dental assistant

dentist

dental technician

associate dentist

processor

Affordable Dentures & Implants

When I first started with this company I was beyond surprised at how lucky I was to be there. Everyone seemed really nice and I felt like I might have found a place to work until I retire, which is my ultimate goal. I realized after a few months that I didn't really fit in with their circle. There was about 12 people who worked there and I started noticing that I was feeling like I didn't belong, like I was disliked and needed to worry about my job security. I expressed my feelings of uneasiness to my manager only to be falsely assured that I was fine. I chose to listen but I had a nagging feeling that she could not be trusted and was throwing me under the bus when I wasn't around. (Very childish behavior, I know, but I'm the 4th person she's done this to so I know it's not just a one time occurrence). I wanted to go to my district manager but I was convinced by the people in this office that contacting her would be pointless as she doesn't do her job, will just cause problems for me if I complain, she will not care and has it out for everyone in that office...so I felt my hands were tied and I had no one to go to as far as HR issues. 

My termination started as this:
My manager came into work with the flu, passed it on to me. When she returned from being sick I was full blown sick and needed to stay out, but I did not do this until she told me I had to leave because I was running a fever. 

I did exactly as I was told: I left, went to the doctor, tested positive for the flu, and stayed home until I was fever free for 24 hours (or that was the plan at least). 

Instead I was TEXTED from the dentist saying that corporate was terminating my employment and that I am an amazing worker that he'd be happy to recommend me. 

When I asked why this was happening he said that my heart wasn't in the job. 
I never once received any reprimand, review, coaching, write-up or anything else to indicate that there was a problem with my work performance. 

I was fired with a very vague and confusing text, while ordered out for the flu. No real reason, nothing for me to try and improve upon for my next position, nothing. 

I truly believe I was pushed out by people that just didn't like me and completely disregarded me as a person in general in the process. These kinds of people disgust me in every way. Playing games like this with people's lives is completely unprofessional and appalling. My experience here went from a dream to a nightmare in a few months and I have no idea why they thought I deserved that. 

In addition to the unprofessional way this was handled, the dentist called an employer I was applying with and bad mouthed me to them. I'm still working on doing something about that currently because I'm fairly positive he isn't allowed to do that. 

He also took my bonus that I earned. 25% of my quarterly pay was to be on my last paycheck, this was money I earned in 2019 and we would not have reached our bonus goal if I had not worked the week of Christmas, allowing our office to open and draw in the revenue we needed to reach said goal. 
Good people don't practice business like this, it just doesn't happen. 

This is the kind of place you'll work for if you work for Affordable Dentures and Implants in Loudon/Lenoir City, TN. 
I'm sure other offices owned by ADI are ran better than this but this location has a lot of underlying issues.

Typical day at work includes busting your rear off supporting 400+ dental clinics with different environments in each one. Chances are if your IT you will be given a role like Voip Support, Network support, etc but you have to solve issues that ave no resolution like Clinics operating on DSL internet or Practice owners being cheap and not wanting to invest in reliable equipment 

Solving issues can quickly turn into back and forth with leadership when the owners need to dish out money for upgraded internet bandwidth and systems. The problem is most owners are cheap and your expected to still fix things somehow with the wave of a wand. I spent 4 of the most stressful years of my career here. 

Management isn't supportive nor care what you need for work in IT. They just expect results and you have CIO and Directors of Tech who don't know anything about the industry. The culture is about rear-kissing management and who is the coolest with the directors have the job security. I saw people come and go like flies in my 4 years there. I was only there due to my hard work and diligence but if I could turn back i would've left the job when I had the chance. 

Workplace culture is horrific. People are ready to throw others under the bus and rub their hands at workplace drama. 

The hardest part of the job is having 1-2 people doing one role for the entire company and they keep adding more dental clinics to the environment. When I started there were 200 and it was manageable. When I left they were at 500 and refused to hire more staff or pay us more. They expect you to work until the issue is resolved and won't let you go home in the afternoon if something pops up. Modern Day Slavery: The Plantation of Modern Day Corporations. No Diversity in Upper Management

The most enjoyable part of my job was my lunch break. I couldn't wait to get the heck out of there at the end of my shift. I lasted 4 years here because I worked 2 years remotely during Covid and I didn't have to go to the office. The office culture was the worst I have ever been in. I have worked Medical, Pharma, and Federal. This Dental culture was worse than all those combined. 



