Warren Scharf

My worst employment experience to date I would not recommend working at Lenox Hill to anyone. Most of my time working at this organization has been very difficult, mostly due to upper management, specifically the ED. He has demonstrated an absolute callousness towards his staff, and an absolute disregard for the clients the organization claims to serve. It appears he is not familiar with the details and processes for Lenox Hill?s programs, but acts and insists that he does, and will often give staff tasks based on what he believes the process to be, and does not take kindly to any clarification or information that contradicts what his preconceived notion is of how things work. When someone tries to let him know that a program may work differently, he is prone to retaliation, such as assigning more work to the staff person, humiliating them in front of coworkers or outside people such as community partners, making threats with regards to employment status, and sending condescending and shameful emails, completely taking the staff person down, and will include other people on the emails so they witness the humiliation. He also chastises staff and pins staff against one another by telling them to do contradictory things that negatively affect the other staff person. Once the negative outcome is achieved, he will further demean you and give a long lecture about you doing something wrong. When you tell him that you were just doing what he said, he deflects and makes it clear that he is not taking any responsibility and it is all the staff person?s fault. He also has no problems sharing your personal details about your employment with others, and will speak badly about other staff to you. He strives to create a culture of fear mongering, such that everyone is too afraid of him to speak out or say anything. The only people he cares about is himself, and the non-governmental funders. It is true that there are staff perks, such as fitness classes and happy hours. However, these perks are not created with the staff in mind, they are created as an ego stroke and something to brag about to the funders so they are more likely to donate to the organization. When you thought it couldn?t get worse, the ED treats women differently than their male counterparts, and does so by holding meetings to talk down and belittle the female staff under the guise of ?teaching?. These meetings take quite a lot longer than they need to, and you are expected to attend them at the ED?s beck and call, even if it is a complete inconvenience to you and takes away from doing your job. It is absolutely true what they say about people leaving bad bosses, not bad jobs. Working at Lenox Hill, the actual job-related tasks were not extremely difficult, and I was content on completing the tasks. However, working with the ED completely ruined my experience and my opinion of the organization. I think there is something to be said that the people with most power are white men. There is no diversity in the leadership and Lenox Hill is run like a dictatorship that only focuses to stroke one person?s ego, at the expense of clients and staff. The ED makes decisions based on a whim, and you are expected to ?do his work?, once he makes an executive decision, and when the decisions ultimately has a negative consequence, you are the person blamed and held responsible for things turning out badly, and you have to face the consequences. As the cherry on top of that sundae, the ED makes indirect racist comments to staff and sees no issue in that, even when it is brought to his attention. In the end, he is always right and eager to retaliate. He expects his staff to read his mind, and if they don?t, they face negative consequences. I would not recommend Lenox Hill and it is becoming more and more toxic of an environment created by upper management, and those who have direct contact with the ED are leaving by the numbers. Unfortunately, there are always new grads looking for jobs that get hired and then exposed to this kind of treatment, whether it is directly by the ED or not, as his actions are trickling down the organization. Take this as a cautionary tale. The money is not worth it.