American Automobile Association (AAA) Reviews

Pros

They are flexible and you have good compensation.

Cons

Advancement is slow due to low employee turnover.

Pros

Benefits at AAA are great.

Cons

Work environment is ever changing.

Advice to Senior Management

Make up your mind and settle down.

Pros

Great group of people. Nice, attentive to your life.

Cons

You have to play the game

Advice to Senior Management

CHANGE!!

Pros

- Great Benefits package that gets greater the longer you are there (first 5 years you get 6.5 hours off every 2 weeks, but after 30+ years you get 12 hours off every two weeks). It steps up every 5 years.
- Great work-life balance. If you need time off, you will get it. If you need to go to the doctor you will be allowed to go. If you get there before 9am, you will be only one there. If you stay after 5pm, you will be the only one there.
- Yearly bonus package up to 4 weeks of salary. It will never be a full 4 weeks as it is based on company financials and your performance. Your performance is purely subjective and everyone will come out and say that upper management does not like to see anyone getting the full amount. So even though you can get 4 weeks technically, do not hold your breath.
- The Lake Mary/Heathrow area is awesome.
- Most of the coworkers are very fun. And some of the smartest people around.

Cons

- There is a habit of sticking with the norm, and the norm is 10-15 years outdated. This means you will write code in Visual Studio from 1998 and be occasionally asked to write Java 1.1 code because they cannot update to a newer flavor due to being shackled to hardware vendors.
- Your immediate manager will more than likely be incompetent and lack necessary soft skills. Sure, he would have been a good programmer, but will be a very ineffective manager.
- Your manager will not be open to new suggestions to change things, even if it is just to make a prototype. If you want something developed for the better good of the company, you have to do it in your spare time. And even after you do it in your spare time, you better take it to your manager's boss instead of just your manager.
- You will be constantly doing the job of Club Support, so I hope you like support work.
- It will take weeks if not months to get anything done, even if management has approved. The sea of red tape is overly much. Talk of changing any of these policies so signatures are done online instead of slow inter-office mail will fall on deaf ears. After all, this was the norm 15 years ago.
- The equipment is horrible. Your computer will be 6 years old and have a 40GB hard drive. It will take it 30 minutes to start up, but you will be required to shut down every night and start every morning to save power. Be prepared to spend 30 minutes every morning staring at the computer screen waiting for it to boot. The chairs also do not have backs and are 10 years old. There was a chair-sale 5 years ago and the ones people didn't buy due to them being in such bad shape are now the ones you will be required to sit in for meetings and while at your cube. So many people complain of back pains they just bring their own chairs in and chain them down so they cant be stolen.
- The pay is a lot lower than jobs you would find elsewhere.
- The turnover is very high. If you stay 4 years you are an old timer.
- You will be asked to do something, and then when you get halfway into it the requirements are changed. And I don't mean tweaked, I mean completely changed. And thats if the project is not scrapped completely. A big joke is that we move 90mph, but most of that time is spent going sideways instead of forward to real progress.

Advice to Senior Management

A serious look needs to be taken at middle management and effectively evaluated on a quarterly basis. I would also recommend the upper management meet individually with the team members sans manager to find out what things could be improved upon. Communication does not flow up or down very well at all.

Pros

employees get to leave at 4:30pm

Cons

poor management
embarrassingly low salaries
no further training

Pros

wellness program, decent benefits, tuition reimbursement, physical work environment is good, diverse work force, great people for the most part though many are leaving

Cons

favoritism, it is a who you know not what you know environment to career growth,lack of structure and set policies, some managers are clueless and no real training provided to new managers
lost of talk and the wrong action, don't live the values

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to what the engagement surveys are telling you, stop laying off talented, effective employees

Pros

They give you time off whenever you ask
They monitor when you come and go
The pay rate is very good
You get a lot of free stuff (promotional items)

Cons

My manager wrote me up based on hearsay. Only time I was written up at work in 15 years.
They expect people who work in tech support to put in overtime without pay and lots of it.
They really have no idea how to run a tech support department. I know because I had previously worked in one of the best tech support organizations in the country. AAA didn't want me to share any of my knowledge about that though. It is their way or the highway.
They are like a big monopoly so they don't really care about good customer service on the tech side. They constantly brag in meetings about how only the Catholic Church has more members. They basically feel like their customers will take whatever they give because they have no alternative (which is wrong but I guess their customer base has never heard of travelocity or google maps or can't figure out how to use those things)

Advice to Senior Management

Educate yourself so you actually now enough about the technologies your people support.
Get some experience in the field you are actually managing.
Never beat your employees up verbally or with bogus reprimands.
Don't come to work late 1 hour or more at least once per day every week. It sets a bad example.

Pros

good pay. You are there for life

Cons

time watchers. They will audit your entries and exits

Advice to Senior Management

Lighten up. Stop clocking every single employee for every work minute

Pros

Good benefits and the company provides many excellent services and products.

Cons

Too many tiers of management transfers to too much time filling out reports and leaving paper trail for everything we do. Typpical large corporation being out of touch with local branch needs, great people and day to day operations

Advice to Senior Management

Reduce levels of reporting and remember you have caring experienced human beings working positivly to represent the company. Too many employees are neglected and positive outcomes go un recognized

Pros

Great Benefits, flexible schedule, growth oppurtunities, free plus membership

Cons

Stressful, floor mangement shows favortisms, general manager can be cold and not understanding, high turnover,customers can be very rude, drivers can be rude.