis. Make 1 mistake and they're ready to cut your head off

Advice to Senior Management

Give better salaries and better raises, and employees will work harder to achieve your ridiculous demands

Pros

Benefits. 401k, health insurance after 90 days, tuition reimbursement, paid vacation, sick days, and a generally flexible schedule.

Cons

Depending on your manager, it could be hell. They often expect the world from you. There's a lot of favoritism shown toward those that the managers like. Your job is to know everything about the store; from Shipping, to Copying, to some Tech Support, to Graphic Design. And, even if you know how to do it all, you're not compensated properly. Your education is useless if you're overqualified for the job as well--you get the same pay no matter what. It's near impossible to move up. And the yearly raises are generally in the form of cents, which will just cover the rate of inflation.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire from within. Give better raises. Listen to your employees. I understand that numbers are important, but when the motto is "People. Service. Profit" then you should remember that the employees are people too, and should be treated as such. We are not drones.

Pros

Pay and Benefits were great as a senior project coordinator I was making about 13.00 an hour.
Regular customers were always great
Maintenance was well maintained on the production copiers, it was 'ok' on the express copiers

Cons

Management incompetence was at an all time high when I left. My management of production, before she was fired, was an outside hire and had NO idea what she was doing. Management later became a horrible experience.
Very little advancement opportunities unless you kiss a lot of butt.
Sometimes we worked late except we were forced to clock out. The work needed to be finished but because of the cutbacks and economy we couldn't be compensated for it.

Advice to Senior Management

You know what you need to do. The changes that need to be made. Communication needs to open up more and it shouldn't matter how much ass is kissed, the employees picked for advancement should DESERVE it.

Pros

Promotional opportunities, competitive pay, great benefits, good training.

Cons

New COO seems to have one purpose in life - to make center visits a miserable, anxious and demotivating experience. In the old days our teams were so excited to receive a visit from the top people, now they dread it. The People aspect of the company philosophy no longer exists.. people are now a disposable commodity, and its hurting morale. We will hire extenal candidates at much higher salaries that we will give to experienced staff within the organization.. there i sno logic to this process, but still we adhere to it. members

Advice to Senior Management

Remember that the team, the managers, the DMs and the MDs are working incredibly hard, and trying to keep up with the knee-jerk changes you constantly impose.. stop being so quick to attack when your arbitrary changes dont happen overnight. We get no explanation to why they are inmposed, or how to deal with them - the so-called management have a "Just do it" phililosophy.