My Nonprofit Reviews

I was a participant of the Easter Seals employment training program in Bergen County. The program provided me with excellent training and experience in the office environment. I was able to obtain an office position and other employment because of the training and experience. The staff who enrolled me and ran the program were very professional and helpful. They were very nice to me. They ran the Easter Seals the way it was suppose to be run. I was lucky they were the ones who were running the Easter Seals program when I had applied. I also ran into the resource specialist at Blimpies and she told me to make an appointment with her in regard to getting into the Easter Seals training program. She was the one who did the intake but then went on sick leave. The resource specialist who replace her got me into one of the host agencies. She then got into a car accident and never returned to the Easter Seals. She got replaced. The resource specialist that went on sick leave and another resource specialist got terminated by Easter Seals. Another one had resigned. I then started to have a lot of trouble with the resource specialists who took over and also with the director of the Easter Seals program. The way they used their authority was cruel and abusive. They did not give a damn. They were also very disorganized. I did not like how the director repeatedly used the phone calls and meetings to attack me that I was unprofessional and made me look bad. She was really the unprofessional one. The resource specialists and staff repeatedly forced me to report to them at the One Stop Center without notice. The resource specialist that first took over was not friendly with me at the One Stop Center. She was very hostile towards me every time I had to report to Easter Seals at the One Stop Center. One time, she threatened to take the matter outside. After I had thanked her for referring me for an office position and telling her that I got the assignment, she started to get nice to me. I was not happy with how she was running the Easter Seals. She was too strict. She was only the resource specialist for a short while and then resigned from the Easter Seals. I was not happy with her replacement. I had a horrible incident with the director of Easter Seals one morning. I was not home on Friday during the day when the assistant resource specialist had left me a phone message. I was not able to return the call until Monday morning. The resource specialist who answered the phone said that her supervisor wanted to talk to me. The director yelled at me that I was not returning their calls. I told her that I did not get home until 8PM and that I am returning the call now. She immediately suspended me from the host agency. Without giving me any notice, she forced me to report to the One Stop Center that same day with the documents. I commuted by public transportation. I had to take a train back home to get the documents and then take 2 busses to get to the One Stop Center. The buses and trains only run once an hour. They did not care. I was lucky I got to the appointment on time or they may have not shown me any mercy. I should not have been subjected to this abuse because the Easter Seals staff were disorganized. The Easter Seals program paid the participant a small stipend. It gave me an income when the unemployment insurance ran out. The stipend kept getting slashed. It was only good for 4 years unless it got extended one more year. The director said that there would be budget cuts for 4 years. After the 4 years passed, there were more budget cuts. Under Title V, the housing authority paid 100% of the rent while I was in the Easter Seals program. At first, I thought a person only had to be unemployed and meet an age requirement to be in the Easter Seals program. It turned out a person also had to be at the risk of homelessness and have health issues. The quarterly Easter Seals meetings started to get awful. I only liked the June meetings because they had a buffet and gave away prizes. The last June meeting that I attended sucked. The food at that meeting was donated by the church. During one meeting, the director announced that Easter Seals was going to pay the participants by debit card instead of direct deposit. That was a threat and an inconvenience. I got a nasty call from the director when I contacted more than one person to complain about it and told them that I still wanted to be paid by direct deposit. She said I should be training there and that I was unprofessional. She also accused me of harassing them and that I interrupted their business. I did not do anything wrong by contacting her and other staff people about an Easter Seals payroll matter from the host agency. It was a desperate matter that needed to be immediately taken care of. I was very upset by that nasty phone call. There were threats of termination. At the meetings, the participants were constantly being threatened with termination by the resource specialist and director. There was a threat of the resource specialist forcing me to accept a food service position or she would be terminated me. I do not want that on my job resume. I do not want to be trained to be a food service worker. It would be an obstacle to finding a better position and getting employment. It would prevent me from getting office training and experience. Fortunately the resource specialists decided to set up an interview for an office position at a place that