phlebotomist

mobile phlebotomist

network administrator

account manager

technician

Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center

I worked for this company for almost 7 years. At first it was okay working a float schedule, 6 days a week at 120+ hours every two weeks, opportunity to grow was okay, but there are way to many chiefs and not enough Indians. This company and what it stands for, saving lives and committing for life to saving lives by donating is a great thing to do for the people who need blood, but being and employee you have to literally commit your entire life to this job. In the past year and a half the new director of donor collections wanted to enforce the whole "Quality of Life" but that turned into only under their needs. We went from working lots of over time to nothing more then 40 a week, without notice. Which was okay cause we were getting that time with family that we did not always get and we were grateful for that, but after the turnaround rate went up to almost 50% we lost that time with our family cause, now they didn't have enough people to cover shifts and again without notice. You went from no overtime to 55+ hours a week. And to be honest its not the company and all that the company stands for it's the employees and the one's who are running the show. Half of them don't deserve to be in the positions they are holding. They would chose a friend to run under them before the chose person who is more then qualified for the position. I loved working for the blood center, but it was the people who pretended to care about your life and really didn't that ruined the whole time spent there. People are so two faced and its like working at one big high school. Everyone is in everyone business and don't let someone see you following to close to someone, you are then considered in the crowed and yes it all depends on the crowed of people you follow weather you succeed or not. And beware, they all seem to act like they care about your life, but don't trust information with anyone. It will soon to be heard from someone else's mouth but with a little more added. They don't care about there employees. Example: Your in a crowed hot room, lets say 80 degrees, and you call back to let them know, the temperature is out of range. They then tell you put the BLOOD in a place in range.... OK WHAT ABOUT THE STAFF THAT'S ABOUT TO PASS OUT FROM THE HEAT??? And on top of that, is pregnant... They don't even care to find a better solution, in efforts to make the staff comfortable... they only care about the product you are collecting. And yes while that is the most important thing to gain revenue... What about the people that go out every day, hot or cold, rain or shine? Without your staff, to go out everyday, there would be NO BLOOD. But Donor Collections is at the lowest part of the pyramid... when we are the most important part, but we were always treated like the last.... And for those who still work for the company will never say what I'm telling you now for the fear of losing their job. They don't care cause this company doesn't have to have a reason to fire you... Oh and miss work and don't provide and excuse, of provide one cause it doesn't matter to them... It still will always count against you... Oh and don't get injured on the job either, if your put on light duty for anything even if you are pregnant, please note... you are only allowed to be placed on light duty for 30 days, any more then that you are forced to take leave. If you have PTO you can use that but if not you will be on leave without pay. This is a hostel work environment, you have to deal with the staff and everyone around you wanting things their way not accommodating to the donors, when they are in fact, the only reason the company is still running. Without the donors, no one there would have a job.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The regular donors are amazing and being able to help save lives every day is very rewarding. Some, and I mean VERY FEW, of the staff are good people. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Pick anything - from trying to use your well deserved and earned PTO hours to reliving the high school mean girls this place will suck the life out of you and toss you aside. It’s also stressful watching the manager and her bestie purposefully defer a donor because they think she’s weird and  don’t want to stay for the platelets she’s been trying to donate. And to watch said bestie flirt with and try to give her number to a donor who’s married. (Btw if you’re man’s a fire fighter going to the sugar land location, send him elsewhere)

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Toxic! ¡Es toxico! You need to make friends in high places otherwise you won’t last and even then there’s no guarantee. You can literally save their @s$ess every. single. day.  and it doesn’t matter. Oh, and avoid the “head of people and culture, formerly HR” at all costs!!!!! It’s ok for him to violate HIPAA (with proof) but he will literally fire you over something that was hearsay. He’ll also fire you even when the proof he requested is sitting directly in front of his face, and he has no problem calling you a liar when a loved one dies so he can accuse you of wanting the weekend off…even though you were already scheduled off. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
That depends on who complained about you the day before and who they’re friends with. Every day is a mystery as to what you’ve done to irritate someone. If you’re gonna work here, get in REAL GOOD with your manager and coordinators and even then, don’t count on that to save you. ABSOLUTELY assume you’ve done something wrong any time they say they wanna talk to you, because any proof contrary wise isn’t taken into consideration. All it takes is the words of your lazy, gossiping coworker who’s besties with the manager and you can have video proof you didn’t do what they’re accusing you of and they’ll still tell you you’re making excuses and find you “guilty.”

