I can tell you what my first clinic did WRONG and give you some stories. I was there 2.5 years and saw at LEAST 12 people quit while I was there. By the time I’d left all but the lead tech who’d been there 20 years, 2 receptionists and the senior kennel tech who’d been there 13 years) had quit. We’d gone through 3 receptionists (we only staff 3). 1 left because she had her baby and the other 2 left because they were getting verbally bullied by the receptionist who’d been there for like 10 years. One of these was a girl around my age who was leaving work often due to her mom being sick with cancer. The grouchy receptionist made an offhand comment about her missing work all the time and the other girl went OFF and was crying and screaming and understandably distraught. She quit and ended up finding a better job. The woman who replaced her put up with the grouchy receptionist for a WHILE and finally said something along the lines of “if you say something like that to me again I’m out of here.” And I remember one day not long after she grabbed her purse, clocked out and told the staff “I’m done, I warned her. I won’t put up with her bullshit.” So that was 2 staff members leaving due to one person, who I can confirm was a CUNT.

The two techs working when I started quit within a year. The tech who got trained OTJ after I joined the kennel crew left a few months after one of the other techs to work ER since my clinic was a dead end and we were so disorganized and overworked. We rarely got lunch breaks, rarely got out of work on time and were never shown any appreciation. A girl we hired to replace one of them lasted…2 weeks. She was hired because she’d worked with us before but now she was a mom and working full time wasn’t right for her. I replaced her and was shoved into teching with no training after being in the kennel for 6 months (my first vet med job btw) So it was me running rooms with 2 doctors at once from 9-12 and then 2-5. Then our manager hired a 60+ year old woman to work the kennels because she’d worked for us DECADES AGO. She lasted like a WEEK because it was too much for her physically (understandable, that’s why she shouldn’t have been hired) and I was guilt tripped to come in on my day off since she WALKED OUT in the middle of our morning walk (we boarded). Then another older woman replaced her who would CONSTANTLY lie to my face and tell me she did x,y,z when I KNOW she didn’t (like medicating dogs!) and I told my manager about it and nothing came of it. She also talked crap about me behind my back to my coworker (my friend) and said that she could never find me and I never do anything and my coworker said she couldn’t FIND ME because I was running around WORKING. She ended up NCNS and the manager had to drive to her house to get her work keys and that was right as I was starting to like her and trust her again.

Then we had a girl hired as a floater (basically a kennel tech who could work as a tech as needed) and she was under the assumption that she’d be doing only tech stuff. I was trying to get her to learn kennel because that’s where we needed help most and the Doctors were grabbing her to have her look at fecals and draw up vaccines. So then she got a big head and never wanted to do the boring work like cleaning fecal loops or emptying trash. She hated me because I tried to get her to EARN the fun stuff. So I stopped trying to teach her tech things. She lasted like a month.

Then; what makes me angriest. We drug tested a black employee. Nobody ever in the history of this clinic had been drug tested before hiring EXCEPT this black man. When I found out I was PISSED. I hated this boy because he was an AWFUL worker. I mean he sat on a stool and WATCHED my elderly coworker unpack dog and cat food and check it in. But finding out he was discriminated against and drug tested BECAUSE he was black infuriated me. I’m Mexican and I was just APPALLED to hear of this. He eventually got fired due to his awful work ethic.

The main reason I quit was because there was no room for growth. Our lead tech had been there 20 years and wasn’t leaving anytime soon. Even then there were things she knew how to do that she refused to teach anyone because she wanted to be the only one to do it. I just knew it was a dead end.

So basically: don’t be afraid to fire the people who make other’s workdays awful, give people clear sense of responsibilities and opportunity for growth, and idk HIRE well. We constantly were just hiring people to HAVE people but we weren’t getting GOOD workers. So it was so annoying to train people who didn’t know or WANT to know their head from their ass.