Office Depot Reviews in Miami-Fort Lauderdale, FL Area

Pros

Dedicated employees
Strong e-commerce base
Great HQ facility

Cons

Struggling industry
Lack of innovation - follower mentality

Advice to Senior Management

Office Depot is in need of a strategy makeover - the office supplies industry is struggling with intense competition from non-traditional participants (Amazon, WalMart, big box membership clubs). Industry consolidation and differentiation required if this segment is going to survive in the longer term.

Pros

Big company name looks good on my resume!

Cons

Everything is done in the most time consuming way possible
The business decisions made are questionable
They don't invest enough funds into the company & employees....only the top executives benefit
The hours are ridiculous
A lot of so-call accountants that don't know accounting
Team-work is one-sided
Management expectations are not in line with the Company's structure and capabilities

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on keeping jobs in the US!!!

Pros

Benifiets are good and the extra commission money is great. You also get "SPIFF's" for selling furniture and printers when available. Makes for good extra money. Managment play favortisim with other managers when it comes to schedules and raises. Pay rate is decent, hours are horrible and when your there your expected to do double the sales in warranty and service sales as the full time people.

Cons

To much pressure to sell services, warranties and if you dont write up including termination. If your managment or the best selling associate your working 6 days until your numbers are there. Sales leader role take up to much wasted time stand at the door and greet. tough economy people dont want to spend extra money. You will do double the work because corporate wants it one way, ur district manger tells you to do it another way and when a visit comes redo what you did the way corporate wants once they leave change it back to how your district manger wants it.

Advice to Senior Management

sales leader waste of an employee instead of walking the store and helping customers thats what were there for not to be at the door and greet. if we need a security guard then hire one. Managment does not listen. They do what they want, when they want, how they want, and we at the store level have to deal with the bad decisions of management. Office Depot motto is "One step forward Two steps back.

Pros

10% Employee discount at any Office Depot store
Opportunities for telecommuting, if your Manager approves
Great disaster planning and hurricane preparedness

Cons

Salaried employees were expected to work long hours
Contractors had more power than actual employees
Portion of cost for health benefits

Advice to Senior Management

Please don't be afraid to promote from within, there are great employees at Office Depot, but many are overlooked. Newer employees were promoted faster than long time employees which was a blow to morale

Pros

Promote within and can move up quickly
Decent Salary with bonuses
Learn a lot about marketing, sales, direct mail and analytics

Cons

Work long hours
Lots of internal disputes among managers
low turnover leads to less progression
lack of accountability when mistakes are made

Advice to Senior Management

Learn how to work together. Managers fight amongst themselves and expect you to take sides. Departments feel like they are at war. If they could figure out how to work together, it might be a good place to work.

Pros

this job is very flexible, expecially if your a college student. the people are very friendly and very helpful. if you work hard enough you'll make decent money off commision.

Cons

Low Pay!! you do everyones job whether you like it or not. they do not give raises. you get hours based on the effort you put into the store.

Advice to Senior Management

very hard to get a management position unless you've had a considerable amount of experience as a manager. even then you would need to be recommended.

Pros

To survive and pay bills in a job I am confident in doing. Adding more equipment such as new copiers and displays for third party products I don't produce in store.

Cons

There are too many, such as being overwhelmed ONE of ONLY TWO Associates working in the Copy & Print Department earning over $200,000 in sales in 10 mos. just in the Copy & Print department of the store by itself.

Advice to Senior Management

Room to Grow after proving worthy performance.

Pros

- Everybody gives 120% (at least)
- The business generating system (stores) is recognized as top priority
- International company and structures
- Nice colleagues, hands-on managers
- Good infrastructure for PM like conference rooms incl. automatic reservation system (at least at HQ)
- Very conscious about network security, a lot of activity to make the network save AND stable, while providing the proper tools (so that safety is not restricting functionality)

Cons

- Project documentation and quality assurance tasks (like reviews) are easily dropped, which contributes also to the emergencies that are then later again the cause for dropping the prevention measures, and so on.
- Therefore requirements are not always properly documented and communicated (leading to uncertainty among the different sub-teams and to the testers "re-inventing" what to test).
- Not always consequent follow-up on action items.
- Because everybody gives at least 120% to handle the assigned tasks and emergencies, there is not much time left for project coordination, discussion for technical and strategical clarifications and cross-team communication.

Advice to Senior Management

More effort and higher priority for error prevention activities. Define one part of the available resources to continue with regular project activities (especially QA measures) even during emergency situations. At least do not drop proper documentation, reviews and document updates to save the originally planned date at all costs.

Pros

learning, growth and development
ever changing varied work

Cons

extremely long hours
lack of recognition/praise
many crisis management - putting out fires
vision changes constantly
clique esque = fraternity/sorority atmosphere
too much work for 1 person

Advice to Senior Management

learn to help making employees jobs easier to execute

Pros

Company that knows how to survive tough environments. Leadership shares current economic conditions of the company and the nation with it's employees. Office Depot is as concerned with the direction of national ecomonic health as it is about it's own. Steve Odland is a great leader in though ecomomic times.

Cons

Company is lead by emotion and has few people that are experts in the job field. Leadership does not hold associates accountable for sales or poor decisions. Youth and inexperience are making the real decisions that effect the companies bottom line.

Advice to Senior Management

Run the company based on the numbers. Know the numbers and be the leaders. Leave your emotion and spouces opinions at the door. Talk to the customer (Small Business Owner) to plot our direction.