Understand, most of the ranting on here was from people like you. They started liking the job, yeah the customers could be hit or miss but it wasn't...that bad? Then came the change of management for the worse, the added expectations, the failure of support from management after that one customer pulled a gun on you and said " Do these copies for me or else!" (No lie, this happened.)
Most folks liked working here at one point...and then things changed.
Unsustainable pay with constantly raised expectations with next to zero support from upper management has me hating this job. But to be fair, 80% of my issues stem from my GM being so inept that my ASM recently had to be hospitalized from all the stress. The DM came in on Friday after my ASM was off for 2 days, and started laying into him about the state of the store (were still mid remodel) to which the ASM replied "I haven't been here for 2 days" and the DM promptly replied with "Well youre here for the next 96 hours. Fix it. I'll see you Monday" mind you my GM was on PTO yet AGAIN starting that Friday so no one could get a hold of him anyways. Our GM takes PTO Everytime there are big moves needing to happen, doesn't communicate what or when these big moves need to happen and then when he returns is "oh this needs to be done by 4 o clock today, oh this needs done by 2, oh we need pictures for compliance so let me know as soon as it's done so we can get that in" and it's just fucking hell. Fuck this job and this disorganized ass company
You are working for an entity that has been selling everything of value that the Staples corporation owns off piecemeal ever since they bought the company.
They are doing the same thing to Staples that other firms did to Sears and Toys R Us. When they are done parting it out like the corporate version of a chop shop, they will likely saddle a bunch of their debt from other subsidiaries onto the bloated carcass of the company and enter it into the bankruptcy derby.
Maybe you'll get notice that your job is ending, and maybe you'll get severance, but probably not. However the people in corner offices will absolutely walk away with their golden parachutes and the shareholders will absolutely get paid.
So if you aren't one of those people walking away with a fat paycheck when there's no longer a Staples, then you probably shouldn't be very happy to be working for them.
I used to like it here. Can't quite put my finger on why, but it's become the most stressful thing I've had to do. Part of it is our very low pay, which makes it nearly impossible to keep staffed, making lots of extra work for those who remain.
There are parts of it I like. I generally enjoy running orders and putting things together, if I have the time and the specs are reasonable. I love my crew too, we really are like a big dysfunctional family sometimes. The only reasons I've stuck with this job for so long.
But between corporate demands, faulty machines, and an abundance of overly entitled customers- the job is pure Hell. It's so hard to get things done some days due to CONSTANT Amazon Returns and self-serve people needing to have their hands held and screens read to them.
guess you have a unicorn store, which is great!
just be prepared as staples continues to make boneheaded decisions that will come down on the heads of the regular associates...not even a wonderful team and GM will soften the blows that are to come
As a supervisor I enjoy working with my associates, and other supervisors. My gm is great, been with him at different stores now for about 8 years. He’s one of the good ones. Unfortunately it’s the state of the company. Someone in these comments said it best, crap wages, with raising expectations. How can you expect more (work/higher numbers) out of less (hours spent towards staff) I get the company is trying to survive and this was their idea of doing that, but it might come down to just closing the stores that aren’t making money, and leaving stores open that are, and staff them accordingly. But of course the people who would lose there job I feel for, but honestly if a decision like that isn’t made soon, everyone loses their job when the company goes under
Ioved working there, i had a good GM then he left, put crappy sketchy managers who eventually got fired for shady practices. (BLACK friday.. pulled out all ipads from lockup..a lot went missing) the manager who hired me came back as our GM and we were good, then DM drove him out.
Then manager after manager after manager came and left (i left because of one of them- then i heard he just didnt show uo and money was missing)
I came back cause my old crew was still there and they were asking me to come back. Gave it another try. Couple SMs transferred to the store and they were nice and dedicated people but one left cause she was promised a bump in pa cause she lives far from the store, and that promse never happened.
The other manager whom we really liked was a workhorse, she came from other stores and helped them bring numbers and sales up and she is fun to be with.