this is a great job i was able to get promoted to my last position before i left, i loved the benefits,hours,and the patients. unfortunately there’s other workers that do not want to work and it makes it a difficult place to work at. it’s sad to watch other people not care about patients and send them home with half done work. that’s bad for the company and makes patients always have to return. i have seen people say they traveled 30 plus miles just to come to our office and have to keep returning. some good employees but they get scared off by the bad ones, those same bad ones always want more money but not take the responsibility to do more work. they are the lazy works that never clean you see blood and mess everywhere AGAIN not good for the company and if you tell any higher ups they don’t care. also the lazy people who get paid a lot do nothing but sit at the computers while lower paid people are running around working hard. those same lazy people are people who have been in the field longer than the lower paid ones but you would think opposite cause the new people work great and they ACTUALLY care about these patients. i constantly had to go and help the lazy people and stop doing my job that was important cause they can’t handle the work. i know the work. i had to give out cases late due to me having to help people that cannot work. also they over work the people that don’t get paid much and they are always on their backs but not the ones that get paid a lot they get to be lazy and get away with A LOT especially if you become buddy buddy with whoever is in charge or sweet talk them then you can do whatever or make so much over time and get paid more. unfortunately i was not a suck up so i had to deal with the difficult things. WHILE also being in lots of pain and pregnant basically working two positions running around and getting paid low and always being questioned, i knew i was a good worker since patients would call or come in and ask for me and then when i would go to help they would say they got treated bad by the other workers. they under value good workers, it’s just the honest truth and the bad workers won’t say nothing cause they get the promotions and raises…. just being honest 

The dentist here is a joke! He belittles any person who walks in the door. He avoids all conflicts makes someone else take care of any issue that goes on and then trash talks that person he just made to be the bad guy. This company would be better off getting a new dentist! They would help a ton more people and would actually have staff that enjoys coming to work. He uses entirely way to much medicine on patients and could care less if they are dripping blood everywhere while walking out of the building. He lies to patients about what services they actually need just to “hit” his numbers for the month. He only “cares” about himself. The front desk staff is lazy and sits around and trash talks patients and the other staff. Patients wait for hours at a time just to be seen for simple adjustments 2-3 hours. Proper PPE is not available to staff because he is to cheap to purchase it for us. But he is covered! Some of the staff that does the ordering said he won’t allow them to purchase the proper gear for us to wear. It takes money out of his pocket. Proper cleaning and sterilizing of surgical instruments are not done and according to the rest of the staff that is nothing new. I’ve watched one of his assistants in the middle of surgery rinse With water a surgical instrument that was used on another patient who just had a tooth extracted and take it to the current surgery because she couldn’t find one that was sterile. He is fully aware that this happens and just plays dumb! If you do the right thing and say something then the dentist and that assistant bullies you. The assistants aren’t allowed to have lunches or breaks because there isn’t enough hired. When we ask for help from anyone up front they all play stupid. There is no teamwork in this building. Patients complain all of the time but nothing is ever done. It doesn’t matter how much patients complain to him or affordable care “corporate” nothing ever changes. They just blame it on someone else. Or the dentist gets mad and takes it out on everyone.

Depending on where you work it can be great. I started with the company and loved it. I worked hard and I was very passionate about my job. My patients loved me and I loved them. Problems raised when I clocked in manually, which was never told to me that I couldn’t also it was an option to do. A new doctor took over when the original owner left after six months (obviously he didn’t like this company either hence why he went to open his own.) This new doctor called corporate on me and made me out to be a liar when clocking in. They instantly fired me after a year of working there. After never being late. Never missing days of work. Being a full dedicated employee. Never got a write up and never had verbal warnings. A Normal business would tell you what is proper ways to do things and what you can’t do. Not only did that happen this doctor then smeared and slandered my name to the workers there and told them my business along with making me out to be a complete liar. They wanted to hire back someone who had a DUI on corporate time on a company trip BUT the way I clocked in I was fired on the spot for it. Very bad corporation to work for. Be careful with this job. They play favoritism to certain employees and they can and will fire you for anything they want to without warning. BE CAREFUL! Besides that this was my dream job and my career that I used to say was forever. I loved it and never had any issues the whole time that I worked there. I guess it depends on the doctor that takes over also if your employees want you back or not. They fight for certain ones and not others. Very unfair to people. It’s not right and they need to fix being that way to people. Losing your whole career without notice is a life changing event so just be careful.


I previously worked at Affordable for 6 months before finding another position. I had little experience in the dental field as well as no x-ray certification. I feel I was trained properly by the assistant who then moved into the lab. The doctor was very helpful, always answering questions, willing to show me how to do things, etc. I got along with all my co-workers and things went well for the most part.

Some concerns I had included the infection control training for the other assistant. From co-workers, it sounded like infection control was previously an issue and was mentioned to our manager but it still continued to be an issue throughout the 6 months of my employment. Myself and another co-worker constantly reminded the assistant of infection control but that did not seem to help. There were also only two assistants. When one of us would call out sick, it was up to the other assistant to work by themselves for the day. I also got tired of coming in a few minutes early to set up for the day including exam rooms when the other assistant would show up on time or late. 

