American Greetings Reviews

Pros

Flexibility in servicing accounts schedule and easy to balance work and home life. Great people to work with when servicing team projects.

Cons

Pay is very supplemental and more conducive to mothers and students just looking for a little extra disposable income. Even if you can manage to service enough accounts to constitute full time hours the pay is not likely to be very high.

Advice to Senior Management

As a National provider of paper based products I am honestly surprised that you do not have your own sister company to recycle the after season products that have not sold-you are in one of the few industries who could actually recoup money on your losses instead of filling landfills. To clarify-in spite of company attempts to recycle in the larger big box stores, alot of unsold product just gets thrown away when the season is over.

Pros

It's pretty easy to get into because they are basically always hiring for something. You make your own schedule based on the calls you need to make each week, The company's employee website is a great resource for just about anything you might need to know.

Cons

Part time, very erratic hours. If you make more than minimum wage, you are very lucky. You are assigned to stores that could be anywhere in a territory. Good supervisors will try to keep you in a specific area, but not always. No real ability to advance to anything more than a minor promotion.

Advice to Senior Management

It's a strangely run company. I could write several pages on the odd decisions headquarters seems to make. I can sum it up as this: the people making decisions are very very out of touch with the field.

Pros

Benfits are good
Flexible schedule allow to take care of family

Cons

New policy of wanting to turn over people to save salary

Advice to Senior Management

Decisions are made to drive short term numbers

Pros

This review is for the Papyrus-Recycled office located in Chicago, IL.

Located downtown and close to public transportation
Wonderful and interesting coworkers for the most part
Great resources and people at WHQ in Cleveland
Fun product and talented freelance artist.
A few very good middle managers

Cons

In the past few years the culture of the company has completely changed. The schedule is not flexible at all, there is no regard for people's time, poor or no pay raises, and no diversity at all. The turn over rate is becoming higher and management seems only concerned with hiring people from Target or the trenches of Sears. This leaves little for innovation. The company is run by type A upper management lacking proper leadership skills and completely out of touch. Instead, they are more concerned with creating a sense of fear and then forcing the company into "fun" competitive games under their terms constantly. Also, those in charge do not know how to use or grow the talent they have and the talent they do have has one foot out the door always. For being in such a large city there is little to no diversity. It's shocking actually.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop worrying about menial stuff and look around you for a moment. Stop being passive, start treating people like adults. Look at how successful modern companies run a business because the way you're running it is old fashioned, out-dated, and stuffy. We are selling greeting cards, smiles, and humor. It should be a fun place to work not fear based and competitive. Do you want talented and loyal people to want to work here, or would you rather just have a high turn over rate and keep paying people less and less? You can still be corporate while maintaining a unique voice. Both upper and middle management need to stop being so passive. Middle management, the leadership skills are there, stop being so fearful of upper management and stick up for your employees. Their happiness and growth is vital to your success as a manager.

Pros

Challenging environment; flexible; ability to interface with different departments; great people who care about the business, the customers and the employees; upper management aware of the deficiencies and working to improve;

Cons

often the goals are unrealistic and not based on solid data; sometimes the data is made up to support senior management direction; not enough research before new initiatives or it is non-substantiated; inconsistency in management direction between key managers; inadequate tools and systems to meet the goals consistently

Advice to Senior Management

Get involved and find out what is really happening in the market, the departments and the field; react quicker to the need for technological needs.; streamline upper management.

Pros

Flexible Hours
Personal Satisfaction
Great peers
Able to interface with store management
spending money

Cons

Low Pay
Low hours
Not realistic with hours/expectation
Little acknowledgement/appreciation
Antiquated Telxon units
Takes too long to transmit

Advice to Senior Management

To have so much hanging on the job the merchandisers do on the store level, AG is not realistic in the hours they give to complete the tasks.

Pros

This is a review for what is now known as Papyrus-Recycled Greetings located in Chicago.
Wonderful people, young and old who are a pleasure to work with.
Everyone works hard to get their jobs done.
Located downtown with excellent transportation options.

Cons

Recycled Paper Greetings is dead. AG killed what once was a lovely company to work for. Job security is always an issue and stressful to one’s life. The attitude is be thankful you have a job which creates very low morale. The hours are not flexible AT ALL, except for management. Can be difficult to get time off. Don't get sick since the health benefits won't cover much and are very expensive. No diversity.

Advice to Senior Management

Be honest. Be modern. Stop treating adults like children. Think about what you're doing and the horrible, humiliating environment you're creating.

Pros

Very creative environment
Starbucks inside of the building
Inspiring building with lots of art and color
For some, the move to Westlake

Cons

The work environment is not very inclusive
Management team lacks leadership skills
The benefits are horrible and expensive
Lack of diversity in thought and ethnic background
No career path. You get stuck in the role you are hired in.

Advice to Senior Management

Take care of your current associates if you want to get more. Network with your peers outside of the company to learn some of their best practices.

Pros

Just to be completely clear - this review is for the Chicago office of AG. It's also referred to as Papyrus-Recycled Greetings, or PRG.
The Cleveland office of AG seems to have everything together. People seem happy for the most part - morale is okay overall. And I worked closely with several people in Cleveland who were just awesome. Seriously - really great people. I'm blessed to know them.
The Chicago office, however, does has some perks that are nice. It's downtown. There are some really great people that work there. Some of the best, and possibly most interesting people you'll ever work with actually.

Cons

The Chicago office has some of the worst senior management that I've ever worked with/for/under. Very manipulative and "read-my-mind"/"kiss my butt". There's constant turnover - and very low office morale.
Most everyone obsessed about leaving or fantasized about being let go.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop being so insecure and passive aggressive - or in one case, two-faced and overtly aggressive. Great leaders aren't made of that stuff. You were put there for a reason (and I want to think it wasn't to run that place into the ground - but I'm not completely sure). Trust your employees to do their job and do it well. Also - it's okay to offer constructive feedback and offer/provide direction instead of expecting people to read your mind.

Pros

Flexible hours
no micromanagement, to a point
pay is decent
some really sharp/talented co-workers
everyone is likable for the most part
great work/life balance
easy commute, as long as you live on the west side

Cons

- management is severely inconsistent in it's practices and attitude
- sometimes you will run across an extremely effective manager, and sometimes the polar opposite, it depends on who walks through the door that day
- impractical deadlines bordering on the impossible if you don't manage them yourself and possess the forethought to start work on something before it comes to managements attention
- there is very little information sharing between departments, no one plays for the same team at AG

Advice to Senior Management

- promote communication between departments and teams within departments
- recognize talent when you see it and work to cultivate that talent
- properly train your managers to manage, and be consistent about it
- recognize problem employees, work to correct their behavior, or fire them and replace them. There is way to much dead weight at American Greetings.