Loved the Clients, but Really Toxic Workaholic Culture
Pros
I loved working with the clients, they are the reason I stayed for a few years. I enjoyed my coworkers as well. I had a few who were very supportive and I looked forward to seeing them in staff meetings.
Cons
I didn't realize how truly toxic the Sample Supports workplace culture was until I left the company and started working somewhere else. Most times when I mentioned to others that I worked at Samples Supports, the response I got was "oh wow, I had a bad experience with them" or "I used to work there but got the heck out of there as soon as I could". There was no caseload caps, you were just asked to take on more and more clients without any discussion of how that would impact your hours or over time. I worked 10-12 hours a day with lunch being a few snacks shoved into my mouth while driving to another client. Although supervisors would tell you to set boundaries with clients, they would text or call on days off, while on vacation, or late at night, requesting responses right away. There were weekend group texts to myself and coworkers saying, "other programs are short staffed! Which one of you is going to step up and come in a few hours?" with follow up texts tagging each of us if we didn't respond within 10 minutes. While on approved PTO, I was called and told, "if you haven't left the state, we need you to come back and work right now". There was no education of staff on disability or disability rights. There was no one-on-one supervision with supervisors. There was a ton of turnover, with some new staff lasting just a few months or less. Self-care was a buzzword, not a practice.
