Pros
Gregory FCA as a company is actually a great place to work. The location of the office is great, walking distance to many great Ardmore shops and Suburban Square. The company does happy hours at random for their employees which are very fun and little bonding events throughout the year. The owner is fantastic and a really smart man who makes an effort to know every employee and keep things fun. The holiday company meeting is probably the coolest, most well thought out company meeting ever put together. The office also offers free breakfast and beverages and ever-flowing La Colombe coffee, as well as a gym with 3 Peloton bikes and treadmills for employees to use for free. Even has showers! There is also a lot of opportunity to be creative and increase your knowledge of the PR world. Certain teams have a great culture and foster the growth of successful, happy PR pro's.
Cons
The problem with Gregory FCA is a select few of the senior employees. There is something serious to be said of select teams who cannot keep a team member for more than a year because of their treatment of new or lower level employees. The only word to describe the experience I had there is traumatic. The first month was okay, but you quickly realize how passive aggressive, condescending, and overall mean-spirited certain employees can be in the work place. It's easy to think that you yourself are the problem if the same behavior is displayed across the company, or even with team members that came after you, but the pattern has continued and the company has done nothing to acknowledge or stop the horrific treatment on this team. I am so sad for everyone who has experienced the same. There came a point where I was so anxious to go to work at fear I would receive negative feedback on something I could not change that I would lose nights of sleep or be unable to eat. Nothing you do is right. Many of the pieces of "feedback" the team gives are directly related to personality and never about work performance itself. All of this has been further validated in my new job/company, where I go to work every day happy and feeling proud of myself, where I can receive feedback in a way that is uplifting and motivating, and where I am constantly reinforced that my work ethic and attitude are exemplary to the company. I wish I had had the courage to leave sooner and acknowledge the toxic environment I was enduring. Even as I type this, I imagine them reading and questioning the word choice in my review. There was also SEVERE pressure to stay late every day even if you had nothing to do. They would often save something for you to do until the very end of the day just so you would have to stay and they wouldn't need to do it. If you leave, you're likely going to get a detailed memo about why you are terrible at everything and as a person. There were also many after work events or happy hours I had to miss at their discretion when the rest of the company had left. You are a seat-warmer and will have to have your hand held every minute that you are there, which still won't be good enough. There are also growth opportunities, but they are mostly time based. I asked what needed to be done for a raise and was blatantly told it was all about the timing -- where is the motivation to try harder in that? I could go on, but I'm ready to release the memory of my time there completely and move past the emotional scarring.
