Let me start off by saying that I really enjoyed my job for about the first year or so. During that time, i dismissed some of the following information as no big deal, but the issues kept piling on top of one another, I couldn't help but lose any and all motivation to continue my high performance. If you don't value your employees and their contributions, they will find somewhere else that does! At the office of physical plant, not many people care about making things better. Most are content doing things the way they've always been done. As long as kids want to go to Penn State, we get paid, so why bother putting in any extra effort? OPP says it values employees and wants to make things more efficient, but many decisions that are made go against best practice and efficiency. Incompetence gets rewarded, especially if you make friends in the right places. People take multiple hours for lunch, are on personal calls all day, and don't get their work finished yet they still get promoted. Working hard and exceeding expectations gets you nowhere and barely a thank you for your contribution. People will intentionally make you look bad if they don't like you, which has happened to to me as well as other coworkers. Some managers and directors only care about looking good to their superiors because their main concern is their own personal gain. If you don't follow the crowd and join the clique, you will be ostracized. I have asked mutiple people in leadership roles for various means of assistance in my career developmeny and I've gotten laughed at and scoffed at on multiple occasions. I have made suggestions and recommendations that were ignored but then implemented later as someone else's idea. I have received significant additional work and responsibilities but I was denied a pay increase and denied a job upgrade mutiple times. I was lied to on multiple occasions regarding my position by management and human resources. The office of physical plant at Penn state is the absolute worst cultural environment I have ever worked in. Do not work here if you are the kind of person that is an individual and not a follower who falls into the crowd. Do not work here if you like efficiency, fairness, accountability, respect, communication, and collaboration. If you are the kind of person that keeps your head down and follows the crowd, is very agreeable, and doesn't voice your concerns, you'll fit in with the clique and you'll be fine at the physical plant. If you're not one to ruffle feathers and you don't like making suggestions for improvement or pointing out flaws in a system or project, then OPP won't be all that bad for you. There are a ton of opportunities for advancement, but you'll only move up if you are able to successfully navigate the social and quasi-political network of ladders. Ability means very little in comparison to how much someone likes you or how they perceive you based on someone else's opinion. Furthermore, management will lie to employees or completely withhold information to avoid having to "deal with" people's reactions to change. Managers will completely ignore emails and will not respond, but will blame others for it. The lack of communication is disturbing and again, no one is held accountable.
