Office Depot Reviews

There is WAY TOO MUCH micromanaging going on in the company right now. When working on the morning freight, we have to call out every two minutes on our progress with the freight. Freight must also be done in an exact procedure. If you walk an item to the other end of the aisle, you WILL get yelled at. Instead, you must wheel the entire cart down the aisle even if it is for only one item. DEPOT (Drop Everything, People Over Tasks) Time is absolutely ridiculous. Customers are important, and they should be the focus of the business. However, it is not always busy during DEPOT Time, which is from 12 pm to 4 pm. More often than not, associates are standing around doing nothing, because there is no tasking allowed between those hours. I am also a technology associate, and nothing bothers me more than when I have to tell a customer that I can "absolutely fix their computer, however I am not allowed to work on your computer until after 4 pm." If it is really supposed to be People Over Tasking, then we should be allowed to provide the computer services FOR THE CUSTOMER. This new ISCE Program is an absolute joke. Every customer must be called out over the radio every few minutes. It is like we are stalking the customers. Several customers have told me that they feel like they are treated as more of a statistic than a customer. We have to count every single customer that comes into the store, and compare that number to the total number of register transactions to obtain our "conversion rate". If a customer comes into the store and does not make a purchase, the management becomes irate. There is a huge pressure to sell a customer several items, even if they do not need the item. For example, a customer might not need Microsoft Office to go with their new computer, but I will get my ass reamed if a customer does not purchase the additional software. The creepiest part of the new program is the fact that corporate managers, as well as other store managers will randomly sit in their cars in the parking lot for hours at a time doing nothing but listening to the associates in the store communicating over the radio. This is a new corporate policy. As an employee, I feel like I am expendable and not valued. Multiple times per week we are reminded how easily we can be replaced. "If you are unable to attend the training this week, you will not work here next week." "If you do not greet customers by asking them what brings them in to Office Depot, you will not work here." I feel like the company would rather have a puppet or a robot than an actual person working for their company.

There is no transparency on our attainment for bonus. It is obviously manipulated at upper managements discretion. From the VP down they have the attitude of "If you don't like it, find another job". It is ridiculous how they expect morale and energy from the sales force yet everything they do kills morale. They allow almost no SPIFF's and offer virtually no monetary motivation to sell more, they seem to prefer to threaten and demand rather than create a results oriented culture. I find it humorous that they post the OD "values" on the walls but all they do is make a mockery of them. Integrity, laughable. Accountability, only for the sales people. Innovation, well we do have Salesprism.... LOL. Teamwork, sales people work together because the managers are worthless. Respect, yes, a total lack of it.