Air Toxics Reviews

Pros

Medical, dental and vision benifits are ok. Compensation is above average for this field. Other laboratories or similar industries recognize Air Toxics reputaion.

Cons

For small company. The owner does not recognize all employees hard work and dedication and sacrifice they have put into the company. Wish for the owner to be more proactive with the lab staff.

Company is top heavy.

Pros

Always something to learn no matter where you work.
Some additional skills to add to the resume.
You'll know what it's like to work in a poorly functioning environment here and know what to look out for next time.

Cons

It's going to sound repetitive after reading the other reviews but the poor management and decision making by the CEO and Sales Manager have cost many people their jobs.
It once was a well functioning company with steady growth.
Expected to work long hours with no compensation for overtime and weekends (exempt) on a meager salary. It doesn't add up.
Very understaffed lab and overstaffed management.
It is a noisy and dirty lab that gets a "quick cleaning" when an audit is about to happen.
Rapid and constant turnover in personnel.

Advice to Senior Management

Management won't listen to advice or feedback. One person (CEO) in the entire company makes all the (uninformed) decisions and they all go through that route.

Pros

Most of the employees are honest, hard-working people. The employees have great working relationships mostly because of the intense bond formed in the midst of such disaster. It's a great job to build your resume and get very impressive sounding things on it like Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry.

Cons

Pay is very low here compared with other area labs. Once you're hired, a standard annual raise is 2%. Bonuses are dependent on sales forecasts that are based on zero factual evidence and unrealistic growth expectations for a small company. The leadership (CEO) of the company needs to retire and let competent people run the business. Her lack of business sense and instability leave people scared for their jobs. Expressing opinions is totally against the rules (unless they agree with the CEO). There have been many hugely expensive attempts at new markets that have all failed miserably due to a lack of understanding about the environmental industry. If you are currently out of work and have no money, work there and feed your kids. Otherwise, keep looking.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay your lab people more. $12 an hour for a chemist who's required to have a Bachelor's Degree is third world country wage. Stop trying to be a big time environmental lab and be happy with stable revenue. It is impossible for a small environmental lab that specializes in air to have perpetual 5% growth.

Pros

Just enough experience using the instrumentation to find another lab to hire me.

Cons

Over worked, under payed. Basically a sweat shop.
It really feels like management does not have a plan and shoots from the hip every day.
The place is noisy, dusty and dirty and feels very uncomfortable. It's very chaotic.
No one smiles!

Advice to Senior Management

The owner (CEO) needs to go get some up-to-date present time experience in the real world of running a company. It's not 1985 anymore! Treating your employees like they are chldren instead of professionals make for a very unhappy workplace.
I'm acutally trying to be nice here.....

Pros

Hard working lab employees. A good place to get a year of experience working with laboratory instrumentation out of school.

Cons

Owner and senior management are out of touch with reality. Don't count on any raises or promised bonuses even though the company makes profit. They will lie to your face. I'm not a disgruntled employee. Just stating the facts. If you are considering relocating to work here, I would highly recommend against it. The employee turnover here is amazing for such a small company. That speaks volumes and it all starts with the owner.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop lying to employees. They see right through the BS but are afraid they will lose their jobs so they won't be honest with you about their feelings...unless they are on their way out the door.

Pros

The actual chemists themselves (only half the company maybe) generally have a high work ethic and don't compromise their data. Benefits are good enough to make you think they might care about their employees at first.

Cons

Those ethical chemists I mentioned? That is in comparison to how willing management and customer service managers are to blow smoke up clients' {whatever}s. Ask about employee turnover. Unhappy employees don't stick around. They have gone through a few hundred employees in the last several years. Lots of management problems for a company with about 75 employees. Management is not ethical in their practices with clients or their own employees so they continually lose hard-working, ethical people or fire them right before they quit.

Advice to Senior Management

There needs to be some honesty with yourselves and with the employees about what is happening. When you have feedback from employees who are concerned with the way things are handled by the upper management, swallow your pride and be willing to make some changes just as you would ask of your employees. Just because some of them insist the Leadership needs mental evaluation, you don't need to go that far but at least address their concerns.