veterinary assistant

receptionist

animal care specialist

shop manager

manager

PDSA

If you thrive on chaos, problem solving and fast-paced environment then PDSA is a great place to work. The team are brilliant, everyone works immensely hard and it is a real family unit. No two days are the same, and most days can feel very chaotic but not always in a bad way. You can often find yourself fire-fighting your way through the day and lucky if you leave on time, and other days can be fine. Every day is a new challenge  and learning opportunity. The whole team are so passionate about what they do and the service that they provide. 

The clinical teams work very well together for the most part, there are some individuals who let the team down with their superior attitude but the rest of the team are like a family unit and always look out for each other. Line managers are supportive and encouraging and will always try to accommodate everyone's needs. 

Unfortunately, the level of stress, responsibility and workload is not reflected in the pay, especially for the Client Services Manager role. If you are in a management role, it's very rare to have time off and not be contacted for one thing or another so there is no chance to properly switch off. 
Non-clinical staff are disregarded and have little to no opportunity to develop, resulting in high staff turnover on Reception and lack of empowerment and motivation. More processes and tasks are given to the non-clinical teams with no additional pay or recognition, making the job more stressful and difficult to retain staff members. If you aren't a clinical staff member then your opinions don't feel heard higher up the management chain. Decisions are often made higher up without consulting the staff that it affects or seeking feedback beforehand. 

Clients can be extremely challenging and abusive at times, so you need to have a thick skin. Client Services are over-run with complaints and issues so the process of dealing with challenging clients such as banning or sending warning letters takes far too long and staff are then put at risk in the meantime. On the flip side, there are many more clients who are the opposite and far outweigh the negative. Clients will often send in thank you cards, cakes, flowers and other treats to show their gratitude which really makes a huge difference to staff morale and makes the job very rewarding. Sadly, there is not enough recognition from higher management for the hospital teams working on the frontline which leaves hospital teams feeling unappreciated and over-worked.

My mental wellbeing was severely impacted by this role over time which resulted in me leaving after 11 years. Hardest but best decision I ever made for my health and work/home life balance. I miss my colleagues immensely, but in all honesty I don't miss the job.  

Arrive at warehouse / shop, unload any stock on the van from previous day.  Go out and collect the charity bags that I have put out some days before, including the empty ones, left on doorsteps then deliver to whichever shop I have collected for.
Prepare the charity bags to be delivered to whatever area of Plymouth / Cornwall I have decided on and then spend the day posting them through letterboxes.
Arranging to deliver / collect any furniture or bags of items that people have donated or bought in the shop.
I have learned that you don't always get the best donations from the better areas and that you get some strange things in the charity bags. That because there are a lot of Charities doing the same thing that people are getting fed up with five or six charity bags coming through their letterbox each week and therefore they are unwilling to donate.  Some people prefer animals to people and therefore will only donate to animal charities!
I have a Manager and an Assistant Manager at each of the four shops that I cover and I get on well with them all.  They each have their own little ways with doing things and so you get to know what they like / dislike.  I also have an Area Manager who is based in Weymouth and we have Stock Collectors meeting with the rest of the stock collectors in her area about every quarter.  She also visits the shops in my area on a regular basis so I see her quite a lot.  I get on well with her as well.
My co-workers, as I said in the last heading, I get on well with, and the other stock collectors in my area (Exeter, Newton Abbot, Taunton)  There are also a lot of volunteers that are vital to keep these shops going and I get along well with them.
The hardest part of my job is sometimes having to refuse some items that people wish to donate.  They sometimes think that the item is in good condition but we would not be able to sell it in the shop. Sometimes the hardest part of the job is when you have a heavy / large piece of furniture to move and if I have a volunteer with me that is not very good at lifting then it can put a lot more strain on me.
The most enjoyable part of the job is meeting people and hearing their stories of how they want to give to this chairty because of their pet or a relitives pet and how it was treated.  Also knowing what I'm doing is helping those that cannot afford to have their pet treated at a normal Vet.

