Pros
I've worked at this job about 6 months now. First thing I want to say is this job is what you make it. Garbage In Garbage Out. This job has many pros though. First, You get to meet great people. I love (almost) all of my patients. You grow very fond of them and are genuinely concerned for their well being. You provide a service to them that they cannot live without. Sometimes you start to feel like a milkman slinging oxygen cylinders, and then you get that patient that just "can't thank you enough". It makes you feel a real sense of pride and accomplishment. Next, You learn a lot about the medical field. I had never even considered a medical job until I took this job. I've learned so much in the 6 months that I've been here so far, and have loved nearly every minute of it. I'm actually very seriously considering going back to school to be an RT. You are provided with uniforms. Gas for service reps is paid via a fleet card. There is massive growth potential. Our regional VP actually started as a service rep in the same center I am working in now. There is virtually no limit on overtime as long as you are actually being productive. Pay may be a bit low for the industry standard, but is far more than I was making as an assistant manager before I started here. Teamwork. With the exception of a few bad apples, we really all have each others backs. Our Center manager will jump in and pick up stops if he needs to. Our Healthcare specialist jumped in and replace a failing concentrator for us the other day, and even our sales rep did an o2 setup when no one else could get to it! The people I work with are fantastic. I absolutely love them all. We love to cut up at our morning huddles, and frequently have lunches together and after work get togethers. I have probably made some friends for life.
Cons
Lots of pros, but there are some cons as well. Work life balance is a HUGE one. If you are seriously considering this job, be prepared to work LONG LONG hours. On a good week, I'll pull about 50 hours. I've been known to put in 80 though. You have a 25-30 stop day? You'll probably be out driving until 10 or 11 pm. If you don't think you can put in a 14-18 hour day, don't apply for this job! On Call is terrible. When you are on call, you live in fear of your phone. Once you get some time in on the job, some of the calls can be taken care of with a troubleshooting discussion. That being said, not all of them can. You WILL get a call at 2 am to drive over an hour one way to replace a machine. Prepare yourself for it. You will have a saturday where you have 2-3 setups coming in at the same time. (Setups take approximately 1 hour apiece, give or take) If you don't feel like you can deal with this, this may not be a good job for you. Training is quite frankly abysmal. My training consisted of one day of paperwork, one day of videos, about 6 days of riding with other reps, and then I was running a route on my own. I felt completely thrown in the water and dealt with about 2 solid months of stress. About the only thing I was comfortable with was delivering cylinders, which is only a small tip of the iceberg. I was only shown one setup before I did one alone. Forget about concentrator checks and DME setups. That was just kind of a dive in and figure it out experience. Procedures and routines are sorely lacking, so myself and the Senior Service Representative are working together to remedy that at our center. (Management is always willing to take in new suggestions and ideas.) You will just kind of be left to run your route. If you are disorganized, good luck. You have to provide your own GPS. This is petty, but it would be nice if one were provided. And trust me, you think you know your own hometown, but you will drive on roads you didn't know you didn't know. You WILL need a GPS. You have to do all paperwork by hand. And there is A LOT. On a typical cylinder stop you will have to fill out an entry on a Delivery log including in time and out time, patients name, description of stop. You will have to fill out a cylinder log including date, type of cylidner, number delivered, lot number, and patients name. You will have to fill out a delivery ticket detailing all delivery items. A new setup is nearly a dozen hand written pages. You will learn to despise paperwork and hoard pens. If your office is a liquid oxygen office that doesn't do milk canning, you will have to get a class B CDL with hazmat endorsement. This will be done on your own time. It's challenging to pass, and not cheap. I had to pay $100 for the CDL test (Better pass first try!) and $85 for D.O.T. fingerprinting. (This was reimbursed, the CDL test is not.) You have 70 days to pass this. This was a source for much stress in my first few months. Even though it looks like there are more cons than pros, I just wanted to give a realistic look into the company and what it is to be a SR. At the end of the day, the pros FAR FAR outweigh the cons. If you are willing to work hard, and aren't afraid of long hours, this is a wonderful job.