I was interested in working at. Someone there was going to be leaving. I was lucky I was able to commute to the host agencies that I had worked at. I was also lucky that I had the computer skills to do the job and that the director of the host agency was interested in hiring me. The participant was rotated to another host agency after a year. For awhile, the director and resource specialist wanted to rotate the participants every 6 months. It was really suppose to be after one year. That would have been an inconvenienced and a threat to be rotated every 6 months. It may not work out. Fortunately, I did not get rotated every 6 months. The Easter Seals director threatened to terminate me if I can not cross the busy intersection to get to the host agency. Fortunately there was a safer place to cross the street. I had no problem commuting and walking to the host agency. The director also threatened me with termination if I was not able to go on an interview during the same day that I had a mandatory meeting with the housing authority or the Board of Social Services. She said that Easter Seals were the ones who paid me. There was even a threat of being rotated to a day care center in Englewood or be terminated. That place is not even local. It would be too hard and dangerous to commute there by public transportation and it was too far. It would cost more in travel expenses to commute there. I did not know if I could even get there by public transportation. Englewood is not the safest place to commute to. I am not familiar with the area. Fortunately fate was on my side and I got rotated to a place in Hackensack instead. There was an incident in which an Easter Seals participant verbally attacked me at one of the host agencies. We started out on good terms until someone at Easter Seals said something negative about me to her. This participant then started to hate me. I was very nice to her. That participant also could not be trusted and used her position and everything against me. Her intent was to make me look bad. The supervisors there allowed that attack to happen. That participant may have complained about me to the supervisors and they deliberately held that meeting so that participant could complain about me. I saw the anger in her face before the incident happened. I sensed that something was wrong. The supervisors wanted her to tell them what was bothering her. They told her to get it out. That is when she suddenly exploded and verbally attacked me. When I argued back with her, she continued to verbally attack me. A big flare up broke out between us. The supervisors allowed the verbal attacks to continue. This host agency was a division of the housing authority. That participant's behavior should not have been tolerated. If she had an issue with me, the supervisor should have addressed this to me privately instead of allowing this participant to make a scene in the meeting room. She created a hostile workplace. What if there were client's there? There were caseworkers working there. The incident was so loud that other people could hear it. The supervisors of the host agency and Easter Seals took no disciplinary action against that person nor did they apologize to me. They were not on my side. The supervisors at the host agency said that since things were not OK between me and that participant, one of us will have to leave. They will go by seniority. Since I had seniority, I thought I was the one they would keep. I lodged a written complaint with Easter Seals about the incident. The director of Easter Seals made a nasty phone call to me and blamed me for the incident. She said that I was unprofessional. She said that since I had the seniority, I was the one who will have to leave and that she will be rotating me. I was there for over a year, so my time was up with them anyway. This was an injustice. I was not the one who instigated the trouble in the meeting room. The person who did cause the trouble was allowed to get away with it. I was a strong asset to that host agency. This was unforgivable. I am lucky that this did not happen before my time was up with that host agency. and that Easter Seals was able to rotate me. It was working out very well at this host agency until that nasty Easter Seals participant came into it. An Easter Seals staff person scheduled an interview for me with another host agency on same day of the Christmas party. She refused to reschedule the interview and made me miss most of the Christmas party at the host agency. I did not make it back there until around the end of it. The supervisor was nice enough to drive me to the interview. When the director made that nasty call to me at the host agency, she also asked me how old I was. When I told her that I did not want to answer, she said she can look it up and continued to harass me to tell her how old I was. I regret even giving any her information. It was none of her business. After I complained about it, she forced me to have a harassing face to face meeting with her and the resource specialists at the One Stop Center They made me look very bad. The director kept denying that she harassed me to tell her how old I was. She contradicts herself by saying the reason she wanted to know how old I was is to see if I was eligible for something and to earn my income that way. It was really none of her business. Her only concern should be the Easter Seals matters. It is not her job to tell me how to run my life. She also forced me