My main reason for leaving was after we were informed there were a lot of lay-offs throughout the whole company. We were told our office would be okay but then we lost our lab processor. There was rumors of us losing another employee, one of the two assistants. I started my job search then. After putting in my resignation, I was basically begged to rethink my decision, which included a conversation with the regional manager. There were different stories on what actually was going to happen or not happen with lay-offs, but I could not trust my manager or the regional manager. 

Worked here for a year.  I had 80 hours of un-used vacation and when I resigned, they didn't pay my earned vacation time . Tried to contact them without much success besides "we don't pay vacation time. " Well  In Colorado, the law is vacation time is earned income so I'm Working on getting a lawyer. 

Pay is low ($12hr) considering the highly specialized skills and time you have to dedicate to learn to do the job right. Even when you move up positions, they pay isn't good. Pay need to be adjusted in places with higher cost of living. Hard to keep employees that will stay when raises don't keep up with cost of living. Thats why people jump jobs every few years because you're losing money if you stay at a job too long.

They claimed to give bonuses after the practice was paid off...A year after it was paid off, still no bonus, but we made top 25 practices in the country in only 2 years.  

They complain and complain about its hard to find Technicians but training is not-existant. They will claim they train you, but its nothing formal. Basically they hope the other employees will have goodwill to train you and hopefully they teach you right.
They have a training facility in North Carolina that they use for new hires of friends and family of top management. I requested many times after year of working there to go to program with no response. 

Management is not qualified, not organized, and doesn't communicate. No teamwork. Political who gets jobs. you could be 20 years old and be a manager or 20 years experience and never move up.

I had high hopes for this career.

My experience at this company was very negative, largely due to the workplace culture and management style. I often felt disrespected, and at times the environment came across as unprofessional and overly stressful.

In my opinion, management lacked the leadership, communication skills, and training needed to effectively support the team. Expectations were often unclear or inconsistent, which made it difficult to succeed in the role. When employees tried to raise concerns or suggest improvements, it frequently felt like those concerns were dismissed or handled in a way that added more frustration rather than resolving the issue.

I did not feel that HR functioned as a dependable or supportive resource. This made it challenging to address workplace concerns or feel confident that issues would be handled appropriately.

The workload was demanding, and although employees consistently worked hard to meet goals, I felt that recognition and compensation did not reflect that effort. This contributed to ongoing stress and low morale.

There were also concerns with the physical work environment, including cleanliness and limited workspace, which made day-to-day work less comfortable than it should have been.

Overall, I found the environment to be high-pressure and difficult to sustain long term. From my perspective, meaningful improvements in leadership, communication, and employee support are needed.


this place is very hard to work at its tough on your body and every bite taken is a bad bite which means resets and retrys  are very high the lab does every piece of work while the assistant do nothing the lab is treated like machines, this is same day dentures your making at least 15 to 25 a day the manager only sets the dentures and after that he's gone and leave all the work to other employees no help, on top of making 15-25 dentures a day the lab has to sweep parking lot, clean all dirty impression trays and etc. theres no talking allowed in the lab you only get one 30 minute break AFTER all dentures are done being made so that's around 3 o'clock. and most of all corporate tells you that if all of your work is finished before 2:30 then the rest of the day is paid in full but that's not the case if your finished then somehow someway management will keep you in lab until 4 o'clock and after 4 o'clock your pay is cut in half at a hourly rate so if you make 10 an hour then after 4 you only make $5 a hour and during tax season your making 25-40 dentures so every denture is retried at least 2 times which means the lab will not finish until after 6:30 or 7 o'clock

Get ready to feel like just another number after the “honeymoon period.”  The big challenge in the DSO model is that profit must be taken from the company to pay investors a return on their investment.  As a business owner, I have no complaints of the company making a profit.  To their investors, this is just another business opportunity to get a return from. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the company leaves far too little money left for compensation of those who keep it running. 

Generally they have average to good  compensation (25% of production) for doctors at the PLLC model if there is good patient flow. Managers also have above average  compensation. But the remaining support staff are typically brand new and will never stay for long because they leave to other jobs that value them more (usually for 50 cents to $1 more/hour :-(. The company is too cheap to pay them higher wages. High turnover leads to a poor patient experience and a very challenging work environment. 

All of this culture leads to an overworked under appreciated staff. The patients suffer at the hoops they must jump through to resolve any issues that may arise regarding their care. The staff generally don’t have a vested interest in the success of the company because they don’t feel appreciated. If they love the doctor they work with, it can be rewarding, at least for a period of time. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Dental assistant 96 salaries reported	$23.15 per hour
Dentist 13 salaries reported	$300,000 per year
Dental technician 22 salaries reported	$27.43 per hour
Associate dentist 20 salaries reported	$350,000 per year
Processor 11 salaries reported	$16.27 per hour

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