Pros
--Some of my coworkers were really fun down-to-earth people always willing to lend a helping hand. --Cigars are fun to learn about. Even more fun to smoke.
Cons
--Everything else: The six months I worked for Holt's were absolute hell. I was micro-managed, manipulated, set up for failure and blatantly lied to at every corner. It was like working in communist Russia. For one, there are security cameras in every part of the office and you get ratted on if you have a non-work-related conversation for longer than five minutes. How do they know if it’s work related? They don’t. There’s no audio. You can get written up and there’s no actual evidence that you’re not talking about work. One time I was explaining about our blog to a coworker who was helping out with it and I was written up because the conversation lasted twenty minutes. I was also written up for conversing with a coworker who was telling me about a bad car accident they had just gotten into. As for the work itself: they kept switching up the style of writing they wanted: one day they wanted it to be funny and clever, the next SEO-driven, the next this loquacious novelistic style. Ultimately, they had such an extreme form of perfectionism that it became impossible to please them. I was frequently accused of messaging the art department "secret proprietary information" during the day (when I wasn't). I was then forbidden from using my phone or listening to music during the day. I was also frequently reprimanded for “staring out into space” during the day-- y’know, when I was actually thinking of the writing I was doing for them. And then there was lunch breaks. I’ve never worked anywhere where lunch breaks were such a large point of contention. When I started I was told I get an hour lunch break (which made sense: I got hired to work a 40 hour work week. Got in at nine, left at six, that means I get an hour for lunch). Then they told me lunch break was actually a half hour and if I ate any type of food around noon I had to deduct that from my already abbreviated lunch break. It got to the point that every time I tried to eat during the day I was paranoid I was going to get written up for doing something wrong. They ended up letting me go (while I was struggling with mono) because my writing wasn’t up to their “standards” and for staring out into space too much (these are the exact reasons they gave the unemployment office after I left). I thought I was free of them. Turns out they tried to appeal my unemployment, stating that I actively was trying to get myself fired and only cared about “listening to music and staring out into space” while working there (along with a bunch of other lies I don't even feel like getting into). I had to get a lawyer involved to help keep my benefits. And remember how I said my writing wasn’t up to their standards (the whole reason for firing me in the first place)? They ended up publishing a few of my articles without credit a couple months later. Just goes to show what kind of scruples this company has. All of which is to say, if you’re considering working with the Holt’s copywriting department in any capacity I strongly recommend you reconsider.