In mid-April I accepted a position with St. Elizabeth Medical Center to be a Network Coordinator within their IT department. The job was contracted through Waltz Business Solutions. This was a 6-month-to-hire contract, with the PROMISE to hire after the 6 months expired. What a joke that was! I am going to give you a detailed description of the reason for this determination below. There will also be a follow-up filed report on Waltz Business solutions for bad employee treatment and business practices.
My first day at St. Elizabeth Medical Center was a blunder at best, and proved to be a prime example of the working environment and lackadaisical work efforts, for the time that I worked there. When I entered the building for the first day, I was told to take OSHA exams, and the normal first day paper work. After doing that, I was given a name tag that simply said "Rob: Contractor." No, not "Rob: Network Coordinator, " or "Rob: IT Department, " but "Rob: Contractor." So from the get-go, not a single person knew what my position was at the Medical Center, and I was CONSTANTLY asked what my position was by doctors, nurses, and clerical workers.
After getting my name-tag, I was told to simply sit in the HR department lobby. Not a single person in that office had a clue as to what I was to do next, nor was I informed by my superior (s) on what to do from that point, or the next place I was supposed to report to. I made sure I came in extra early to take the OSHA exams and paperwork so I could start working at a decent hour, and hopefully by 9:00 am. I finished the OSHA and employment paper work around 8:45 am, and waited in the lobby after getting my "Contractor" name badge that seemingly no one else in the entire hospital was wearing. An hour roles by, and I am still sitting in the HR department lobby without word on what I am supposed to do or report to next. Finally, I call my hiring agent at Waltz and asked him what I am supposed to do. He doesn't have a clue. He calls the Computer Operations Manager (his name is Jerry) and finds out that a guy named Donny was supposed to report to the HR department 45 minutes early to give me a tour of the hospital. So let's recap this situation...
1 - No one had a clue what was going on. It seemed to me, from the first few hours on the hospital's campus, that I was just "some dude" waiting in a lobby. And honestly, I don't think a single person there cared.
2 - The guy that was supposed to give me a tour was 45 minutes late doing it. This has already left a very bad taste in my mouth about the type of people that work at this institution.
Finally, at 10:15, Donny shows up and asks for me. He doesn't shake my hand, doesn't introduce himself, and doesn't even look at me. I asked him how he was doing, and got a semi-warm response from him on how his day was going so far and how he has been "sooo busy." Being my first day, I didn't think anything of it. I didn't know the work nature of the hospital, the IT department, or how the people within the department performed. I would eventually find out very soon, however.
Donny walked me back to the IT department office. 2 other people were sitting in their chairs within the office a girl (I can't remember her name for the life of me) and another guy named Rae. He didn't introduce me to either of the people, took me to his desk, and sat down. He opened a browser that had Fantasy Baseball on it, played around with it for a few seconds, then closed it before acknowledging me again. He told me to take a seat, and that he would take around on his Help Desk runs a little later. So here I am again, stuck sitting down with nothing to do and wasting valuable time that could've been spent on getting me familiar with the Help Desk software, network, server room, etc. I fully did not expect to do a ton of work on my first day. Usually the first day consists of meeting your co-workers, doing paper work, and creating login names for the network and any other type of software I may use within the role.
Since Donny failed to acknowledge to the other co-workers that I was a real person, that I existed, and was standing there by him, I decided to take it upon myself to introduce myself to them. Rae shook my hand, but said nothing and didn't look me in the face. The girl was very polite, shook my hand, and said, "Nice to meet you."
For the next few hours, I sat and awaited for Donny to take me on his rounds while he sat and played with his Fantasy Baseball, or whatever else was so interesting to look at the deferred him from doing his work. Lunch time came around, and I decided to tag along with him to the cafeteria for some food. I don't believe he wanted me to, but how else was I supposed to find my way there? Ask a secretary in radiology, or at the front desk? So, I went to lunch with him (even though he seemed a little agitated that I was there), and found my way around the cafeteria because he felt the need to not tell me where things were, if I got a discount, etc. So, I paid full price for my food, even though I was told later that I was capable of getting a discount. I brushed aside the incident, went back to the office to eat my food, and awaited to go on the daily runs with Donny.
