Pros
The only pros were my lovely coworkers and the very occasional free treatment
Cons
Where do I even begin? This company is the epitome of profit over care for its employees or customers. It’s the worst job I’ve ever had and I worked in customer service for 10+ years before becoming a nurse. As most nurses know, it’s hard to gain experience in the aesthetic nursing field, something that LA exploits in its new nurse hires. For the first 6-9 months you’re guaranteed to be doing around 6 hours of rushed laser hair removal per shift. Double to quadruple booked appointments all day, means the whole day is incredibly rushed, stressful, and UNSAFE for patients. The nurses are forced to rush through appointments to keep up with the constantly overbooked schedule. Which is not only unsafe for patients - can lead to improper settings, which can burn and permanently scar someone, and is hell for nurses to have to somehow keep up with. When nurses speak up, we’re gaslit that we can’t “multitask”. Overlapping three 1 HOUR full body hair removal appointments is impossible but that’s what they expect you to do on the daily. The sales people in the front who make the schedule are making commission off every single customer so they don’t have any incentive to lighten up the schedule. Bc of the overpacked schedule, almost all the pt’s end up waiting past their scheduled appt times and they (understandably) are annoyed by the time the nurse sees them which makes it even more stressful. Nurses go without breaks, even tho we’re forced to say we took them when we clock out of the end of the day - I’m sure to avoid LA getting sued. When I worked there I developed intense chronic neck and shoulder pain from holding the LHR machine for 6 hrs a shift. Another concern are the carcinogenic fumes from the burnt hair the LHR machine produces. The LHR rooms are filled with these fumes (which contain people’s bio material as well, I looked into this when I started working there because it didn’t seem right). There is no ventilation of any kind in the LHR rooms, and during training the trainer told us we didn’t even have to wear masks. Breathing carcinogens for 6 hours a shift is not safe but LaserAway doesn’t address this or care of course. Hygiene was severely lacking in many of the locations. Because of the overpacked and rushed schedule, the rooms were almost never properly sanitized between patients. The sales staff are supposed to help nurses do this but I very often saw almost no sanitation between clients. That means the same laser hair removal wand that was just in someone’s brazilian area is being used for the next patient’s face LHR. It was absolutely disgusting and I felt so bad for patients that are paying THOUSANDS of dollars for these packages. They advertise working 1-2 weekend days out of the month but I was scheduled 5-8 weekend days a month. Their multiple a week “on call” shifts are ridiculous, you have to wait til 8 am to text a number to see if you have to drive to a number of Bay Area locations to start that day at 945. I lived in the east bay but was expected to be ready to drive as far as the marina location in SF, Corte madera, Novato, etc (all an hour or more drive in morning commute traffic). The on call shifts also made it hard to make personal appts or maintain a life outside work hours bc you have to be ready to jump when LA says jump. The sales tactics are shady. In the few moments outside the treatment rooms when we would be using the bathroom, getting a bite to eat, resting for a second, nurses would constantly be asked to give their medical opinion to help sell overpriced packages to potential customers for services they usually did not need. The sales are commission for your coworkers, so you’re put in a tough position to lie to customers or potentially lose a sale and income for your coworker.