I began working with Kabookaboo Marketing on May 16th. I was hired as Multimedia Project Manager and during our verbal negotiations. I was promised a 90 day review with potential salary increase based on my performance. A couple of days before the 90 days i spoke to Camila Correa and Ari Rollnick separately inquiring about my review. Both parties congratulated me on the work I was performing and continued to prolong this evaluation. At this point, Alan Brown, the other principal also extended health coverage for myself through the company. A couple of weeks after this, I reported a serious issue with the programing department and development practices. First, with Camila Correa who at the time was acting as Traffic Manager and Director Of Operations. My words were "Our programers are half assing their work and I need to bring this to your attention as it is making my job hard to perform". Her answer was that they worked in interesting ways and I would get used to they way they work.
After this incident, two websites of which I was in-charge of managing continued to break and lacked the SEO strategies sold in the proposals the client had approved. I asked Mr. Rollnick to address these issues. He walked me downstairs and told me he was aware of the challenges with this department and promised me that some changes would take place and things would get better. Needless to say much didn't change and we continued to program sloppy and without the correct SEO guidelines.
Eventually Mr. Rollnick began to give me more work in relation to business development and online social marketing strategies. I saw this as a great challenge and based on his promises of advancement I began to work extra hours at my house to meet these deadlines. We had a potential client for which i prepared a 45 page proposal for and the day of our meeting, Mr. Rollnick presented the power point to the clients with the presence of Alan Brown and Camila Correa.in the mid of the presentation, Mr. Brown and Ms. Correa began to pass notes to each other and play with their feet under the table, which i found distracting and highly unprofessional. After our meeting I told Mr. Rollnick how i felt and he said he would address it with Mr. Brown. At the end of that day, Mr. Rollnick pulled me aside and explained to me that "This is Al's and my company and we can do whatever we want" - I explained that the relationship between Mr. Brown and Miss Correa was distracting to the work environment and that if that is he felt I knew all I could do is "deal with it".
After this conversation. The work environment became very hostile. Ms. Correa would not speak to me or inform me on projects as a traffic manager. It became almost impossible to deal with until I brought this to Mr. Rollnick's attention; I told him that the work environment was hostile and I felt my job was at jeopardy. The day after this conversation with Mr. Rollnick. Ms. Correa apologized and told me she was aware of her challenges with communication and that she was sorry she was no longer "my favorite".
My job situation increasingly became more hostile and her attitude along with Mr. Brown's became almost abusive. (highlighting papers and sending emails at 3 AM about how i misspelled words in documents) - Finally, about 2 weeks ago, we had a meeting with Mr. Browm, Mr. Rollnick and Ms. Correa to go over our programing department and SEO. They proposed that Search Engine Marketing falls under the project management umbrella - My response was to please clarify since i never had a job description and such job (which i had done before) fell under the CTO of a company. At this point i stressed my promised review and requested a thrall job description. Also, at this point I told Mr. Rollnick to not use my personal clients as KabooKaboo's since he was doing that to get more business in his RFQ's to various companies. The sites they programmed are still not SEO ready and their social media campaigns are cookie cutter with no thought process behind.
Monday of last week. Mr. Rollnick told me that I was "bad at my job as project manager as projects were not being completed" - I printed out emails and highlighted the procedures for work orders I explained that it was technically impossible to "mange" the two developers they have in house because I had to ask for permission from Ms. Correa to even speak to them. I explained that the programmers didn't want to cooperate with me and that Ms. Correa had taken all my managerial powers away from me slowly. Mr. Rollnick then began to tell me that he would want me to work on business development and online strategies more instead of my current job. He then told me to think about it.
Tuesday, the next day I told Mr. Rollnick that I had 3 clients on the side for which i was doing online media placement and social media marketing and that unless I signed a non-compete agreement and he agreed to compensate the extra revenue I was making on the side I thought it was only ethical that he is aware of this. His reply was "I'll speak to Al" but he was very angry and proceeded to ask me who my clients were and how much revenue they had. I refused to answer and told him i needed to protect my clients.
Thursday of last week, I was given SEO, market research and technical docs to be written - Mr. Rollnick was not available to answer some questions so upon his return i went to his office to ask him questions related to a project. Mr. Rollnick said he didn't have time and called me in office 10 minutes later to ask me about a tech doc which idn't have the changes he requested; I began to explain that the changes he requested were not possible and that I needed to ask him some questions before proceeding. He then said "he was getting frustrated by me" and began yelling. I asked him what he wanted from me and to please clarify my job description already or else let me know that he wanted me to leave. Mr. Brown sat on the corner and knotted his head. At this point Mr. Rollnick stoop up from his chair rushed me to my desk along with Mr. Brown and asked me to hand over my laptop, phone, and entrance card. I asked Mr. Rollnick if he was firing me at which point he said he would have his attorneys speak to mine. I began to cry and noticed everyone around me staring. I felt humiliated in front of my peers and told Mr. Rollnick the card to enter the office was in my car. He then began to escort me out and told me that as far he is concerned I was asked to leave early for the day until we speak about this with "Cool heads". He then proceeded to lock me out of my personal email and twitter account via my laptop. He invaded my privacy.
I received an email on Friday "accepting my verbal resignation" and offering me a two week severance. They even sent me a "release and Non-Disparagement Agreement", which I had my attorney look over. The truth is i was fired, thrown out like a dog and humiliated. He told my peers and clients that i wasn't doing my job and therefore i resigned. Which is completely false. Mr. Rollnick has been known for bad mouthing any employee who has left Kabookaboo marketing and even though I asked him to stop that bad behavior he continues.
BEWARE - The creative work in Kabookaboo is great, but management is screwed up in every way possible from unprofessional to over promising. They are not any good at SEO or social media strategies and look to cut corners in every project possible.
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