Just Keeping It Honest - Account Manager Aisle Rocket Employee Review

ARS sells itself well during the interview process; however, once you’re in, you quickly realize it was all smoke and mirrors. Below are just some of the malfunctions of this laughable company. NON-COMPETITIVE SALARIES – If you are looking to make more, especially as Chicago’s cost-of-living rises, ARS is not your answer. If you’re lucky enough to get what you ask for, it’ll be used against you when it’s time for raises or layoffs. PORTFOLIO OF WORK DOESN’T REPRESENT CURRENT CATALOG OF CLIENTS: Read up on some of the bigger names, and you’ll be able to infer how much active work ARS actually has. They struggle to win new business, resulting in annual layoffs. NO DEFINABLE CULTURE – Between mass exoduses and annual layoffs, moving into a Chicago office without an established culture and identity, and with a leadership team that needs a complete overhaul, it will be quite some time before ARS has a culture worth mentioning. PLEASE NOTE: The MI office has/had a culture of its own and the TN office is the hub for operational related transactions, such as Accounts Receivables and Payables. Don’t allow posts related to those offices to be any indication of Chicago office culture. LIMITED PERKS – Actual “perks” include free coffee, snacks and quick pantry style/frozen meals (while supplies and budgets last). Working from home is only an option for select few employees. At the point of my departure, there was no “booze cart” or beer-on-tap, which are perks about which they often boast. With the new office comes a “Wellness Room,” which is located right off of the entrance and is currently utilized as a storage closet. Bringing dogs to work is only applicable in MI. TOXIC, POLITICAL, AND IMMATURE WORKING ENVIRONMENT – If you want to survive at ARS, plan on falling in line and curbing your ideas and opinions. EXCEPTION: Brown nose the leadership team, date a team lead, agree with their ideas and praise them, and you’ll succeed! If you’re eager to travel back in time to your high school days, surrounded by cliques, gossip, and rumors, and where the head cheerleader and quarterback ruled the halls, ARS is THE place to work. ZERO TRANSPARENCY – Leadership has mastered the art of zero transparency. EXAMPLE: Instead of addressing layoff rumors, they allowed their teams to sit in paranoia for weeks until the layoffs started to happen, and even then never communicated the five important “W’s”: who, what, where, when, and why. This is just one of many examples of their inability to understand and incorporate transparency into the DNA of ARS. AMBIGUOUS ORGANIZATIONAL HIERARCHY – Current hierarchy includes: leadership team, team leads, and the dispensables. ARS claims to have a leadership team, which is a falsehood as this team lacks all qualities of true leadership and rarely works well together. The definition of a leadership team at ARS essentially means a group of VPs, and not all VPs are treated equally. Second in line are “team leads.” There is significant ambiguity surrounding this team, which results in much time being wasted when trying to schedule meetings and obtain approvals/direction. These “decision makers” are often unavailable because they’re spread too thin. Dispensables are those who actually contribute to the success of the company. They are the one who are the least recognized and appreciated. Members of this group have been replaced by a freelancer and/or an off-shore team. NOTE: ARS is not trying to be an “agency”; therefore, you may end up with a made-up title that isn’t in line with your career goals. LACK OF INTEGRITY – ARS Leadership is known for making false promises. An example (one of many) is when they announced to their IL team that they would open a satellite suburban office after they migrated IL operations to downtown Chicago, and then changed their minds. During a significant time of change, this was a beacon of hope for those living in the suburbs. This was a chance to maintain work/life balance and not increase personal expenses with a city commute. With absolutely no announcement of their decision to not proceed with said satellite office, they allowed rumors to fester about said plans, all while laying people off right before the holidays. SMOKE AND MIRRORS – When I interviewed at ARS, their leadership team bragged about how either they, or other members of the team, have left ARS and came back because it’s such a great place to work. It is true that people have returned to ARS after leaving; however, the reasons for these employees returning is unknown. Leadership likes to believe it’s because ARS is a great opportunity for all, but based on my experience there, I imagine a return to ARS is an act of desperation or convenience. Leadership will tell you they want you to help improve current ARS and mold future ARS, which means, true story, “We’ll tell you what change will be and what the future of ARS will look like. You will agree and get everyone else to be on board.” That is what your participation will look like. The “empowered” is powerless. BUSINESS NEGLIGENCE – The leadership team manages ALL RFP requests. They wait until the absolute last minute to assemble their pitch, have no organized work history or templated deck, and stress out their already overworked team with design/copy requests, requiring late hours, including weekends, in an effort to win new business and then are surprised when they don’t succeed. As a result, ARS continues to rely on their pillar, retainer-based clients who end up cutting budgets by bringing more work in house/reducing their shopper marketing investments, and consequently have to lay off more employees than they can operationally support without putting more stress on their already stressed and unhappy survivors. They were presented with a huge monetary, and possibly award-winning, opportunity where one member of their leadership team wanted to take a “different approach,” where “different” means “inexpensively outsourced,” and lost said business due to poor project management and complete negligence.