I have worked closely with a few FSNS locations and the cons are the same for all of them. Very few of these cons are unique to the location I worked at. The money-above-everything-else mindset by upper management bleeds into every aspect of the company and is the root cause of nearly every con listed below. I want people to get a clear picture of what is it actually like to work at FSNS, so this is extremely long. As such, I have included a TL;DR at the bottom.
-Employees are treated as disposable and the turnover rate is truly staggering. Good, hardworking employees are rewarded with more work, higher expectations, and picking up the slack of underperforming employees. The company will continue to expect more and more and more until you have nothing left to give and are completely burned out. When that happens, you'll be met with the "nobody wants to work anymore/special snowflakes/pull yourself up by your bootstraps" argument.
-Pay is low compared to other lab jobs in the area, yet management insists that they are paying too much. A specific incident that comes to mind is when one of the FSNS labs got a significant increase in their workload and the employees asked for raises. A member of the management team was continuously ranting about how the technicians were ungrateful and "maybe they should consider the fact that they were being paid too much to start with and work harder to earn their current wage instead of asking for more."
-Hours are inconsistent and overtime is required. There is a "you can leave when the job is done" attitude throughout the company that is not compatible with a work/life balance. When the needs of the company change, your hours will change.
-FSNS claims to "run the labs lean." What this actually means is that they simply do not hire enough people to the point where it is a catastrophe if just one employee calls in sick. This leads to other technicians being pressured to come in on their days off and they are heavily shamed if they say no.
-There are cameras everywhere that include both video and audio. This would be fine if it were for safety reasons, but the company handbook explicitly states that the cameras are for protecting FSNS property only and are not intended for employee safety. Management is able to listen to employee conversations and it gives many technicians a paranoid feeling of being watched. Additionally, I witnessed a member of the management team combing through footage. The accompanying discussion made it seem like they were trying to find a recording that would help build a case against an employee who was injured in a slip-and-fall accident so they could avoid paying workers compensation.
-The training program is laughably bad. You will be expected to figure things out on your own and if the lab is particularly understaffed, they will turn you loose to work on client samples before you are completely trained.
-There is blatant favoritism by management that creates an uncomfortable environment and pits employees against each other. The animosity between main lab and path lab makes things very tense and management does little to fix it yet complains about it constantly.
-Management is manipulative to keep their worker bees in line. They will listen to your concerns and make promises to make you feel better, then immediately turn around and do things exactly the way they were before.
-There is a massive emphasis on reducing turnaround times and the expectations are often unreasonable.
-Supervisors are protected at all costs regardless of their behavior. I have witnessed supervisors say some truly appalling things about technicians (including gossiping about staff with/in front of other technicians) and nothing is done about it even when management is made aware. In the same vein, there is no confidentiality of any kind. If you tell a supervisor or manager something, expect gossip and for your business to spread like wildfire.
-The benefits package is subpar at best. There is no sick time, but vacation accrual rates are okay. However, oftentimes it is hard to get PTO approved in the first place. If it is approved ahead of time and then they realize that they don’t have enough staff to cover your vacation, they will “ask” if you can cancel your time off and come to work (alternatively, sometimes they will literally try to gaslight you and claim it wasn’t approved at all. Keep printed paper records of PTO approvals to protect yourself—I have seen this happen twice).
-If you are a salaried employee, you will be expected to work extra hours and be on call virtually all the time with no additional compensation. After I had been working at FSNS for about 2 months, I finished a 10-hour shift and on my way out, I was asked why I was leaving early. They then explained that salary employees were expected to work an average of 50-55 hours per week, which is an expectation that was not explained to me prior to starting the job.
-There is little room for advancement and raises are nearly impossible to get.
-The company culture is horrendous. Without exaggeration, it is almost cult-like. They talk about "our FSNS family!" but no family should ever treat each other the way FSNS does. Management and long term employees drank the metaphorical Kool-Aid and no longer see the issues with the way the business is run. To succeed at FSNS, you have to become a cog in the corporate wheel. If you can't set your morals aside and become completely sold out to the money first/people last ideals of FSNS corporate, you will struggle.
-FSNS keeps you on edge at all times because you never know when things will go south, so employees are used to being anxious at work constantly. I have kept in contact with many coworkers who have also left FSNS and we are all having a hard time shaking the anxiety and adjusting to workplaces that do not thrive on stress and fear.
TL;DR: Food Safety Net Services is a terrible place to work. It is a revolving door of employees who have been disrespected and overworked. Management needs a complete overhaul and needs to reassess their priorities. Company culture is abysmal with no signs of changing.
