Ashamed I Was Proud to Work Here Once
Pros
The tuition reimbursement is nice, the maximum amount you can receive is $4,500 in one year but you do have to repay it back if you leave before two years on the day you received it. They offer a on-site cafeteria and kiosk for any last minute lunch plans or snacks. At least in Specimen Processing, I can’t speak for any other department, there are plenty of opportunities for overtime or to cover shifts for extra money.
Cons
Ever since the start of 2026, everything has gone downhill in Specimen Processing. I can’t vouch for the rest of ARUP, but I imagine they’re also feeling overwhelmed and frustrated like we are by the amount of specimens we’re receiving with no adequate plans for staffing. Just last week, we found out that we’ve been getting a surplus of specimens from clients who began to pull back from another company: almost 6 months with no answers as to why we’ve been getting a larger workload than normal. Not only is this frustrating for us since we’re the ones processing these specimens, but then management makes it seem like it’s our fault for not processing fast enough to meet these ridiculous standards. It got to the point where management decided they wanted to implement mandatory overtime to meet these demands. We haven’t had mandatory overtime since 2021 when we were bouncing back from the pandemic; but this time the surplus is artificial and made us to believe we’re not “good enough” to tackle the work. Once that was over for the pay period, management said that they don’t anticipate doing mandatory overtime for at least four years; only to implement it again the following week for a shorter window of time. Being an employee for a while, I understand that sometimes things happen and we have to do overtime to compensate the amount of work. But at the same time it feels like management doesn’t know what they’re doing and they’re only implementing mandatory overtime as some sort of safeguard to please their higher ups. I was personally frustrated because I had maybe three days to do many mandatory overtime since we were only given a week, and something that was sprung on us last minute when many people have other obligations in their personal lives. A recent implementation, since May of this year, from management is how they’re tightening our attendance policies. One of the ways is how they’re getting rid of SDAs and instead giving everyone an SNA for anyone who calls out. For those who may not know, and SDA stands for “secondary day absence” and didn’t count towards your overall absence record, only as 2 reliability points. Speaking of reliability points, most of the floor were given 12 reliability points as a maximum, and now it’s been reduced to 5. Which translates to about 2.5 hours of being late or leaving early if you don’t have the PTO to cover it. A lot of the PTO you can use you have to inform management before 24 hours of the start of your shift; so if you’re running late because of traffic or have to leave early because you’re sick it’ll count as an attendance infraction. But if you do manage to find coverage from someone else, they still take your PTO away for that time. For what reason I’m not even sure. Speaking of being sick pay, the way that we use sick pay no is essentially that you can’t use it as all. Before we were allowed to use sick pay as PTO without any infraction on our attendance. But now we can only use it to “save our PTO” for any attendance infraction. Obviously no one “plans” on being sick, but the fact that we can’t use our sick pay at all without getting an attendance infraction frustrates a lot of people. Management’s response was essentially “deal with it” and tagged our HR rep in the email in which they know will upset everyone. Also, in regards to that email, some people laugh reacted to it as a ways to show management that these new policies are ridiculous; and then those people got reprimanded in the form of a written warning. Mind you written warnings around this time of year as essentially a game over if you want to get your merit raise for the year (granted, it’s maybe like 30¢ if you’re lucky). They even started off the email with something like “I know these decisions seem rushed but they’re not” and personally I don’t believe them. But for me at least, the fact that management is willing to listen to processors when they’re being “disrespectful” but not when they raise valid concerns about these new polices is the main reason why I’m currently looking for another job. Other people have talked to management in person about these concerns only to get stonewalled and told “it’s just policy” without any regard to how this will impact the overall floor. I’m disgusted that after all the years and hard work I put into this department, I’m being treated like I’m some problem child because I want to use my sick pay that I accrued every now and again when I’m not feeling my best. Many of our stuff are disabled and/or chronically ill so my heart goes out to them during these trying times.
