Don't Do It. - Associate Smithbucklin Employee Review

First of all, everyone needs to chill out. A lot of the complaints on Glassdoor are that you can't leave at 5pm, you need work all the time.....you honestly don't. It's not life or death; you should be allowed to finish up a task or project the next day if you can't get it done today. The problem is that the company culture sets everything up to seem like a fire drill. Employees who don't stay after 5pm or respond to emails on the weekend are shamed and not only is that ridiculous but it's also unnecessary because this is not an industry that requires that kind of a lifestyle. Second, the pay is *very* low. I've seen what the industry averages are like in other companies and they pay substantially less. And then they seem very shocked when you leave after 5 months because it's a toxic environment of blame, shame, long and unnecessary working hours for peanuts. Going back to my first point, people stress about everything. Everyone is always stressed out and it's like: why? Stop acting like you're doing the Lord's work. I wholeheartedly believe you should take your work seriously and give your best, but you shouldn't blow things out of proportion. Two weeks after graduating from college and starting this job, I got reamed by a client lead because I hesitated during a webinar introduction. Okay, so I'm a human person who tripped over a few words - I had to issue a formal apology to the webinar speakers who hadn't even noticed my error and were taken aback by my apology. It's truly ridiculous and extremely over the top and made me feel completely inept and incompetent which is irrational because I just tripped over two words. The last thing that just rubbed me the wrong way: in August we went for a company update meeting. The CEO spent the whole time talking about how well we were doing as a company and taking questions from employees. One employee asked why people who followed other religions were forced to use their PTO for their religious holidays when Christians/Catholics get their religious holidays handed to them without having to turn over their PTO. They basically had no answer to that and then an HR woman stepped in to condescendingly tell the employee that you can use the 3 hours of flex time you get to celebrate whatever religious holiday you want. Doesn't answer the question because Christians/Catholics are still not required to hand over *their* flex hours to celebrate their religious holidays but everyone else is. I know a lot of companies don't give other religions time off either, but I think a company that pretends to be very diverse and welcoming should take into consideration legitimate employee concerns instead of acting like employees are ungrateful. Second, at the same meeting the CEO said it was "very sad" that other executive leadership (himself, the Chief Marketing Officer, the Chief Legal Officer, etc.) would not be able to get their bonuses this year. What?! You're staring at a room full of people you only pay $45K a year to and we're all supposed to feel bad that these guys making six figure salaries aren't getting a bonus? Cry me a river.