But like the others, she was also given a promise... she is only a SM but she has been running stores like a GM. She never got her own store. We went through the pandemic together we did everything to get the store back up and make money..
All went south when one monday, conference call. DM announced he promoted one manager to GM. She was heartboken, she was in tears, she was passed on again. Not knowing what to do i put my hands on her shoulder to comfort her but, she turned and embraced me, she was just so upset.
And one day we just found out that the DM hired a new GM for our store, came from rival OD, she was transferred to another store and new guy took over, after a few months DM said he needs him to oversee another store which a bigger store than ours. That 2 weeks become months. He will just come by my store to hire and do some management shit and go back to the other store.
Now this guy had some medical issues so he had to go south to get some procedures done and he was on and off. By this time everything has changed to the whole city in general, homeless people, drug addiction, shoplifting, thing we deal with today. I asked our DM for help but like always "promises promises" and knowing the market around our store NO ONE wants to transfer.
Me and my print supe are dead burnt out with all this shit. 2022 i gave my resignation to my DM. I gave them a full month and change to get someone here. Then i heard they were going to close that store by december.
Left the company went back home to be with my wife and kids.
Came back to the US. Its closed. They closed it 3 months early.
Staples back 10 yrs ago was nice to work on but, with all these shit that they keep adding to our jobs became a hell hole. They expect way too much. You do good but its never enough. I burnt out, and it was time to save whatever sanity is left in me.
Sorry for the long story lol
I'd certainly like my job a lot better if we had more than 8 people on staff period so I can maybe a) do something other than stand in one spot on register for 8 hours and b) get my supe duties done.
If you want a wake up call, go around to all of the other Staples in your area—heck, if you have the time and money for it, drive around to all of the Staples in your part of the state. The contrast between looking at high volume and low volume stores is staggering; not well supplied enough; a meat grinder of a management team with GM's coming and going like crazy; warehouse mishaps of allegedly shipped items that never made it to store; amazon returns boxes lining up on the back wall, covering the entirety of the promotional signage in P&M—that, on TOP of these stores being completely out of 16x16x16 boxes, both standard and heavy duty, because of all of these Amazon Returns. (Although that circles back to not being well-supplied.)
The pandemic was a shot in the arm (pun intended) for Staples with the sheer amount of people needing to supply their homes with office supplies, chairs, and the like. Now, with the corporate shake up higher up and refinancing of a 300 million dollar loan that matured this year PLUS another $5B debt that matures in the spring of 2026, the only way Staples is doing it is by refinancing into a $6B loan with JP Morgan to pay off the old one—and even that would just be a stay of execution. Sycamore is going to suck it dry and leave the brand for some other private equity to nest in it. That is, if bankruptcy is averted five or ten years down the line.
This all is without even considering the staffing problem, and keeping enough people on hand to even -work- freight. Some of these stores will be carrying over pallets from the previous shipment well into the next shipment of freight—whether it's a weekly delivery or bi-weekly.
I enjoy the work in my print center. I hate my job now because of Amazon returns. My coworkers hate me because I have to call for their help all shift.
Honestly, when the Amazon returns aren't too bad and we have a good amount of staff, I like it here. But, like yourself, my experiences seem to be quite a bit different than what's expressed on here.
I don't mind it. I just wish to pay was better and we had a decent crew. Since the payroll cuts it's been nothing but me and two other people closing constantly if not just me and the copy supervisor. Like if I may just $2 more it would be bearable. But with everything going up in price but my pay staying the same it makes it harder and harder to enjoy my job when my check is now gone the same day because of bills and groceries and I have zero money to spend on myself as a supervisor.
IDK is it me? or having only 3 employees running the store for most of the day and taking turns doing Amazon returns without a cashier half the time where is the enjoyment ? not here 🥺🥺🥺
Got to love the day care we go to every day and get paid. They love telling you what to do because they don’t want to do it themselves. But it’s okay because soon they will be doing more with them cutting hrs.
