Pros
It paid the bills and there was a friendly atmosphere
Cons
The CEO pretended I was unqualified in order to justify a shockingly low initial pay of $15 per hour. I began working there in 2015, and I received a Bachelors Degree in Chemistry in 2014. I was more than qualified to write the comment "the matrix spike and matrix spike duplicate recoveries for hexachlorocyclopentadiene were outside of recovery limits" 25 times a day. In fact, I could explain how a cyclopentadiene could be used in a Diels Alder reaction to synthesize compounds. However, the boss played this game of pretending my resume was insufficient. The day I was employed, the boss told me he got the sense I was exaggerating my qualifications because I couldn't remember the specific Aroclor number that I helped detected as an undergraduate researcher in college. I checked my notes later that day and it turned out to be Aroclor 1260. The question about this specific piece of information was a way to trip me up and justify low pay. See, if the new hire is exaggerating his qualifications, it's okay to pay him $15 an hour. These lies about my qualifications continued throughout my employment. At a Christmas party in perhaps 2018, they were giving out awards and the boss said something about how I was someone they practically picked up off the street. I have a Chemistry Degree. I'm simply from a poor family. To be fair though, they eventually gave me a substantial raise, but this was their way of covering their own tracks for giving me an unjustifiably low pay rate in the first place. It took me a while to put the pieces together and understand the level of manipulation that really went on in Aqua Protech Labs. The boss maintained a friendly correspondence with me. He was always pleasant to be around, so I didn't really notice how manipulative he was. In fact, he might have truly convinced himself I was lying about having a Chemistry Degree or something. Otherwise it doesn't make sense. Most of the employees, aside from the analysists, did not appear to have degrees in a STEM field. I did. So why was I treated like some poor person they took in out of the kindness of their hearts? Sure, I didn't put in all the effort I could have. But when the work is that tedious and the boss is humiliating you openly to other employees, it's hard to be motivated. And here how I caught on to the fact it was all manipulation. I lost my job here due to Covid layoffs, so I figured this was a past employer I was on good terms with. So I figured I could pick up some of my belongings I left there, including a biography of Ulysses S Grant, Edward Gibbon's 1000 page book The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and a book on American history of a comparable size. I suspect these were simply thrown in the garbage upon my termination due to Covid. Also I'm only talking about Rob here, not speaking negatively about anyone else, including his brother.