OfficeMax Reviews in Chicago, IL Area

Pros

Management was great and it was a good working atmosphere. The company is very forward thinking and my team was very family oriented and very supporitive. I really enjoyed coming to work every morning.

Cons

Outside of day to day operations I'm not sure how OfficeMax will stand up aainst the competition which made it a little unnerving while working there.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep searching for innovative ways to gain new customers and keep old ones so that your employees' mines are more at ease.

Pros

Summer hours and work from home 1 day a week.
Domestic Partner benefits.

Cons

Manager with terrible leadership skills and poisonous style is allowed to continue in same role.

Advice to Senior Management

How many employees have to quit or ask to be transferred out of the same department before a director is removed? Apparently more than half a dozen is not the threshold. Ridiculous.

Pros

Decent flextime. Nice surroundings. Co-workers very professional and usually highly skilled. Location away from downtown Chicago is easy to get to.

Cons

Management doesn't want to get involved with any of the actual work. Programmers are given no requirements or leadership. Programmers are also very low in social class, not surprising since the company is sales driven. Highly bureaucratic.

Advice to Senior Management

Get involved. Be able to at least describe what your employees are working on. Recognize and reward accomplishment.

Pros

This company has a lot of good people.

Cons

The company is slowly shrinking.

Advice to Senior Management

Value your employees.

Pros

Solid personnel in mid management levels. Forward thinking in private label development, branding, business services. Comfortable working spaces. Good cafeteria. Competitive pay & benefits.

Cons

Changing leadership = changing priorities. Lots of consultants over the years without a lot of tangible results. Slow moving I.T., Business Development and eCommerce departments. Process focus can choke creativity. Little tolerance for risk taking. Not enough resources to execute plans.

Advice to Senior Management

Let mid-level management drive change. Allow creativity & risk taking to become part of the culture. Recognize & reward internal expertise. Add personnel where gaps exist. Break out of silos.

Pros

Lots of nice people to work with

Cons

The culture within each department could be very different. Make sure you join the department with good culture.

Pros

Decent pay, some very good people and generally pretty lenient.

Cons

Job #1 is CYA - if there is a chance to throw someone under the bus it is taken every time.
Decisions seem to be made based on how it will make much work is involved for the decision maker and how it will make them look rather than the benefit to the organization.
People aren't generally held accountable.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't assume that the first thing you hear is correct - listen to people. And if you start seeing a pattern start holding people accountable.

Pros

time off when you need it; you can get a good "spiff" (commission) for warranties, and the warranties really work! cool people, management listen

Cons

I feel that management should watch closely to the associates who just slide by. why should everyone have to work their butt off when someone else can slack??

Advice to Senior Management

watch your employees! take advice from them! we work with the policies you implement, you should take time to listen to our feedback

Pros

It's a great place to start if you are looking for an entry level management position (specialist). You are part of the management team and you do get management responsibilities. The company does give you the tools to succeed. Communication is clear and concise. It's easy to move up from the specialist position to an assistant store manager when an opportunity presents itself. The management staff is great as with my employees. Good work is usually recognized.

Cons

Like many have mentioned on glassdoor the specialist are underpaid. Even with the incentives, such as selling max assurances and sprint phones, it is still not enough. We are essentially an assistant manager but roughly half the pay. An average specialist may make $10-13/hr. We are responsible for sales numbers, management on duties responsibilities , being the sales associate, keeping up with planograms, and sometimes opening and closing by ourselves. Sometimes due to payroll crunch, we are stuck being the sales associate and being the manager on duty.It can be a stressful job especially if store is struggling in sales.

Advice to Senior Management

Company needs to compensate the associates and specialists a lot better.It's hard to recruit top tier talent when the compensation is a joke. They need to consider retooling the specialist position. Maybe bring back a 3rd salary position and get rid of one specialist position. That position can be in charge of logistics and sales. This will allow fair compensation for the workload. There shouldn't be a need for 2 hourly specialist.

Pros

Good benefits. Full medical, dental, vision. Starting your second year you will receive around two weeks of paid vacation. My boss is very respectful with me. He is very flexible with day off requests. Our staff gets along well. I enjoy interacting with customers all day. We have a respectable customer base near our location. There are promotion opportunities.

Cons

Specialists and associates are greatly underpaid. Pay is started off low with limited raise opportunities. Specialists are expected to know sales number/sales report, clean, stock the store, task other associates, manage the building by themselves on nights and weekends. The expectations of a specialist isn't out of hand but it is too high for the low pay/incentives.

Advice to Senior Management

Appreciate your underpaid workers. In my experience, specialists do as much if not more than the assistant store managers while receiving half the pay (this may not be the case at all locations). If you want to keep good workers you need to pay and reward them. I understand District managers are pressured to keep payroll undercontrol and it rolls down to store managers. As a manager you should understand that it is hard to live on $10 an hour.