Don’t work for Probation EVER. Work Probation elsewhere outside of Albany.
Pros
Hours and benefits Some people are fun
Cons
This place is like living in the in the 1950s or earlier with no morals or values in the workplace. People think that they can treat you any kind of way and think trust is a must. Trust is an understatement in this place. As simple as the workplace may appear, it’s not as easy as they put it. People have an idea of what they want in the workplace, but they have no idea of how to implement the idea, keep it flowing, and keep the atmosphere positive. You spend weeks in training for you to come back to be told “do it my way” making you forget all of the “important” information you now have to erase. People flock together creating a very nepotism environment thus screwing over good employees and new comers with potential. Basically, it goes like this “if one don’t like you, they all don’t like you.” They basically find ANYTHING about you and make sure that everyone knows something negative. The fact of the matter is that if you approach them PROFESSIONALLY multiple people will chime in and try to personally attack you and use your shortcomings against you. Rather than help you build your character and reputation, they do anything to tear it down. They try to promote the “fear me”mentality (but yet some are afraid to walk a few steps to their car each night *eye roll*). They have unnecessary unrealistic expectations for every single thing here. If someone is there for less than a year, the struggle with trying to maintain the job is nearly impossible. They threaten your job almost on the regular and call it “motivating you.” How could you feel motivated in a place where you are literally walking on eggs for?!?!? You get told “there is a lot to learn...” but no one is sitting down showing you anything step by step. Then if you do it step by step, you have to do it THEIR WAY, otherwise your evaluation will look “altered.” Yet these are your superiors that lack the most important basic leadership skills and enthusiasm. I think most would need to take a business course or two to gain some insight of being leaders in the workplace. Basically, the superiors are egocentric. They have the “kiss butt” approach. You can do your job to the fullest, go up and beyond, do it to the best of your ability, and they will find anything to not be satisfied about. Basically, their theory is “If you don’t kiss butt, you must not want your job.” If this wasn’t a county job, the retention rate will be at an all time high. But because this is a county job (i.e hours, comp time, sick time, vacation time, floating holiday, have every holiday off...etc) everyone wants in. This place have zero clue of how to keep their employees motivated. Like I said, a business course would be essential in this place. These people have been here for 30 years and the threat of having new people is very obvious. The union representatives know what is going on here and even though there are MULTIPLE complaints about management, the refusal of them doing anything baffles me each time. What exactly are you paying for? Needless to say, retaliation is very real in this place. Like I said, some people flock together and create the worst things about you to each other and the organization. You will find a few people who will help you along the way. But those few good ones are very hard to come by. I will say if you find those few, please keep them as good resources because they are the ones that will help and give you the best advice to get you along the way. My advice is to treat employees like assets not liabilities.