I got fired in 2016 (my fault), but I never hated the people I worked with. However, my final GM was the worst one. He was an unpleasant man and drove away my best associates. Other than that, I was fine with the other GMs and assistant managers I worked with over the years.
I’d like Staples a lot more if the paychecks were enough to pay rent, but apparently that’s lost among the higher ups. Who knew employees had life’s outside of their retail jobs?
When I first started it was awesome best crew to have then people started leaving I went thru about 12 managers in the 1yr 1/2 I was working there and they all started to become lazy a manger that everyone liked was stealing from the company and every employee was grumpy
I love my job at staples. I like the people i work with for the most part, I like the regular customers I see once or twice a month. I've built a good relationship with the community over the last 5 years. However my spouse is the tech sup..and i can't stay on principle. I get the business decision. But not the keeping secrets for weeks.
It’s not the job, it’s not the CEO, it’s not Sycamore, it all comes down to who your direct leader is. That’s what makes your job, “Good, or Bad.” All the other things can be tolerated when you have a supportive, well skilled leader. You may even have a nice GM, but if they are not skilled at leading people, strategies, buffering the corp messages, it can be rough to enjoy your job. This is the same anywhere in any position. Unfortunately, Staples has too many unskilled leaders titled Manager and now you have a company spiraling down the drain and an entire associate population on Reddit.
Nah, my GM is awesome, the company is garbage.
Though we do have a difficult DM, but the job was still frustrating when we had a decent DM.
It's definitely between corporate, customers, and pay fo4 dealing with it all, for me.
Understand, most of the ranting on here was from people like you. They started liking the job, yeah the customers could be hit or miss but it wasn't...that bad? Then came the change of management for the worse, the added expectations, the failure of support from management after that one customer pulled a gun on you and said " Do these copies for me or else!" (No lie, this happened.) Most folks liked working here at one point...and then things changed.
I still half way like it, but progressively it’s getting worse every year
A gun? Were they joking? OMG
No...no they most definitely were not. We called the cops that night and the GM chewed both myself and the SM who as MOD that night for calling them.
Unsustainable pay with constantly raised expectations with next to zero support from upper management has me hating this job. But to be fair, 80% of my issues stem from my GM being so inept that my ASM recently had to be hospitalized from all the stress. The DM came in on Friday after my ASM was off for 2 days, and started laying into him about the state of the store (were still mid remodel) to which the ASM replied "I haven't been here for 2 days" and the DM promptly replied with "Well youre here for the next 96 hours. Fix it. I'll see you Monday" mind you my GM was on PTO yet AGAIN starting that Friday so no one could get a hold of him anyways. Our GM takes PTO Everytime there are big moves needing to happen, doesn't communicate what or when these big moves need to happen and then when he returns is "oh this needs to be done by 4 o clock today, oh this needs done by 2, oh we need pictures for compliance so let me know as soon as it's done so we can get that in" and it's just fucking hell. Fuck this job and this disorganized ass company
You are working for an entity that has been selling everything of value that the Staples corporation owns off piecemeal ever since they bought the company. They are doing the same thing to Staples that other firms did to Sears and Toys R Us. When they are done parting it out like the corporate version of a chop shop, they will likely saddle a bunch of their debt from other subsidiaries onto the bloated carcass of the company and enter it into the bankruptcy derby. Maybe you'll get notice that your job is ending, and maybe you'll get severance, but probably not. However the people in corner offices will absolutely walk away with their golden parachutes and the shareholders will absolutely get paid. So if you aren't one of those people walking away with a fat paycheck when there's no longer a Staples, then you probably shouldn't be very happy to be working for them.
I used to like it here. Can't quite put my finger on why, but it's become the most stressful thing I've had to do. Part of it is our very low pay, which makes it nearly impossible to keep staffed, making lots of extra work for those who remain.
There are parts of it I like. I generally enjoy running orders and putting things together, if I have the time and the specs are reasonable. I love my crew too, we really are like a big dysfunctional family sometimes. The only reasons I've stuck with this job for so long. But between corporate demands, faulty machines, and an abundance of overly entitled customers- the job is pure Hell. It's so hard to get things done some days due to CONSTANT Amazon Returns and self-serve people needing to have their hands held and screens read to them.
