Now we know how quick UF is to mute & cover up any negative comments or information that comes to light so there will be a linked repost in-case this gets deleted.
Hello my fellow Central Floridians good tidings. I made this throwaway for the express purpose of sharing my experience & perspective of my employment at one of the most prestigious universities in CF.
Speaking purely as a local there’ve been many benefits to UF’s placement here, hell Gainesville wouldn’t be what it is today without UF, but that in itself is an issue. I’ve seen the conglomeration of UF in real time, eating away at viable land & businesses. I’ve witnessed firsthand the impact of prioritizing students over civilians, and the preferential treatment that’s provided to anyone in association with the university. It’s created a dichotomy between those solely paying taxes & those paying tuition, well, until they aren’t anymore. UF is no longer a soupçon of Gainesville, Gainesville is a soupçon of UF.
Look no further than how they treat their employees. My experience in my department is just that, my specific experience in my specific department, I cannot speak for a staff or department I had no engagement in however I don’t believe you’d be hard pressed to find other employees or ex-employees with a similar experience.
I’ll keep things as detailed as I can without compromising anyone’s identity, as my gripe is with the institution at large & its practices, not any one singular individual.
I was admittedly a lower tier employee. I was a fresh hire on with no experience in the field of our daily operations, or real motivation to further develop my knowledge/skills to move into a more “secure” position. I was “entry level”, helping reach day-to-day quotas & upkeep, compared to “individual contributors” that were more vital to processing & gathering information for their managers who just get to be talking heads above that.
I say that to say I knew my job security was, fragile to say the least. UF offered a six month training/probationary period for this position, & my colleagues reassured me it would probably take most of the six months to sufficiently learn the ins & outs of day-to-day operations. What they didn’t warn me about was the rotation of employees every six months, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Here’s a short summary of every workplace incident I could recall:
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Two verbal incidents of racism from a manager, both in front of my other department manager which isn’t unfathomable but it’s weird it happened twice. Three times if you count the interview my other POC friend had with the same manager. UFHR’s response? N/A.
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Same manager verbally berated & cursed at a coworker. UFHR response? N/A.
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Verbally harassed & ogled by coworker my FIRST DAY on the job.
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A coworker OD’d on Ketamine in the faculty locker room (has yet to be released to my knowledge)
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A coworker physically tackled & assaulted an older coworker, who thereafter said they wouldn’t press charges but they wouldn’t work with said coworker again. UFHR’s response? Facility transfer
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I was exposed to unregulated chemicals & nano particles as a result of improper training/PPE. UFHR’s response? N/A.
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Coworker reported repeated & continuous verbal abuse from a coworker & physical abuse from a manager. You can probably guess what UFHR did about that?
UFHR is an utter joke. I called their directory trying to find my specific HR Rep for our department & they acted like I was insane. They had ZERO clue who I was asking for & after 13 minutes and four transfers, I literally typed in Google my department + HR & found my HR Rep in less than half a minute.
Regardless we’re nearing the end of my personal grievances & my professional relationship with the company. They pull me aside at the tail end of my probationary period, “sorry, we don’t feel you’re a good fit, effective immediately you’re being terminated, reasoning: tardiness, you had more than three in a single month”. So they fired me after six months for being late more than three times in a month when I’d told them since signing on, “I don’t have a car, my primary transportation is the local bus” regardless they fired me mid-pay period, no warning (which I know they have legal grounds to do) & at the end of my housing lease so I virtually had no income to acquire new housing. My HR Rep told me I could file for financial support through one of UF’s programs, only to find out 2.5 weeks later that program is only available to CURRENT UF employees, so they basically flat out lied to me, which wouldn’t be the first time. All my benefits, pet insurance, health insurance, gone. And a real cherry on top is part of their policy is once you’re fired you can’t be reconsidered for employment for a year minimum, so now I’m barred from directly working for the company or any of its subsidiaries for the next year, the same company that employs 1/5th of our local population.
The main thing I wanted to get across is to any potential employees, they don’t care about you or anything that exists outside of UF. Again I’m not the only one who feels/felt this way. Of the original staff I began my probationary period with, there is now ONE remaining coworker, & across every facility our department covers I think we were “fully staffed” four-five months ago just to lose 1/3rd of our staff if not more. If that isn’t indicative of something idk what is. And now they’re clamoring for new hires to cycle through the same six months of BS. The entire work culture is “don’t rock the boat, head down, make it to payday”. Sincerely, abandon hope all ye who enter here.
TLDR; UF’s bumbling management nearly left me homeless.