A disaster in leadership, transparency, employee management, and ethical practices
Pros
The AG team is made up of incredibly talented individuals and extremely hard workers. It is inspiring to be around colleagues that are always pushed to perform at an elite level and always seem to over come the hurdles of working at a small company. The team routinely performs and exceeds the expectations of nearly impossible standards. The coworkers are by far and away the best thing AG has going for them. They are helpful and supportive and the camaraderie of being on an amazing team and not wanting to let your team members down will keep you going.
Cons
AG has many cons, but nearly all of the problems come down from the company's "Leadership". The franchise is family owned and operated, which leads to some uncomfortable situations and an extreme lack of accountability. The leadership and managing styles at this company can only be described as a circus ring that has caught on fire. The work environment is incredibly toxic which leads to employee burnout. Employees often work right through their lunch due to the insane amount of workload. Crying at your desk is considered a right of passage for new employees and even senior team members are not immune to breakdowns. Due to layoffs and an unwillingness to hire, it is expected that the sales employees spend hours of their week on the production floor where they will assemble, print, and quality control the projects that they manage. Naturally, a sales person who is not a trained digital operator or bindery specialist is bound to make mistakes and then is critiqued by management for making errors. The team is also forced to do free projects for leadership's friends and family. The projects are highly scrutinized and it adds to the pressure and mountain of work that is already on each employees plate. There are also issues of privacy and security. Without letting their employees know, management had security cameras installed throughout the building. This was never addressed with the team and no explanations as to why this was now deemed necessary was offered by management. This destroyed team morale and made the atmosphere extremely uncomfortable. There were also instances where management would reference personal conversations that employees would have with their colleagues over email. They were actively reading private messages and monitoring the cameras. These constant paranoid behaviors indicated that they did not trust their employees to do their jobs without being monitored. The turnover rate at AG in the last year has been ridiculously high for such a small company. There were roughly 30 employees beginning in 2020 and that team is now down to less than 20. The remaining workers are left to cover several unfilled positions and they are stretched uncomfortably thin. Benefits and pay are lackluster and way below industry standard. Promises about compensation, flexibility, and bonuses are not fulfilled by management. Raises are often dangled over employees heads and then redacted. PTO is nearly impossible to get approved and when it is finally approved, the expectation will be that you are available on call. Management will often call, text, and email employees who are off, as they do not respect employees boundaries or personal time. Overall, leadership is a disaster, the workload is unrealistic, morale is nonexistent, and the employees are exhausted. Don't do it.