to sign a grievance form stating that the grievance has been addressed and that the matter has been resolved. She was the one who had the power. The resource specialist also blamed me because the supervisor of a host agency that was a rape crisis center was not interested in hiring me. The resource specialist twisted things around and made it appear that I was not cooperating. It was very dangerous to cross the street just to get there. There were no traffic lights. Some of the areas did not have sidewalks. This was the meeting that the director threatened to terminate me if I can not cross the busy intersection to get to the host agency. Fortunately, that host agency was interested in hiring me and I had no trouble getting there. It was in a better location. I rather work for a domestic violence center than a rape crisis center. It was interesting reading pamphlets on domestic violence. The director also gave me no recognition for the good evaluations I got from the host agencies. She used the good evaluations as an excuse to rotate me. At that meeting, she also said that if the host agency is always giving me good evaluations, it means that I do not need further training there and that it is time to be rotated to another host agency to get more training. I also needed the office experience and it looks good on the resume. The reason the host agency gave me good evaluations was because my work and attendance was satisfactory. The director only cared about rotating me and did not consider the realities of it. The resource specialist was also nasty to me at the One Stop Center and and harassed me to leave the Easter Seals. She also harassed me to lay out money for a community school and said that Easter Seals will reimburse me. She also harassed me that it was my fault that I could not obtain employment. She compared me to the people who did find employment. It embarrassed me to the Easter Seals staff and the labor department employees who can hear it. I was just there to sign something. I was not happy with this resource specialist. I had a problem with her from the moment I met her. It was a threat that Easter Seals made her the resource specialist after another specialist had resigned. The quarterly meetings that she coordinated were awful. One of the entertainment she had provided was a band from her church that played off tune. That band sounded terrible. I had to go outside so I would not have to listen to it. This resource specialist was cheap with the food. At the last meeting I had attended, this resource specialist was the one who had her church donate the food. Easter Seals did not pay for it. The prize she gave me at one of the meetings was a box of tissues. At first, I had thought it had wrapping paper and that the prize was something else. The other prize she was giving out was a roll of toilet paper. I could not send her an email at the One Stop Center without her private phone getting an alert. I was getting emails from her past business hours. If I sent an email late in the evening, she complained. When she exited me out of Easter Seals and our business was completed, she never gave me the time of day again. I had asked Easter Seals not to contact the employer of the company that I had gotten hired at. One day, the owner of that company invited people from Easter Seals to a luncheon. They looked like the same people I saw at the Easter Seals meetings. I wanted to keep my involvement with Easter Seals a secret from the company. My private and confidential information got breached. Easter Seals embarrassed me to the company. Easter Seals will keep in contact with the company for a year and follow up on the former participant. That is an invasion of privacy. When I emailed the director about it, she sent me a very nasty email and gave me an argument. She oppressed me by saying I don't need to email them. I had the right to email them about Easter Seals matters. I had to keep my silence because it was within the year I had exited Easter Seals and they still had the legal right to contact the company which corporate from the East Brunswick office already did. The owner of the company wanted Easter Seals for a customer. One day in the shipping room, I saw an order that was addressed to Easter Seals at their East Brunswick office. I also did a search on the company terminal and saw that Easter Seals at the East Brunswick office was listed as one of their customers. It was also an embarrassment that Easter Seals forced me to get my doctor involved in order to stay with the program for another year. When I lost the job 2 years later, it was a threat that the director and the resource specialist wanted me to wait right before the employment insurance ran out before contacting them. They were suppose to put me on a waiting list. When I made an inquiry with the director and resource the specialist, the director relayed a nasty message from the resource specialist when I returned her call and was very nasty to me. Again, she told me that I did not need to email them. I had the right to email them about Easter Seals matters. The director and that resource specialist were very nasty and abusive. Fortunately I found other employment. I am glad that I am out of that program and do not have to answer to these people again. I got my life back. I was lucky that I was able to find employment on my own and finally exit the Easter Seals program. So much crap from the director and the resource specialist.