* Awful equipment. For a tech-centered business, employees spend entirely too much time fighting with antiquated equipment. Machines routinely go down in clusters, knocking out the store's entire production capability at once. Support (provided by an external vendor, so I can't necessarily blame FedEx for this) is abysmal,frequently failing to fix problems or providing a temporary patch that fails as soon as the tech leaves.
* Poor scheduling practices - managers are forced into a "one-size-fits-all" scheduling scheme which forces them to fit employees into predetermined boxes based on past volume. These are rarely in touch with reality, meaning employees are often scheduled to leave just at the beginning of a major rush. Dedicated team members are forced into a bind - they don't want to leave their colleagues short-handed, but the company often comes down hard on overtime. Also, staff is frequently cut to the bone on weekends, even though Saturday is often an extremely busy day. This is not just an employee complaint - we frequently get customer complaints about this as well.
* Pay & turnover - obviously everyone complains about pay, but this is an *extremely* complex job. New employees can't expect to be even remotely competent until about 4-5 months in, and even then there will be significant gaps in their knowledge. There is a ton to learn. While the challenge is part of the fun, many will think - and rightly so - why should they wrack their brains and put themselves through so much stress when they can get the same pay working for a department store? Not surprisingly, turnover is rampant. My store was relatively stable, but I saw others around me do a complete personnel flip, with only the manager and maybe one core employee remaining to keep centers functioning. Obviously, when this happens, service suffers. Management has to consider whether or not the loss of business due to situations like this is more acceptable than the cost of a modest pay raise.
