I took a job as a Covid19 tester. This job was supposed to be temporary as I was waiting for my old position at my old job to open uo but on my first official day of work, they decided to make me 'Site Lead.' They also promoted me on my 30th birthday so I thought this was going to be a new chapter for me in my life, a new challenge. I TOLD them I had never been in a lead position before so I wanted/needed some help/guidance which they were fine with and appreciated my honesty.
I then spent the next three months begging for people, supplies…and being sent all over the state to help train people and leave supplies. Meanwhile I also have a main location that I have to maintain but it's hard to do when you're literally everywhere but at the main location.
Near the end of November is when I started to show my frustration. They had me volunteer two of my employees to help with something, which I did…and then I never got those employees back so my site was down two people that NEVER got replaced. Not only that, but those two employees got promoted and given company cell phones…when myself and the other 'Site Leads' had been asking for Company Phones since we had to use our cell phones a lot for the job and had patients calling us after midnight some times.
I kept badgering and bugging my Regional Manager, asking him if he was hiring people and telling him we would need a much larger team for after the holidays. He kept promising they were hiring people…and they WERE…but all of those people instead went to a traveling team…where they sat around waiting for schools to call them so they could do rapid testing.
Our testing at my location increased after the holidays, just like we knew it would. We were averaging 120-140 covid tests daily. In the first 3 days after the break, we broke 1,000 covid tests. Myself and my three staff members were outside for 100% of our 9 hour shift and weren't getting lunch breaks, or even 15 minute breaks.
Both myself and my best employee were calling the regional manager asking for him to send people to my site to help. Regional Manager would say there was no one to spare but then I'd end up running to the main office just to see a bunch of people sitting around on their phones, apparently waiting for work.
Well after three days of seeing over 500 people a day, with my RM even trying to get me to leave my site to go do training events while my 3 staff members dealt with the huge crowd, my best employee puts in her 2 week notice.
I become pissed. I had TOLD the company we were going to lose good people without any support and now I was losing my best employee. Twenty minutes after, I put in my two week notice.
Surprise, surprise, half an hour after I've sent my two week notice, all 16 traveling employees and THEIR lead come over to my site and take over. They got to the site with two hours left to spare, so my three exhausted employees leave and don't come back, which I don't blame them. With 16 people to cover the site, they get the impossibly long 2 lane drive thru done and the lead of the traveling team is bragging…like I didn't only have 3 people plus myself to run this location.
I go to lunch, come back for the last hour because I'm responsible (stupid) and I'm then told by the traveling lead to leave because someone complained I smelled like Pot. I could've argued with them. I had every right to since I knew I didn't smell like pot…but I was TIRED and DONE with this company, so I just took all of my stuff and left.
I was officially let go the next day. But I found out that they had been planning to replace me as lead anyway, asking my best employee if they wanted to be lead instead and having a separate Leads Group Message I wasn't a part of.
3 weeks later, I realized I had some company supplies so I went and dropped them off at a different location, since I was/am friends with that location's lead and heard that my RM quit two weeks later and the lead that had replaced me had been demoted and nearly lost his job for lieing about sending testers somewhere.
I found a new job right away. I make less money but the benefits and the evironment and people I work with make the change worth it!