Edited for grammar.
TL;DR: I asked for a long-overdue raise from $12 to $14/hr and was denied and punished simply for asking, so I quit: within 18 months, most other employees also quit and the company is so desperate for workers they’ve raised the base pay to … $14/hr!
Background: I had been a vet assistant both in private practice and in an animal shelter environment and had a lot of experience in the industry. After my partner got a good promotion that paid most of our bills, I was free to downgrade my pay in order to work a “passion project” job at a non-profit animal shelter that I admired, thinking that minimum wage wouldn’t matter because I’d be doing something I loved and making a difference in the lives of homeless animals.
Then the toxic culture hit me like a freight train. The constant, purposeful understaffing; the unreasonable expectations; the mind-boggling combination of micromanagement and neglect; employees never allowed to rest or sit down except for legal breaks while also making it difficult or impossible to even take those breaks, (I requested a stool once for a task that required standing still at a counter for long periods and was denied because it would “make the room look cluttered” – in a back room the public never saw); never providing a consistent work schedule, changing people’s schedules last minute without warning and punishing them if they say no, etc. This place somehow managed to combine the worst elements of toxic corporate culture with the worst elements of fast food management into one workplace, and had the audacity to call us all “family” and to complain that minimum wage went up every year.
I should have quit way sooner than I did, but I kept telling myself if I could just go a little longer, maybe things would get better. The managers and bosses are very good at gaslighting as well, so I also kept thinking that I was missing something, or that it really was something wrong with ME, that the weirdness and abuse were just in my head.
I was “promoted” twice because of my previous experience and work ethic, although they refused to use that word — but what else do you call it when you’re given a new position with more responsibility, higher stakes, more complex tasks which involves using more of your past experience, some of which required extensive expert training, while also being expected to train other employees on those complex tasks? After my second “promotion”, I found myself working as a vet assistant in the shelter’s vet “department” that was essentially a complete, independent vet clinic in all but name. So, I was doing the exact same job I’d been doing before, but with significantly less pay, less flexibility, and more abuse and disrespect.
I asked for a small raise – from $12/hr (the then-min wage in my state) to $14/hr, which would still be well under industry standard for the region. Not only did they say no, they retaliated by cutting my hours and kicking me out of the vet department, saying that needing a consistent schedule (which is a whole other story) and a raise meant I “wasn’t a team player” and “wasn’t cut out for the stresses of the job”. I quit a few months later.
Fast forward 18 months: I found out that almost everyone I used to work with, both in the vet and kennel departments, have quit over similar issues. The bosses are now so desperate for workers that they’ve raised the base pay above minimum wage for the first time in the history of the company – to $14/hour. And yes, or course the director makes six figures and the nepotism probably doesn’t help – the top five highest paid employees are a wife, husband, their two adult children, and a close family friend. Nothing weird there, move along.
The thing is, the vet tech world is fairly small, word gets around about the bad employers. Not many are as willing as I am to openly criticize a non-profit for fear we might indirectly hurt the animals, but trust me, we talk; It’s already a hard job, and if you add toxic culture on top of poor wages, there’s literally no reason to work there. I’m pretty sure that the bosses have now burned through the entire pool of available vet assistants in the area; there may literally be none left for them to hire. I understand the company is currently limping along using the vet tech equivalent of travel nurses, meaning they’re paying way more than $14/hr.
I could write a book on how this company is the poster child for the ultimately counter-productive non-profit industrial complex, but one thing I keep coming back to in my mind is the vast amounts of squandered good will I witnessed in the two years I worked there: I worked with so many wonderful, talented, dedicated people, and it still blows my mind that these bosses managed to run ALL OF THEM off. Like me, they were ready to do an emotionally difficult job for low pay (often NO pay, because we’d help animals off the clock!), but not ALSO be treated like dirt by those in power.