There's just... a plethora of things about this place that makes me want to-... ugh.
Here's my life story.
I started as an overnight main lab technician. That means literally nobody is there. When I started, there was no "training week" like they supposedly have now. I had no idea how to set samples or read the reports. I was completely clueless and relied on another overnight tech who started only a month prior to me. Other shifts didn't care about the overnight shift. They left mountains of work for us and went home. We busted our butts to make sure there were no reports in the morning, made sure things were stocked up for them to use, and made sure the lab was clean. The cycle repeats itself every single day. They leave us with a ton of stuff to clean up and do, we leave them spotless. It was aggravating. When I complained, supervisors didn't really do anything to rectify the situation.
I moved to the day shift after a year and working with the people who always left things for me to do overnight, I saw how nobody wanted to do anything. There was no leadership and there was no sense of responsibility.
I took on so much that was BEYOND MY PAY RATE in order to make things more streamlined. Did management really care though? No. They only cared to ask why I'm clocking in 50-60 hrs a week and corporate only cares about making sure we don't have overtime BUT we also need to get results out to our clients in a timely manner.
It's difficult to make change in an environment that hates putting in the work. But I'm sure all my efforts have been tossed out the lab when I left.
Once, a sister lab gained a new client and corporate forced all labs to give up 3 people to go to that sister lab to help set samples for that client. That means we were 3 people short in what's already a short staffed lab with people who work just to finish their scheduled hours and go home. What did any lab really gain from this? We were so behind. I worked 12+ hrs a day for weeks because both of our supervisors were gone since nobody else was trained enough to go over to that sister lab to work.
So so soooo many times, the team works hard to get things done and out to clients, and management doesn't bother saying anything. But as soon as we're running behind schedule, they're on us like "why are we behind?" OH I DON'T KNOW MAYBE BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH EMPLOYEES??? AND YOU DON'T TRAIN THESE PEOPLE WELL SO THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING SO I'M OVER HERE REDOING THEIR WORK????????? Corporate would ask us about why our TATs were really bad compared to the other labs. But I've been to another lab before, they're not putting in the information truthfully. They're cheating the timer so that their hours look better than ours.
Corporate also decides when labs should implement new things thinking it'll be better for us, but it makes things 10x worse. "No headphones in the lab". Do you think I really want to listen to Freddie's screamo rock for my 8+ hr shift? No. Do you think I want the stomacher going off screaming in my ear as I try to set samples and end up going deaf? No. The headphones are multipurpose but they care about us being able to hear people. If someone needs to speak to anyone they go to that person.
So many times when there's an issue regarding the lab or an employee, management doesn't seem to act on it. They just let it continue to be an issue. A former coworker tried to go around management and emailed corporate and corporate told her to talk to management at the lab. So that was a dead end.
When I "interviewed" to become the lead, all I knew was that I was getting myself more work with crap pay. When told about my pay raise, it was made to seem like a favor was done for me, rather than I deserved a pay raise for taking on more responsibilities.
Communication between departments and between labs SUCKS.
There's always some kind of drama BECAUSE COMMUNICATION SUCKS.
For a place that prides themselves on using the Melina test to hire people, they sure do hire a lot of incompetent people.
Imagine working there for 3 years, starting at a crappy rate of $13/hr overnight with no compensation for being an overnight employee and getting a $3.25/hr raise after three gruesome years working your butt off just to find out some incompetent guy who doesn't do anything around the lab got hired for $3 more than your current pay rate because he has "experience".
There's also a new overnight supervisor there that doesn't do anything either. I know they had people who quit because they're tired of her crap, too. All she does is sit in her office and pretend she's on her email doing something important. Spoiler alert, there's really no important emails at 3 AM.
We had multiple complaints on a single employee and nothing was ever done to that person. (We had multiple employees with multiple complaints).
You really have to do some REALLY BAD stuff to get fired. This place has only ever fired 2 people. Everyone else just quits. High turnover rate.
Don't tell me I'm "grossly over dramatizing" and that my allegations are "inaccurate" because they're not.
I'm glad I had the experience I did and I know I put 200% into working there and lost my social life and sleep. I would definitely NOT do it again.
