Patricia Dahl

Recent College Graduates Beware This job consists of cutting eyeballs out of dead people. The fact that the management at EBSR is worse than having to manhandle a smelly corpse in a dark, drippy morgue is so sad its laughable. The managers at EBSR are in a perpetual, petty spat against each other, with each department pitting their employees against the other's. When the managers are not attempting to use their employees as pawns in the company politics of a tiny, disorganized non-profit, they are using their own department's employees as scapegoats for their own mistakes. While there are a myriad of anecdotes I could tell you to give you a clear insight to this company, only one needs to be shared. This is what made me quit the Eye-Bank for Sight Restoration: One night, during my lunch break, my manager calls me to let me know she needed me to recover a pair of corneas from a hospital in Westchester, NY. This particular night was that of a blizzard. The mayor of NYC had declared a state of emergency, advising people to stay off the roads at all costs. Looking at the FDR drive from the EBSR office windows, I could see cars with their hazard lights on, struggling as they slipped and slid across the highway. Simply put, I did not feel safe being on the road, even with the option of a car service to drive me and pick me up. When I expressed this concern for my own safety to my manager, she angrily expressed that she was the judge of my safety, not myself. I refused to go recover the corneas, which I was right to do. The technician that went in my place took over 3 hours to make the normally 1 hour drive. This is due to the fact that he had to drive uphill through icy side roads, as the the highways were being shut down. Not only did he have to deal with these horrid conditions, but he was driving over ACTIVE POWER LINES. He expressed this to my manager, who told him she was glad I did not go, as I was still a novice driver. To top it all off, the pair of corneas my coworker risked his life to get were improperly screened by the EBSR, as they turned out to be septic and un-useable. Due to the fact that my manager had screamingly threatened me with a firing, in the middle of my lunch break nonetheless, I took the issue to HR. HR took some notes on what happened and told me he would follow up. Two days later I am pulled into a meeting with HR and two of my managers. They wanted me to sign an admission of insubordination which would make me lose 2 of my hard-earned vacation days. They claimed this was due to a refusal to work overtime, completely ignoring the physical risk they put their own employees through. This was ridiculous cover-up, as I was consistently racking up overtime hours every week, which many times you have to fight payroll to get paid in full. After contesting their claims and refusing to sign the document, the HR representative began yelling at me at the top of his lungs. I quit on the spot. EBSR has a very nasty habit of hiring recent college grads and trying to convince them that their abusive, unprofessional, and disorganized ways of running the company are normal in the "real world". The amount of times I have been discriminated against as "young and naive" are too many to count. Quitting this place was the best thing I ever did for myself. Don't make the same mistake that I did. I was better off unemployed. Thankfully, the day after I quit I got an offer for my current job, with a fantastic manager, and higher pay