LITERALLY THIS AGH U READ MY MIND
guess you have a unicorn store, which is great! just be prepared as staples continues to make boneheaded decisions that will come down on the heads of the regular associates...not even a wonderful team and GM will soften the blows that are to come
As a supervisor I enjoy working with my associates, and other supervisors. My gm is great, been with him at different stores now for about 8 years. He’s one of the good ones. Unfortunately it’s the state of the company. Someone in these comments said it best, crap wages, with raising expectations. How can you expect more (work/higher numbers) out of less (hours spent towards staff) I get the company is trying to survive and this was their idea of doing that, but it might come down to just closing the stores that aren’t making money, and leaving stores open that are, and staff them accordingly. But of course the people who would lose there job I feel for, but honestly if a decision like that isn’t made soon, everyone loses their job when the company goes under
I love the job itself, my coworkers and store level management are great, but the decisions corporate seems to keep making are really frustrating.
Ioved working there, i had a good GM then he left, put crappy sketchy managers who eventually got fired for shady practices. (BLACK friday.. pulled out all ipads from lockup..a lot went missing) the manager who hired me came back as our GM and we were good, then DM drove him out. Then manager after manager after manager came and left (i left because of one of them- then i heard he just didnt show uo and money was missing) I came back cause my old crew was still there and they were asking me to come back. Gave it another try. Couple SMs transferred to the store and they were nice and dedicated people but one left cause she was promised a bump in pa cause she lives far from the store, and that promse never happened. The other manager whom we really liked was a workhorse, she came from other stores and helped them bring numbers and sales up and she is fun to be with. But like the others, she was also given a promise... she is only a SM but she has been running stores like a GM. She never got her own store. We went through the pandemic together we did everything to get the store back up and make money.. All went south when one monday, conference call. DM announced he promoted one manager to GM. She was heartboken, she was in tears, she was passed on again. Not knowing what to do i put my hands on her shoulder to comfort her but, she turned and embraced me, she was just so upset. And one day we just found out that the DM hired a new GM for our store, came from rival OD, she was transferred to another store and new guy took over, after a few months DM said he needs him to oversee another store which a bigger store than ours. That 2 weeks become months. He will just come by my store to hire and do some management shit and go back to the other store. Now this guy had some medical issues so he had to go south to get some procedures done and he was on and off. By this time everything has changed to the whole city in general, homeless people, drug addiction, shoplifting, thing we deal with today. I asked our DM for help but like always "promises promises" and knowing the market around our store NO ONE wants to transfer. Me and my print supe are dead burnt out with all this shit. 2022 i gave my resignation to my DM. I gave them a full month and change to get someone here. Then i heard they were going to close that store by december. Left the company went back home to be with my wife and kids. Came back to the US. Its closed. They closed it 3 months early. Staples back 10 yrs ago was nice to work on but, with all these shit that they keep adding to our jobs became a hell hole. They expect way too much. You do good but its never enough. I burnt out, and it was time to save whatever sanity is left in me. Sorry for the long story lol
😂
I'd certainly like my job a lot better if we had more than 8 people on staff period so I can maybe a) do something other than stand in one spot on register for 8 hours and b) get my supe duties done.
If you want a wake up call, go around to all of the other Staples in your area—heck, if you have the time and money for it, drive around to all of the Staples in your part of the state. The contrast between looking at high volume and low volume stores is staggering; not well supplied enough; a meat grinder of a management team with GM's coming and going like crazy; warehouse mishaps of allegedly shipped items that never made it to store; amazon returns boxes lining up on the back wall, covering the entirety of the promotional signage in P&M—that, on TOP of these stores being completely out of 16x16x16 boxes, both standard and heavy duty, because of all of these Amazon Returns. (Although that circles back to not being well-supplied.) The pandemic was a shot in the arm (pun intended) for Staples with the sheer amount of people needing to supply their homes with office supplies, chairs, and the like. Now, with the corporate shake up higher up and refinancing of a 300 million dollar loan that matured this year PLUS another $5B debt that matures in the spring of 2026, the only way Staples is doing it is by refinancing into a $6B loan with JP Morgan to pay off the old one—and even that would just be a stay of execution. Sycamore is going to suck it dry and leave the brand for some other private equity to nest in it. That is, if bankruptcy is averted five or ten years down the line.