While this job may be rewarding at times it must be understood that working night shift for the PDSA you will either be working alone or with an entirely different team meaning that communication with your PDSA colleagues/management can be difficult.
Furthermore, there are no opportunities for progression in an Out of Hours post and due to the nature of the job you will consistently encounter unpleasant people that will abuse the charities kindness and services; there will be very little enforcement of rules and regulations made by the organisation and the policies are filled with loopholes allowing abuse of the system, this in turn makes an independent, lone working, out of hours role incredibly difficult as you have no managerial support while on shift and when support is requested it is often not upheld.
Moreover, due to the PDSA being a non government funded charity they rely solely on support from the general public. While this may be admirable it does in turn make the organisation very afraid of bad publicity. This, and the presence of GDPR, means that welfare/abuse cases will often go unresolved.
You also do not get typical Annual Leave/Holiday; I would best describe what you get not as Annual Leave but instead as "convoluted shift swaps".
You may be requested to attend unpaid staff meetings on your days off work simply in order to communicate as a team due to the fact that in an out of hours role there is no way to have a "staff meeting" as you are the only PDSA staff member present.
Lastly, due to Covid-19, methods of working have drastically changed, understandably, meaning interaction with pets and the care of them is currently somewhat non-existent; as a result of this you are essentially an emergency call handler/cleaner.
In saying this, if you are strong willed, very prioritised and wanting to try and make a positive impact on the welfare of pets in the UK then you may be well suited to a role such as this.

Endless, unsatisfying, tiring, dirty, stressful, badly organised. If you care about animals, just don't bother. 
If you relish conflicts, arguing with hagglers and shoplifters, debating endlessly about prices, sorting hoards of donations that should really have gone to the rubbish tip, supporting volunteers, checking illiterate bossy emails from upper management, doing shop banking, checking safety procedures and doing admin *all at the same time*, then this role is for you.
Your input from upper management takes the form of 'sales rally calls'; badly written emails and newsletters placing blame for poor sales squarely on the already overworked shop managers. This sales rallying is backed up by accusatory phone calls, taking you away from all your main duties. Sometimes you will be given a pep-talk if times get tougher than usual.
You will be warned about shoplifters, but don't ever expect to be supported by security devices such as mirrors or even dummy-CCTV. Each shop is left to be run at the discretion of each shop manager, which means 'local arrangements' galore, adding to the chaos when shop managers look after shops in different locales for each other.
You will be expected to donate your time with minimal recognition, since your contracted hours only cover shop opening times minus an hour for break/s, but lots and lots of work is needed out-of-hours to keep the shop running. Your rota for the days you will work will remain a mystery until a day or two before the new working week, and will still be subject to change depending on the whims of management, making a mockery of work-life balance.
If this sounds like your perfect job, go ahead and volunteer or apply for a management role; no experience is necessary, but only minimal training will be given within your first month on the job. Then, you're on your own.
Otherwise, avoid at all costs!

I work here as a volunteer. When you volunteer, you may not get paid, but you do get a little more choice in your hours. The minimum is four consecutive hours per week... which is really not that difficult to manage even if you haven't worked before. 

If still in high school, you can probably ask for Saturday shifts or even Friday after school, if you live close enough to the town centre. If out of school, there should be shifts between 9 AM and 5 PM that you can do on some day(s) during the week, except Sunday, when the shop is closed.

There is plenty of experience to be gained through stock processing, working with the cash register and helping the customers out, and if you need to build your confidence and communication skills, starting in a small shop like the PDSA is a good idea. 

The manager(s) and colleagues are friendly and understanding, so they should be able to help you get used to working in a shop fast enough. 

As long as you do your job properly, listen to the manager and help your colleagues whenever you can, you'll do well. It's also a good way to get job references and if you work hard, you are sure to be recommended for any paid jobs you apply for in the future. 

The most enjoyable part of the job... well, that depends on the person. A sociable person would say that it would be the people, which, by the way, are great and very fun to work with. A person who seeks to help animals can find a job that requires less qualifications but still helps support pets and their owners throughout Scotland, as well as a sense of purpose, a sense of accomplishment and they can be proud of doing something right.  A person interested in neither of those can still gain the work experience necessary to find other jobs in a moderately-paced environment that required little prior experience and helps develop your skills.

