LaserAway reviews

To anyone reading this review, I urge you not to take the following words lightly, as every sentence has been delicately chosen in an effort to protect you from making a detrimental mistake in your career. Over the last 2 years, LaserAway has become such a distressing, disturbing, and disappointing environment that it started to haunt my dreams. Imagine how fowl a workplace has to be to torment you in your sleep. I want to make it very clear that if you are considering applying to an open position at this company, please refrain from doing so and keep your mental, emotional, and physical well being intact. This is going to be a lengthy review but I feel that this information is vital for those who are curious and eager to apply. If you do not have time to read this review in depth, let me first put it simply; LaserAway does not care about medical staff. LaserAway cares about sales and reviews. If you are not making LaserAway money, you are worthless, invaluable, and replaceable. Now if you do have time, here are some of the changes that have transpired over the last couple of years that have made the pits of hell seem like a better place to work. About a year ago, LaserAway removed the "schedule view" from clinician access. This feature had allowed clinicians to have a clear picture of their day, showing the time spent with each patient in an organized way. They claimed this change was made to "decrease our stress" by letting patient care coordinators at the front desk fully manage the schedules. The real reason for its removal was to allow patients to be double and triple booked without it being as obvious on the schedule view. Essentially, the mentality was: if we can't see the problem, it must not exist! For background, patient care coordinators are primarily focused on making sales, as most of their income comes from commissions. If they don't sell, they don't earn. Daily patient schedules are the absolute least of their worries, making every day the new worst day of your life as a clinician. LaserAway is now triple booking time slots, expecting you to see three patients in the time it previously took to see one. We use laser machines capable of causing severe burns, and with safety not being a priority, your license is at risk. This company could not care less. Additionally, LaserAway recently extended operating hours from 10 AM - 6 PM to 10 AM - 8 PM on Mondays and Thursdays. Initially, the plan was to have one clinician work from 10 AM - 6 PM and another from 12 PM - 8 PM. However, LaserAway decided that instead of paying for two clinicians, they would have one clinician handle twice the workload for a 10-hour shift. These shifts only include one 30-minute lunch break. While they state that we should take two 10-minute breaks per day, these breaks are not actually scheduled, so they NEVER happen. Furthermore, they recently revised the time allotted for Coolsculpting treatments. They removed time blocks in between applicators that allowed for removal and prep for the following applicator. What this means is that you are now expected to use time out of your next appointment to change applicators, further causing stress and delays. All so that they can slam one more life or death vaginal hair removal on the schedule. To make matters worse, the company no longer adheres to the listed hours. They allow patients to show up one minute before closing time, and we are expected to treat them. If your child is in aftercare, expect the school to close at 6:30, and for your child to wait on the sidewalk of a busy street in the pouring rain, because you will never make it to pick them up on time. Lasering a man’s chest hair will always be more important. When it comes to safety measures and quality control, there is no effort to maintain machines or the buildings in which we work. AC units in all clinics across our state have been breaking, leading to temperatures above 90 degrees in the treatment rooms—this is not an exaggeration. The cleaning crew is only present at the facility three times per week. That's three out of seven days. So, imagine the toilets, the trash cans, and the smell of hair that lingers without a cleaning crew for four days each week. LaserAway is a medical establishment, and something tells me that is a health code violation. The company used to value and respect holidays and work life balance. They are now opening on what few holidays we used to have off. We were forced to work on Easter, the holiest day of the year for those who celebrate. Who needs the day to praise our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ when Ashley needs the hair on her derriere removed? There is ZERO work life balance. In our state we as clinicians used to work together to generate a schedule that balanced weekends and weekday shifts. That has now gone out the window as we can be scheduled wherever, whenever. Making birthdays, holidays, attending your children’s events….. all a thing of the past. Prepare to be absent for any and every event that has ever meant something to you. We no longer have regional managers, our only source of actual clinical support within the company. Our previous regional manager was a beacon of compassion, radiating kindness and warmth. Under her guidance, we felt safe, seen, and cared for. Instead of statewide regional managers, we now have east and west coast medical directors who post on average 5-10 threatening messages on Slack per week about areas needing improvement. Interestingly, in the last couple of weeks, they have suddenly opened a regional position. It appears they need a scapegoat to take the blame for issues stemming directly from corporate mismanagement. The role of a medical regional comes with significantly more responsibility than that of a lead clinician, yet the raise offered is no where near proper compensation. It's no surprise that as things spiral out of control within the company, they suddenly find the budget for a regional position. Where was this budget when we needed a new regional for over 6 months? Our raises for the last 2 years have been a little over one dollar per hour. Which equates to virtually nothing in this economy. There is no room for growth other than being lead clinician, and if the clinic you work in