Pros
f you are into food safety then you will learn alot about how microbes are detected, the manufacturers way of troubleshooting. The only other reason that you would want to work here is to get a feel for how corporate America really is and it's not a fun process. You will learn what bullies are really like in the management in amarillo and corporate and how corporate covers up mistakes and lies to the customers
Cons
First and foremost, they reel you in with a false sense of hope. They promise you will have a steady schedule and great wages. The reality is that you are thrown around to different shifts when the inevitable person walks out and more work is required of you. They claim to give you 90 and 180 day raises but i never got mine and others i have spoken to have not either. Be expected to stress out over the schedule every week. They dont care about your outside life. If you are called into work (which happens frequently due to the same people claiming false sickness but then you look at their social media profiles and they are out at a party or social event) and say you cant come in, you will be bullied by the management team and HR for the rest of the time that you work here. I would know personally. Management here knows very little about what really happens. When we get discrepancies in data,they take the easy route and release false results. Customers complain frequently about not getting their results on time, so this is just one of the many ways that management gets around it. Another example is calling them and telling them that we never got any paperwork, which has happened multiple times this year even. They want you to stay overtime and if you decline, you will be bullied. Even the fastest and most efficient technicians get yelled at for overtime, which management changes their mind every week so we were constantly confused as to if we could stay and help our team. We usually went home on time for fear of getting yelled at, and then got yelled at next day for not staying. As ive said, management does not know how to manage. If i recall correctly, 99% of this management team was pulled off of the streets with no prior experience and told to learn as they go to avoid training cost, but at a cost to validity of results. We had media fail QC not too long ago and came with positive results. When management was informed of this, they basically told us to falsify QC records (which happens during audits anyway) and release as is to customer. I wont say which customer,but it is a very large on that has merchants all across the US and beyond. Due to this,i dont recommend anyone to eat beef samples due to a pending recall. Because of this, quality is consistently at odds with the goals of the company. To make up for it,quality is consistently forged and management still complains about hours. Quality standards are non-existent here, but audits are always passed due ti management forging other technicians signatures. This happens alot in the lab and at my other lab job a forgery was done and thry were immediately dismissed, but here management will threaten you with a writeup or firing if you discuss it with anyone. Forgery is actually encouraged here if you want to go home on time and not get yelled at / written up. Things that are not just unethical are also illegal and lab should lose their accreditation for it, but they are masters of forgery so the practice continues. Management have secret meetings each week out of camera's view to discuss impatient clients and how to please them. The only solution came up this far is to take many shortcuts including those previously discussed. Company has a history of forging documentation as well as changing employee timecards to avoid overtime. In 2014, there was a lawsuit filed against the company for failure to pay overtime(you can find it on google) and the plantiffs won. You can bet that corporare and management will deny it even exists and you will be threatened and blackmailed if you even bring it up. Getting disciplined is common practice against those management and corporate doesnt like but if the favorites do the same thing,it is swept under the rug. This is evident by the fact that a member of management forged an employee's initials on some QC paperwork. HR was notified and the person that told HR was reprimanded and written up for insubordination. There is really no telling who will be punished next in the russian roulette of accountability, it is usually determined by what is politically accurate amongt the secret corporate and management level. If you aren't a favorite, the hot potato will unevitably fall into your hands Senior techs and lead techs are held to a higher standard than supervisors and management for the performance of junior lab technicians while being given no authoritative power. Any complaints against management will become the problem of the leads. We had a worker who went to HR about all of the unethical things that the amarillo lab does and they ended up getting a gag order and got forced to resign. They were asked if they would ever report unethical practices during an interview to which they say yesw, when they actually reported it, they were punished. They knew too much and the CEO personally decided it was best to get rid of them. Management lied to us at a meeting one day and said they had quit,but we all knew what was going on. Since then, numerous people have quit on the weekly and amarillo is having trouble keeping up with the high turnover rate that has accrued here. HR will probably deny this and say something like "candidly what you describe is inaccurate" as is the case in the replies to all of these reviews. I know you're trying to protect the company as that is your job. Don't you think protecting the company will entail preventing the release of false results and actual true quality control instead of forged documentation everyday and during audits? Because of this, i stopped going to HR and corporate with problems and started immediately looking for another job, which I found quickly. You dont want to be still working here when the FDA and USDA find out what this lab is really doing. The ceo and / or HR will inevitably follow this review with a threat of lawsuit and will contact all former employees to threaten them, and will say the company is still improving and that the problem "stems" (another one of their favorite words) from people that dont find fsns the place for them. The truth is that i came to fsns with every intention of working here for life,but those prospects were buried with each day i see management forging and hurting our customers, which leads to hurting the public through blatantly (another favorite word of HR) releasing inaccurate / false results. Also, another reason which i have already described in small detail is that you will basically live at this lab with little compensation. With an annual revenue of US $4 million, they still dont want to pay anyone what they deserve except for the management that hides the secrets that corporate holds. One day I saw a very bad decision by one of our management team regarding a rushed result (which was 100% incorrect but released as such) being released inaccurately because the customer called and complained. Do not recommend this facility or company for even veteran lab techs. Like i have said before, you do not want to be employed here when things hit the fan. Its so bad that HR had to come to this lab to interview and lie to applicants to which several techs told them later to stay away from this company and to read the reviews. They have recently posted a "confidential company" posting for this company for a manager position. They have to have some way of preventing recruits of reading these and indeed reviews until its too late and they sign onto the company.