The pay is great, benefits are great. Staff is garbage. The worst employees get the same raises and praises as even the best employees, even if management is blatantly just lazy and rude they are told its a no no and sent back as they were.  Nothing is ever really done. Favoritism is obvious. There's times I would be setting up for the day by myself and all the other girls are having a pow wow until opening time. The more we hired the bigger the pow wow got. Your opinion doesn't matter when the manager is IN the pow wow. Nothing ever gets addressed so by the time someone hits a boiling point it ends in an HR investigation then everything goes right back the way it was. If you can show up every day and truly give not one single F about anyone but yourself you can succeed here yet they are the first ones to preach being a team and top stressful situations off with a pizza party. Even during the freeze HQ management was mocking those without water and with busted pipes to "get over it and put a baseball cap over our unwashed hair and come to work" that we were  "milking it" because we could not safely drive to work or leave our homes to flood and our children were home from school due to the freeze. Everything is about conversion and production so upper management salary can get their bonuses. Even when you exceed goals you're told what you COULD be doing to push harder. Going out of your way just gets you no where so stick to  just what your job description entails. It takes one single upper to like someone and even if they are bad at their job they are secure. We will all mutually agree the person is horrible at their  job and nothing gets done because one upper likes them for one reason or another so it just continues and they are usually ones in position of power such as scheduling and running entire departments so the turn over rate is crazy in float staff dept. They have a coordinator that  can't coordinate anything in another department.  Managers who can't manage and when you finally implode some dumb dumb will just be like " you can do it " and throw you back out on the floor. 

I enjoyed working for TBC because it did allow me to grow as a professional. So much of my job involved: forecasting, problem solving, public speaking, and other great skills that are very useful in addition to being transferable if you do want a career change. Additionally, I felt that my colleagues were very genuine making it a wonderful department to work for.

 Nonetheless, the stress of meeting monthly goals by selling the "blood drive" can be a lot to handle. It takes patience in learning what each month might bring, and mastering it can take time. If you're a "goal seeker," and you love sales then this suits you. Moreover, changes are consistently being made and the responsibility to implement all the changes often falls on Recruiters. Although the responsibility might seem easily attainable it can be an unrealistic task to ask for on a regular basis. These changes are reflective on TBC trying to adapt to a changing population, so for that I applaud them. It's also reflective on the fact that blood donations are low and there's a desperate need to change to continue being a successful organization.

Lastly, I do feel that TBC needs to work on reaching the communities they wish to work with. Recruiters have the responsibility of connecting with the community, but it's hard to  when the proper tools are not there. Sure, this is where management would tell you to get creative, but that's another addition to what you're already responsible for.

I worked for the company for almost 7 years. Unfortunately, Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center seems to be on a steady decline. The pay was decent considering the lack of education/training required for employment. Phlebotomy positions with most other employers pays less. The company is a non-profit organization; there are some policies and procedures concerning employees that are acceptable because of this. Lunch breaks aren't a guarantee; regardless of the lengthy shift you may be scheduled to work. Attendance policy is zero-tolerance and totally empathy-free. Company politics are ridiculous. Scheduling could be fickle. Your schedule could change overnight; sometimes completely changing your shift time. An employee originally scheduled to some in at noon may be rescheduled to come in at 5am. This could be inconvenient for employees taking advantage of a late day and possibly making appointments prior to their shift. The turn around rate it high; this company has a consistently revolving door. For many years I enjoyed my job. I enjoyed my coworkers and the donors. I met new people everyday. Because we traveled, I better learned Houston and surrounding cities.

I don’t even know where to start. 

