Day to day operations are over-complicated by rigorous procedures. Every area of the business is over-evaluated through a million different metrics, many of which are misleading. The "People" in P-S-P has been lost. Priorities change too often, because those priorities are filtered down through every layer of management, each with their own spin, their own direction, and their own priority of what's important.
The company overcommunicates - you can spend half of your work day reading and answering e-mails, reading hot sheets and sitting on conference calls, which takes away time from actually being out leading and working on the floor. Much of what is communicated does not make it to front-line team members because a store manager has to choose what to drive or what not to because you simply can't drive everything all the time.
TM Product knowledge is not adequately developed - online classes are not sufficient to learn everything that a TM needs to know at FedEx Office, but there is no continuous and defined process for product and system education. Managers barely know how to read the income statement and fail to make decisions that make us profitable. Too much of the important area of the business is left up to the individual managers to figure out, while trivial tasks are expected to be carried out by the book. It feels like everyone constantly works to avoid failing in their role, being last on a list, or being low in an arbitrary metric, instead of focusing on ways to be successful, which causes enormous job stress.
There is no way to do your job as a manager at any level within a 40 hour work week. The unspoken rule is for you to put in whatever time necessary to achieve results, which for many is working long days and then spending time catching up at home. This challenges the work/life balance like no other job.