Finally, after lunch, at about 1:30, Donny took me on his runs. During this time, he didn't introduce me to A SINGLE PERSON within any department that the help desk tickets were filed with. It was as if I was just "some dude following him around." I honestly felt like this was a complete waste of my time. I was frustrated, and rightfully so. What kind of fellow employee would do this to someone on their first day? Nonetheless, I kept a positive attitude, brushed it aside, and continued throughout the day. I thought maybe Donny was having a bad day. Maybe he was extremely peeved about something. I didn't know, but just continued the day as if it didn't effect me.
We finally came back to the IT office around 4:00 pm. It was near the end of the day, and Donny left for the day. I was introduced to a guy named Charlie, and only because he took the initiative to come and introduce himself to me. Charlie, as I will explain later, was the only guy in this joint that actually gave 2-cents that I was there, and offered to give assistance on anything, introduce me to people, and take me effectively on his runs. He was and probably still is, the ONLY genuine person at the IT department at St. Elizabeth Medical Center.
5:00pm finally rolls around, this ending my first day at St. Elizabeth's.
The next few days were a blur or sitting around waiting for someone to show me what I am supposed to do, more information about the server room, and waiting for my logins for the network.
On the second day, a guy named Adam showed me the server room, what each server functionality was, tape backups, the whole works. He did a really good job showing me. I can't complain about that. Adam's work and effort from this point on, and his attempts to befriend me were what gave me an impression on his work persona. The second day, from the point forward, was nothing but me sitting and staring at a computer, because no one seemed to know anything I was supposed to do. However, I finally got a call from the supervisor Jerry, and he wanted me to work with the Security Department on their newly installed security hardware software, familiarize myself with the system and it's functionality, and get to the root of a problem that has been lingering for 6 months.
So, I went and talked to the Security Department, and they are royally peeved! They believe the IT department has been giving them the cold shoulder for well over six months on their newly installed equipment, and simply because they just didn't want to sit down and familiarize themselves with the software and hardware that was installed. I sat down for 2 hours with Mike (security office), and came to the solution that the problem was because of a lack of memory and an incapable graphic card. The security department director gave me the minimum and recommended system specifications for their video feeds.
I took one look at the requirements, and could easily see that the video card didn't even meet the MINIMUM requirements. I now understood their displeasure! They were getting the cold shoulder, simply because the members of the IT department didn't want to mess with the problem. So, something unsolvable in 6 months, was solved in 2-hours by myself by just putting he effort into the work! Absolutely unbelievable!
I communicated all this information to Jerry, told him the hardware that needed ordered. He then proceeded to order the WRONG HARDWARE after I emailed and spoke to him about the SPECIFIC HARDWARE that needed to be ordered. To me, it almost seemed like the effort was lacking because people just didn't care. Nonetheless, I kept my mouth shut, and kept a cool attitude about the situation and my situation and continued though the second day of work.
The third day of work was another big bunch of NOTHING. I would try to strike conversations with Donny about the Cincinnati Bengals, or Reds, and he insisted to shoot me down with my comments. It was if I wasn't supposed to be talking to him. Like I wasn't GOOD ENOUGH to be talking to him. I would talk to Rae, and the guy wouldn't even look at me, and sometimes would IGNORE ME. This stuff was getting pretty ridiculous, but I continued to keep a positive attitude and try to befriend and work with the co-workers.
Charlie came in during the third day, showed me some of the processes within the server room, tape backups, etc. He was extremely friendly, and ALWAYS willing to help. A lady named Donna within the IT department (whom Donny also did not introduce me to) took me on some of her runs. She was demanding, barked orders at me, didn't introduce me to people on her runs, and treated me pretty much the same way everyone else (except for Charlie) had. The third day FINALLY came to end.
Driving home, I am thinking to myself, "Rob, what did you get yourself into? You left a great job at the Nielsen Company for this?" I was hard to think positive about the past 3 days of experience, but I continued to tell myself that this was some sort of immature initiation process these people were putting me through.
The 4th day finally came around, and I went into the office, sat down, and read my email. Jerry wanted me to come over to the data center so he could speak with me. He sat me down and told me that everyone within the department was complaining to him that I was "unfriendly" and "not easy to work with." I was SHOCKED to say the least!