already has a lead clinician, then you do the math. You will never be anything more, you will never have any chance of a greater promotion. There are no tiers of raises based on positive reviews or patient feedback. You are forced to strive for greatness with zero compensation. The only ounce of fraudulent positivity comes from the use of emojis on Slack. We were explicitly told that we were all obligated to respond to every single Slack post to prove that we are “active participants,” in the company. Anything less than fake exaggerated enthusiasm is unacceptable. This company runs off of fear. Every email, every slack post, is about what we need to do more of to make more money or spend less of the company’s money. They use fear, manipulation, and intimidation tactics to keep you feeling powerless. Do not dare voice your opinion, you will be gaslit into thinking YOU are the problem. The company demands that you ask for Google reviews after every treatment. Thus, after you were 45 minutes late to your appointment, treated a patient in a steaming hot room, and had to turn the laser machine on and off four times during the treatment because it kept giving error codes, please make sure you beg your patient to leave you five stars!!! Reviews and patient surveys run the world here. If a patient leaves a bad survey, you will be notified immediately. You will then have to defend yourself vigorously. Be ready to live in constant fear of bad reviews 24/7. You will never feel free because you never know who is filling out their patient survey, potentially obliterating you at this very moment, whether for being late when you don’t control the schedule or for lack of results when they show up once every eight months for treatment. Every single week, there is a new “protocol change” that wipes away what little ounce of respect the company was giving clinicians. BUT these changes might BOOST SALES?!!! So who cares about a clinician’s physical well being????? For example, in the past there were scheduling standards to abide by, clinicians could not do back to back laser hair removals if they were over 60 min each. This would allow the lasers to cool and allow the clinicians to take a break from the grueling and lengthy process. Now, there are ZERO protocols, anything goes, you can have two 90 minute lasers back to back with 15-30 minute ADDITIONAL lasers booked at the beginning and the end of each 90 minute appointment. There are ZERO boundaries in place. You are expected to read and reply to emails and slack posts immediately on your days off. You are to blame for any and every adverse event that occurs. You will be questioned. You will be made to feel responsible, despite it clearly being the patient’s fault for lack of proper aftercare. Laseraway keeps track of how many patients you have turned away. Why would a company care about the metrics behind clinicians using SAFETY STANDARDS such as recent sun exposure to turn a patient away? Simply because they would rather risk it if it means a patient doesn’t refund their package???? Food for thought. Clinicians made an attempt to voice all of these concerns and the result concluded that these conditions are expected in aesthetics and we could actually be working harder. Alas, instead of trying to do ANY single thing to make the work place better for clinicians, the answer is that we are the problem. Perhaps the problem actually lies within the fact that those in upper management lack business degrees. Majority of those who occupy corporate positions at LaserAway are in these roles simply because they know people or have excelled in their lower level remote and clinic positions. NOT because they have years of experience and education to warrant such a pay raise. Picture this: you're in a stifling 92-degree room with a patient who has paid thousands of dollars for their first radio frequency microneedling facial. You started their treatment 30 minutes late because you were double booked twice in a row. Now, you have to interrupt their appointment (that they PAID THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS FOR) to change a Cool Sculpting applicator. As you rush to the Cool Sculpting room, a patient care coordinator (PCC) intercepts you in the hallway. They ask you to assess a patient who walked into the clinic and convince them they need a treatment they are NOT eligible for, all so the PCC can make a sale as they are also getting ripped to shreds in their own Sales Slack channel. When you finally walk into the Cool Sculpting room you see that the applicator popped off but the machine never notified you because all of the “ new and better” Cool Sculpting Elite machines don’t work properly and do not transmit vital messages. The Cool Sculpting patient is now angry because they just wasted 35 minutes without the applicator properly on. After speaking to the patient, addressing the extended time needed for this patient’s treatment with the PCC, and reapplying an entirely new applicator, you are now an additional 30 minutes behind on the microneedling appointment. The new patient is now furious because she is sweating in the room with a broken AC and the numbing cream she applied to her face and neck 90 min ago has worn off, meanwhile your next three appointments are waiting for you in the lobby and each person is enraged at the wait time because they don’t realize they are all double booked on top of one another. By the way, LA corporate makes sure to exclaim every chance they get that a full lobby is a happy lobby, not sure what full happy lobby on planet earth they have ever stepped foot in but I digress. The PCCs are badgering you about why you're behind schedule because patients are being rude in the lobby. You haven’t had a chance to use the restroom in five hours. Your entire lunch break was spent cleaning, charting, calling back patients with adverse reactions, or documenting follow-up notes for all the customer service issues arising from lack of results. Don’t forget to check your phone in between every patient to read the 4-6 Slack messages about how inadequate you and your team are for the company. You go home feeling defeated, wondering, 'Am I alone in feeling this way?’... Well, considering other days, this was a relatively good day at LaserAway.