This was my first serious job, and I am thankful and grateful for that opportunity. This job was not too hard yet not too easy, a perfect balance and you had the freedom to find comfort in the workplace.
The typical day consisted of assisting customers, going behind the work-floor and into quality control and product cleaning/selection, taking in the donations and sorting through them to find items to sell and items to donate to africa, entertaining both the workers and customers was always a must for me and others and created a wonderful and fun environment. I learnt many things: How to find a sellable item, how to pick up donations, how to drop off the donations to Africa, how to clean clothes with an industrial clothes steamer, how to calculate prices, how to work a cash register, how to communicate with customers (Customer Service Skills), etc,etc. The management was open-minded and disciplined to the perfect level. No matter who it was I had a task and was comfortable doing it. If I was uncomfortable, they always had a reasonable alternative and minded carefully of my health and wellbeing. The Co-workers were equally as open-minded and took care to ensure that I was working to my full potential. The hardest part of the job, personally, was working through illness. I am often ill, but I fight through it. The most enjoyable part is hard to choose, but I must say it has to be meeting all the new people, co-workers and customers, and finding a purpose and place to be and belong.

An enjoyable first job for work experience, nothing that was overly demanding. Every member of the team was treated equally and there  were always small jobs that required continuous focus, such as cleaning or aiding customers which helped development with communication skills on a steady basis. Managing various small jobs at one time was challenging but capable for the most part as this also required communication skills between colleagues to complete tasks at the time in order to keep the shop up to working order. Colleagues were very kind to each other which helped in the long run to aid each other in completing jobs as well as making communication between each other easier as well. The hardest part of the job was keeping up with large queues of customers when on till duty as these tills did not use scanning equipment much to purchase items but rather through manual selections on a screen which sometimes lagged. However the easiest part of job was the flexibility of hours as this was only a voluntary role which did not have any fixed hours however, I did stick to my initial hours very strictly in order to get used to the working world.

A  typical work day at PDSA would be to pick up charity bags and empty them out on a large measuring table to be sorted out, wherever it was in good condition or bad. They would then be tagged and hanged up to be steamed and put on shop floor, normally they're can be 2-3 people who you work with but I would say the more people there the faster the job is. All the co-workers were polite and productive we worked as a team and got on well, the management were very understanding and helpful when and whenever you had a problem you could sit down and talk about it with either the manager or assistant manager. But the most hardest part was having more charity bags passed up to us and having to go through all of them and deciding which were suitable and in good quality to be steamed some cloths were designers and others were in rare condition. Apart from that the good points working at PDSA were sorting through cloths that were in good condition and speaking with friendly and enjoyable co-workers, I would say I learned that getting something done quick you need good team work and quick communication skills with a good attitude.

The job was quite repetitive but easy enough. The main reason I left the company was due to the toxic behaviour of staff. There’s was a lot of back stabbing, and unnecessary gossiping about staff members when they’d leave the room. Team leader was unprofessional, if the manager was away she’d tell us to have 2 hour lunch breaks and let us leave half an hour early. 
If you didn’t want to sit with the longest serving members of staff for lunch and you wanted to go out and grab food or get fresh air, then expect to be spoken about or shunned for not spending a whole hour at lunch with them repeating the same conversations everyday. 
Don’t tell your team leader anything personal as they’ll tell the whole office before the day has ended. 
The pay was awful and if you want to progress you can’t because there’s two people who have been there longer so they automatically get promotions and make it clear if you even attempt to go for a promotion then you are a bad person and you’ll will be spoken about EXTENSIVELY.

Also, not a very diverse environment and people in charge of hiring made it clear that wouldn’t be changing any time soon.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Good company, and helping customers along the way. The management are well positive and great to work with. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Customers can be a .pain, trying to get discount on new sale items. Plus trying to hit targets at the of the week.
Apart from that, we try to give the customers good service, sometimes throw back in our faces.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Working environment and culture is very good, although I am on point most of the time.
(Point is I call counter till work). Our front area - shop area is exceptionally well lit and clean.
Customers remark how clean and well lit, and how it’s well kept and items at at arms reach.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Typical day, sign in, go to my post (till area), keeping the book area filled up as well as keep the floor clean, picking up clothes on the floor.
Plus at lunch take money to the bank, sigh out sometimes have change some money for change for the till and sigh back after, put change back into the till, until I leave.
A moral thing is getting tea on the front.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Veterinary assistant 3 salaries reported	£20,000 per year
Receptionist 17 salaries reported	£19,235 per year
Animal care specialist 16 salaries reported	£16,364 per year
Shop manager 1 salary reported	£12.76 per hour
Manager 3 salaries reported	£46,366 per year

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