I had been the person trying to befriend these people, with little-to-no effort from ANY of them! It was appalling, and I proceeded to tell Jerry all of the situations and explain to him that I didn't understand the complaints because of my efforts with ALL of them. I told him I would be willing to sit down with everyone and discuss with them on what I can do to get along with them and work together with them as positively as possible.
So, after the talk with Jerry, he gave me a pager so I could start to take Help Desk calls. I took the pager, and headed back to the IT department office. Upon entering, I asked Donny if he would like to take me out on some his runs. He agreed, and I told him I had to run to the restroom real fast, and that I would be back and ready to go within 10 minutes, in which he obliged. I came back very promptly to find out Donny had LEFT ME and went on his runs! I was almost to the point of EXPLODING at this situation, sat down, and just tried to cool off. So, without going out with Donny, we were set for more sitting around and doing NOTHING. Because let's face it, there wasn't one single person in that office that wanted me there, let alone wanted to let me work with them. It was depressing and aggravating, as you can imagine.
So, lunch rolled around, and I come back from lunch and ALL of the people in the IT department are sitting in the back room talking about something. I knew it was something they didn't want me to hear, because they didn't ask me to be a part of their little discussion group. I knew what they were talking аbout: ME. I proceeded to tell Jerry about the situation, how there wasn't any effort from his workers to actually try to work with me and befriend me. His response "I don't have the time or ability to deal with HR issues right now." Those were his exact words. I then asked him if I could email him and explain what I was going to try and tell him. He obliged, so I sent him a polite explanation of what was going on, what my efforts were, and that I felt like I was a part of some sort of initiation process. I didn't hear back from Jerry.
So, day 5, I am getting dressed and ready to head in to work for the last day of the week. I get a call from Mike from Waltz Business Solutions saying, "Rob, I want to come in and fill out some more papers we forgot to have you sign for employment." I didn't think much of it, and went in to "sign the papers." Once at the Waltz office, Mike sits me down and says, "this is really hard for me to tell you this, but they are letting you go." At this point, I was shocked and asked him the reason. He said, "Because they felt you were 'unfriendly.'" He shrugged his shoulders and continued to re-iterate on how he doesn't understand the supervisor's decision on this. After all, how can you judge someone's character after only 4 days of work? How can you consider yourself to be a PROFESSIONAL by letting someone go 4 days into a new job, after leaving a VERY GOOD job with a respected company that he had been with for quite a long time? It was appalling, confusing, contradicting, and just a plain waste of my time! I explained my situation to Mike, and it was of his consideration, that this was some sort of feud these people wanted to have with me because they were hired on by a company called Brooksource and I was hired on by Waltz. He determined it had a little jealousy to do with it, and he was going to speak with the supervisor about it. He told me he was going to try and save me my job. However, he said that if he couldn't, that I could file unemployment because Waltz NEVER denied unemployment. Which you will find out with my Waltz usacomplaints.com, is a COMPLETE LIE!!! So, he tried to save my job, and didn't unfortunately.
So, to sum things up, because of incompetence, unfriendliness, unprofessionalism, and a variety of other things that was completely on St. Elizabeth's side, I was let go within 4 days. This place is a complete waste of your time. If you are hired on to work within the IT Department at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Edgewood, Kentucky, please think twice before making the decision to work there!
The people have been working there for a long time, and if you're new, you will be left behind, which is obvious from my experiences.
These people aren't genuine, and don't care about the people they work with. They care about goofing off on the computer, being lazy, and doing their own thing. It's a very uncomfortable working environment and I would definitely say that this place is the WORST place I have worked in my entire time within the IT field. I have hear horror stories, but this experience for me takes the cake, folks!
I am seriously thinking about contacting an employment lawyer and seeing if there's anything I can do on my end to see justice for this situation. It just doesn't seem right that a company can let you go after 4 days of work, after leaving a week prior to the start.
This put me in a very bad situation. I have a mortgage, car payment, and food to put on the table for my family. If I would've known this tripe would've happened, I wouldn't have wasted my time and stayed within a position where I felt my services and friendly, professionaly, and easy-going attitude would be delightfully accepted.
STAY AWAY FROM ST. ELIZABETH MEDICAL CENTER AND THEIR IT STAFF! They are a bunch of ex-Pomeroy clowns, that unfortunately use their mouths and backstabbing to make up for their incompetence in the work place.
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