The previous posts about Work Opportunities are pretty thorough, in fact in reading them I felt a sense of vindication to know that a) I am not alone and b) I am not crazy for feeling this way. I have worked at Work Opportunities for a number of years, and have never felt so insulted and tread upon in my life. The upper management is living in a dream world, disconnected from reality and what it means to help the people we work with. The lower management (that being the state level directors) are either stressed out to the max with their huge caseloads and constant push back from the "big guys" about any ways to improve or try things differently (Try Another Way, right?) OR they're robots, ghosts of the bright eyed bushy tailed CRS they once were, just trying to not get fired, handing down the bureaucracy to the direct care staff in cold detached WOU jargon.
The other things: lack of raises, curious holiday protocol, meager reimbursement for gas (I have filled my tank up as many as 3 times in one week...) the expectations to be in multiple places at once, to serve all of your clients thoroughly, but within 40 hours (over time is not a part of the vocabulary), these are to be expected, to a much lesser degree, of a non-profit social services organization. WOU is not a non-profit. WOU makes money hand over fist for the clients it serves, and raises and employee appreciation efforts are just about non-existent.
As a side note, in a rebuttal to one of these accusations, a poster says something about getting a day off if you work a holiday? My experience has been the exact opposite. If a holiday falls during the week, we are expected to work 40 hours in the other 4 days, or use our earned personal time off to take that day. So in other words, not actually getting a day off unless we essentially choose to loose 8 hours of vacation time or to work extended hours. Working until 7:30 every night instead of 5? There goes the time I spend with my children before bedtime! Good thing I had that "day off" though.
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