Complaint Review: Express Employment Professionals - Des Moines Iowa

Applied online and was called in for interview by Express Employment Professionals.  After filling out more application forms in their office, I was told to give urine sample for drug screen - right on the spot.  There were several people in the Express Pros office at the time, and the receptionist had to go back to the bathroom to retrieve the sample in between applicants.  This is not proper procedure - anyone could go into the bathroom and tamper with your sample - people can be very competitive when looking for jobs.  Someone is supposed to seal and register your sample before allowing another person into the bathroom to give a sample.

When I was hired, it happened very fast, right on the spot, to start the next day.  I was not given a time slip for recording my time at the job (even though I went back to ExpressPros a second time and asked for one).   The ExpressPros recruiter said she would be on the job site and would show me around and clock me in.  When I arrived for work to start the next morning, the ExpressPros recruiter did not show up!  No one knew where she was.  She did not call me or anyone else to explain what I should do.  I hung around the job site, waiting for her.  Someone from the company showed me around, but people did not know what I was there for.  There was no company time card for me and I was not clocked in to start work.  A person really cannot just show up at a company and start working.  Someone took me to a different department and handed me off to another person who gave me a work station and I worked an entire day, without ever hearing from ExpressPros.  At the end of that first day, there was no time card for me to clock out and no ExpressPros time slip for me to have the company supervisor sign.   So I don't know if I am going to get paid or not!  I think this verges on violating labor laws.

Twice during the morning of that one day, someone set something on fire that set off the fire alarm.  This happened twice.  I felt terrorized and bullied at this job site.   I contacted ExpressPros by phone from the job and submitted my resignation immediately, to be effective within 48 hours - the Employee manual said that was the minimum required.  To preserve my work record, that I did not walk off the job, or fail to show up (which would be considered abandonment) I worked through the day and at noon I notified the person who was giving me work to do that I had resigned from ExpressPros.   I told her I would work through the minimum required notice period that I intended to resign from ExpressPros - legally that was all I could do, and not get stuck for more time on the job that I might not be paid for - with no legal record of my having worked those hours, because I had no time card - either manual time card or company time clock time card to record my presence at the company. 

Express Employment Professionals did a very sloppy job of matching my skills to the available job.  I was doing work that was my least qualified skill, and was not sent out on a job that did match my skills.  I was doing mind-numbing data entry when I was hoping to get a more well-rounded office position where I could interact with people, answer phones, do copies/fax, general office work.  They just do a sloppy job of matching people's past work experience with their available job openings.