HR never got my pay right. Everyone I talked to about it told me the pay would be correct the next check and it never was. 
If they don’t like you, they will gang up on you and look for a reason to get you out of there. This wasn’t the case for me but it was happening to a girl while I was there. 
It’s a lot of women so it’s very messy and high school-ish. 
They talk a lot about their personal lives, especially sex, which will make a lot  of people uncomfortable. 
The managers and supervisors are very ignorant and rude.
Everyone is so unprofessional.  
They have SOPs to follow that they don’t when the higher ups leave for the night. 
The shift supervisors never wanted to work after the managers left. 
You’ll never have a consistent trainer that’s knowledgeable. 

If you are thinking about applying here... I can honestly say don’t. Save yourself the stress. The hours may sound great or work great for you but it’s not worth it. If you are debating between this job and another... pick the other. I thought I could stay here at least a year but I couldn’t. The environment is so negative that it’s draining. Sorry for the long review, I just wish I would have had someone tell me.

I like to be productive.  Some days are just not like that; there will be setbacks (when you're dependent on something or someone), or obstacles, or whatever the reason that at the end of the day, I feel like I wasn't very productive.  I don't like that.  But, I love to tackle things, love a challenge and when all works well and as I complete things, that's a very good feeling for me.  I am super busy at my job dealing with service requests, phone issues / outages / contracts, etc., that my days fly by.

I love the culture here.  I love my Director and my department.

What I'm not satisfied with is the salaries here.  We are a non-profit organization which is why we're not paid top dollar.

But, our mission at the Blood Center is awesome.  For me, personally, I have to respect the company I work for and my manager.  And, I do.

So, basically, all of my wants and needs are met here; fast paced work style being in IT, constantly changing which requires me to maintain flexibility.  The mission the company has, the culture, my love & respect for the company and my Director - I'm only dis-satisfied with how much money I make now vs being in IT previously for 14 years and making far more money.

Give me a job with the same as I have here and more money, I'm there!

Thank you.

The Blood Center's mission statement does not represent any of heir core values as a company when it comes to management. The constant favoritisms, open racism/discrimination, lies and assumptions from HR displays an unequal amount of politics within a "non-profit" organization. HR does not represent the company for all employees, just management and they will attempt to do whatever that they can to get rid of great employees just to move up their "friends" in positions they are not qualified to do. This continuous aggression shows clearly that the CEO or President of this company has either no idea of what is going on, or does not want to see the reason why employee retention is extremely high in mobiles and ndcs. The phlebotomists are the front line for all donors, but the appreciation of their hard work goes unnoticed by management on a daily basis. I have personally seen managers talk about their employees as "problems" instead of attempting to show empathy. This company once stood for it's mission statement, and I feel like the founder would be extremely disappointed with where the company is heading.

Component Production Tech I
March 2022- Sept 2022


I worked here for about six months..
In that time i was offered a tech III position that I refused to take.

I was driving about an hour each day to get to work and In those six months I never was late once, nor did I ever ask off.
The work life balance is terrible here, if you have a family I don’t suggest you working here because I can promise you that you will be very unhappy in the long run.
This company is not very family oriented, I don’t think this company cares about its employees.

You work until 12:30-1am, you come home and go to sleep only to wake up and be back here.
That’s exactly how this place will feel like, you will have no life and on top of that the work here is too much.

The supervisors are lazy, they seem to forget that they were once in our shoes and when they feel threatened they will generate evidence for you to not get a raise later in the year.

I was terminated for no reason, HR will side against you in any situation and if you ever do go to HR you will only paint yourself a target for termination.


First of all I love that my job is important.This company needs to work on a lot of things. The managers do not help out as much as they could. I also have a coworker that doesn't help out as much either. The work life balance has gotten better but it still needs improvement. They do hold us back from being 100 percent at work. They expect for you to recruit and recruit, at the end of the year you are put on a rating scale and are told you don't do much or you could work on this aspect and that is suppose to get you to get a "raise". Highest raise I've seen was a 3 or 4 percent. To be considered the highest working  you have to do ALOT for GCRBC. A raise that doesn't even help much at all for a year's work. I am getting tired of this to be honest to always be recruiting and not even seeing it on your paycheck. You can grow in this company easily with hard work  SOPs and procedures are always changing so it keeps you on your toes so that is pretty cool. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Phlebotomist 3 salaries reported	$22.92 per hour
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Account manager 4 salaries reported	$54,284 per year
Technician 1 salary reported	$18.73 per hour

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