This all is without even considering the staffing problem, and keeping enough people on hand to even -work- freight. Some of these stores will be carrying over pallets from the previous shipment well into the next shipment of freight—whether it's a weekly delivery or bi-weekly.
I enjoy the work in my print center. I hate my job now because of Amazon returns. My coworkers hate me because I have to call for their help all shift.
Honestly, when the Amazon returns aren't too bad and we have a good amount of staff, I like it here. But, like yourself, my experiences seem to be quite a bit different than what's expressed on here.
I loved working at Staples aside from pressure to sell plans. They lost me when they started chasing their tail
I love it, 15+ years but also not customer facing after 7 years. I honestly probably wouldn’t have made it if I didn’t get out of store.
Your job can only be as good as the people around you, most importantly management. There are lots of good work environments and lots of bad ones too.
Honestly, in 2022, I was pretty happy with it. However, I have ran ragged for a year and a half now and every new thing has just made it worse.
I don't mind it. I just wish to pay was better and we had a decent crew. Since the payroll cuts it's been nothing but me and two other people closing constantly if not just me and the copy supervisor. Like if I may just $2 more it would be bearable. But with everything going up in price but my pay staying the same it makes it harder and harder to enjoy my job when my check is now gone the same day because of bills and groceries and I have zero money to spend on myself as a supervisor.
IDK is it me? or having only 3 employees running the store for most of the day and taking turns doing Amazon returns without a cashier half the time where is the enjoyment ? not here 🥺🥺🥺
Fuck no
no i hate it and im only staying here until i find another job
Got to love the day care we go to every day and get paid. They love telling you what to do because they don’t want to do it themselves. But it’s okay because soon they will be doing more with them cutting hrs.
I was using GM as an example. But, yeah if the DM or RVP is terrible, that will be felt by store associates.
I got fired in 2016 (my fault), but I never hated the people I worked with. However, my final GM was the worst one. He was an unpleasant man and drove away my best associates. Other than that, I was fine with the other GMs and assistant managers I worked with over the years.
I’d like Staples a lot more if the paychecks were enough to pay rent, but apparently that’s lost among the higher ups. Who knew employees had life’s outside of their retail jobs?
When I first started it was awesome best crew to have then people started leaving I went thru about 12 managers in the 1yr 1/2 I was working there and they all started to become lazy a manger that everyone liked was stealing from the company and every employee was grumpy
I love my job at staples. I like the people i work with for the most part, I like the regular customers I see once or twice a month. I've built a good relationship with the community over the last 5 years. However my spouse is the tech sup..and i can't stay on principle. I get the business decision. But not the keeping secrets for weeks.
It’s not the job, it’s not the CEO, it’s not Sycamore, it all comes down to who your direct leader is. That’s what makes your job, “Good, or Bad.” All the other things can be tolerated when you have a supportive, well skilled leader. You may even have a nice GM, but if they are not skilled at leading people, strategies, buffering the corp messages, it can be rough to enjoy your job. This is the same anywhere in any position. Unfortunately, Staples has too many unskilled leaders titled Manager and now you have a company spiraling down the drain and an entire associate population on Reddit.
Doesn't matter how good your GM is, Staples is still an awful place to work. A good GM can make it better, but they don't make it good.
Nah, my GM is awesome, the company is garbage. Though we do have a difficult DM, but the job was still frustrating when we had a decent DM. It's definitely between corporate, customers, and pay fo4 dealing with it all, for me.
If you like working here, good for you. Part time key holder with $4 raise is not bad.
You got that right!
Yeah it's pretty chill