I just started a new job at a dental office 2 weeks ago. When I was called in for an interview, I arrived at the office to find 20 other people in their late teens/early 20’s also waiting in the reception area resumes in hand. I didn’t think much of it at first. We were then led into a conference room in the back and the dentist who owns the practice did a powerpoint presentation. He started it off with “how many of you are familiar with L. Ron Hubbard?” And I was immediately concerned. He then said that his practice follows scientology as a philosophy to better connect with patients— he then goes “don’t worry, I’m not trying to convert any of you to scientology as a religion. I’m Jewish and I never plan on changing that” so I was like, “ok that’s a little more reassuring”. He then gave us a lecture on the ARC triangle and the tone scale, then had us pair up and do some exercises. This entire process lasted two hours before he had us take a quiz on what we learned, weeded out the people who didn’t get 100% on it, and myself and two other people got to interview with the dentist. He didn’t even ask me any questions about my work experience or goals, just my availability and how soon I can start. I was extremely skeptical and didn’t want to work here, but I’ve been unemployed for 6 months and got no other offers so I took the job.
The first two days on the job, they had us take personality assessment tests that took over two hours and then had us watch videos on DDS Success (a course that I came to find out is created by MGE) In sum, everything they’ve taught us is about upselling dental treatments instead of actually caring about the patients and harassing them with calls/texts to come into the office even if they haven’t been here in 10+ years and asked to be put on the Do Not Call list. Oh, and every week we have a staff meeting where we go over how many patients we booked and how much money we made and if we don’t meet the quota, people will be written up. I read A LOT of negative yelp reviews about the practice saying that people were charged $7000 for a crown even if they had insurance and the doctors here try to scare patients into paying for these procedures by saying that all their teeth will rot out of their skulls and they will die if they don’t proceed.
Yesterday, I came into the office and the doctor said that he was going to have us attend a seminar today, friday, and Saturday (our day off). He never said what it would be about, but from browsing this sub I see that a lot of these Scientologist dental practices have staff regularly attend seminars to essentially brainwash them. I told him that I can’t make it in on Saturday because I just had surgery and I have my post op appointment, and he goes “oh we’ll record it for you so you can watch it at home when you’re done and we’ll quiz you on it when you come back” Excuse me? I’m not watching 3 hours of scientology crap on my day off for no extra pay.
I told my partner about all of this and they told me to RUN. I’m applying for other jobs as we speak, but it already took me 6 months to find this job because no one’s hiring/getting back to me and I can’t afford to just leave this place without having something else lined up for me. I’m afraid that I might very well be stuck here for 6 months or more and have to put up with this.