But if I had it all to do over again, I wouldn’t. - Call Center Advocate Allegheny Health Network Employee Review

I have had excellent trainers, but none of them were with AHN. I have had excellent supervisors, but none of them were with AHN. In all I had 5 supervisors over the years. Two of them were emotionally abusive. One was totally incompetent, was hired from the outside, and eventually let go after a few years. One did not pass on information about serious infractions to her manager, and would not do so unless management somehow got wind of it. And one supervisor was good. On out of five. My first trainer held me up for ridicule at every session, which gave permission to would-be bullies to follow her example. A few years later she was fired, probably for similar though unrelated issues. To be clear, there is a zero tolerance policy over abuse and harassment, and a no retaliation policy. But it does happen, often. The supervisors made it known in veiled terms that if I did any reporting, that they would find disguised ways to make my life miserable. We have to often deal with other supervisors and “leads.” One of them, for reasons that I have never understood, reported me to my supervisor for something I didn’t do. My supervisor did not sit down with me to ask my side of the story, nor did she investigate in any way. Instead she wrote me up to H.R., and the first I knew of it was when I got an Email from H.R. threatening me with termination. When I asked her why she did it that way, she said because she had not seen the alleged situation herself. I reminded her that she was not 5 feet away from me when it was supposed to have happened, and if she saw nothing it was because there was nothing to see. But it was on my permanent record anyway. The one occasion where I did report sexual harassment was met with: “What’s the matter, can’t you take a joke?” After repeated bouts of emotional abuse from one supervisor, I petitioned, and got, transferred to another supervisor. But it shouldn’t have come to that. You can get interference from the outside such as when I once scheduled a same day appointment, by the book. They had been cracking down on unnecessary transfers to nurses for triage. According to the scheduling program, there was no reason to have it triaged. When the patient got to the office the provider took one look, and decided that it should have been triaged anyway, and wrote me up. Even though there was no indication that it needed to be triaged, and the patient was being seen on the same day as the call, and the whole call had been recorded as proof, I was written up and it was put on my permanent record. After that, when the same symptoms came up I insisted on getting the call triaged, over the objection of the nurses who said it was unnecessary. Enshrined in the company Core Behaviors are “Customer First,” but when push comes to shove it is the doctor’s office first, and the quickest way to get into trouble is to advocate for the patient. Also listed is “Transformational leadership,” but in practical terms, there is none. “Trust Working Together,” though years of experience taught me that it is a mistake to do so. Making a good faith effort will usually lead to being stabbed in the back. “Purposeful Execution,” which also doesn’t exist. Supervisors and leads seldom take responsibility for their actions, you will be often held responsible for information that you were never given, and taking calculated risks will usually land you in the dog house. Ultimately I had a particularly bad encounter with a lead that provoked a panic attack, and I had enough and gave notice. As one of the people, who came in with me, and who left years before me to go back to her old job on the ground floor again, said to me on the day she left: “No amount of money is worth what they put us through!”