To preface, I’ve never had to deal with intense, gut wrenching anxiety at a job until I started at Anntoine. The experience below is my opinion, and is only a fraction of the issues that made me miserable to come into work everyday: Anntoine Marketing + Design office in Hammond, Louisiana, has a unique clientele and body of work for the Gulf Coast region. However, another story unfolds behind closed doors, revealing a different picture of how this agency treats and discards employees. Having seen multiple red flags throughout my interview process, I decided to accept the job. I was welcomed into what appeared to be an extremely positive and cooperative work environment, seemingly perfect for the first two months. One of the issues that I noticed was that there were tons of promises that just fell flat: Monthly team building that are supposed to happen but never do, Friday morning "fixer mixers" where the entire office drinks Mimosas, Weekly progress meetings, Quarterly employee reviews that would be incessantly cancelled, etc. Under the surface of a seemingly exciting and fun workplace is a toxic work environment with directors who treat and speak to employees with a complete lack of respect and abrasiveness. Upper management refuses to do anything about the situation, and would rather employees leave over issues instead of correcting the (known) problem with the directors. Throughout my experience, it felt like I had no safe place to turn as I didn’t feel comfortable going to my director about their abrasiveness, and after being ridiculed for trying to go directly to the owners to determine a solution, was ridiculed for that as-well. Another major red flag is that management dislikes salaried employees who arrive on time and leave on time (Including when the day’s work was completed on time). The claims of a "perfect work/life balance" and "never forcing you to work after hours" are, in my opinion, false. Instead, only employees who "live and breathe the company" will be hired to work and be allowed to stay in the company's agency. Because of the high employee turnover rate, the agency is in constant disarray. You are expected to provide a quality of work on par with Disney or Apple, but with a salary much below the industry average. No job, however low-paying it is, is ever worth risking your sanity for. It’s even more frustrating when you go into a new job, hoping to grow and learn as a person, and provide better work as you learn, only to be torn down my those in charge. In my opinion, Anntoine Marketing is based on countless assurances that never materialize and never-ending justifications.
