What a crazy situation!
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Hi everyone,
Wow what a crazy situation we are all going through. To all the negative mean people out there this post is from a rep at WC on the west coast with almost 10 years of pharma sales experience. Yes I've heard all the stories and read some of the nasty posts, but news flash not every rep that worked here was a bad person or a criminal. It's sad that in the year 2013 we still live in a world where people want to be mean, rude, nasty and label people instead of treating people as we should in a nice proper respectful way. It's very hard to get a job in pharma sales or medical device sales and even when you do it's even more challenging to be consistently successful with sales numbers. Can't we all just get along no matter if you have been in this industry for a day or 20 years. That fact is yes WC was not the best place in the world to work, but the last 3 years I made over 100K for my family. This is more money than my friends at Merck, Actavis formerly Watson, Forest, and Astellas made in compensation as drug reps.
With that said does anything feel the same as me how crazy this whole thing went down. First, Actavis says we are "better together" then there were tons of rumors about Actavis taking at least 50% of the sales force. I'm sure your manager was like mine talking about call times, scripts and putting myself in a good place so Actavis would want to hire me. It wasn't her fault as she was just telling my team what other DM's were telling theirs. Basically, we were all lied to (welcome to corporate America) and should have all been looking for new jobs 6 months ago, but I'm sure many of us stayed in hopes to continue promoting products we believed in that did give patients a better quality of life and getting a job at Actavis.
My experience with the person who closed out my samples and my fleet vehicle were horrible. Neither person had any empathy and made it out like I had to jump for them that was sad and there was no need to treat us like that. Also, it's crazy how we still haven't received anything from HR. They send us document about when out last start date is mine is Jan 31 and how many weeks our severance package is and that's that. We are all still getting paid for doing nothing and can't leave for other jobs in fear of losing bonus pay and stock options. Does anything have a bad feeling like me that all WC has to do is say hi Mr. or Mrs. rep this is WC we noticed you didn't send in a sign in sheet for a breakfast or lunch a year ago thus you are not "winning with compliance" and we do not have to pay you severance or benefits. This could happen to us people even if you have been like me sending in sheets every Friday.
All in all WC wasn't the best experience of my life nor the worst, but the poor insulting way I was treated I will never forget. It's so sad how the top executives get their payouts right away of hundreds of thousands of dollars and the little reps have to beg and demand for what should be coming to them.
I don't know about anyone else but my Actavis rep who I overlapped with in my territory has been awful during this process. My numbers always tripled his and many of my offices don't even know his name or have thrown him out for being a annoying Watson/Actavis rep. He expects me to contact him when an office calls me that doesn't have samples lol yeah right buddy you should have been nice to me in the field. And is anyone confused how there is no mail order number nor any direction on samples. Most times the new company will give a mail order number so offices can obtain samples for their patients while there wont be a rep. My Actavis rep said he wont have samples of WC products will end of Jan early Feb. He is also going around to my offices saying that the entire WC legacy sales force was not laid off that they did hire some and that the entire home office was not laid off that Actavis did hire some people. Also, he is telling my docs since you don't have WC product samples now is the time to use his Actavis products. I think it's crazy how we are being ranked in December when we were laid off in November and many of my offices ran out of samples. I was also disgusted how Actavis had their press release they saying a "30% in sales force reduction" Um hello what spin doctors when you add all the WC reps in every division to the Actavis sales force numbers, then add the new reps Actavis was going to hire for territories, then pad the numbers somewhat sure it's roughly a 30% sales force reduction, but instead they could have said the truth "we have laid off the entire WC sales force and 90% of home office employees in NJ, but no that would have been a domino effect and resulted in a dip in their stock price. All in all Actavis laid off over 1,000 employees from WC.
Actavis sets up fake interviews with us, they pay to fly us all over the country, pay a hotel bill for us, we go around asking our doctors (now Actavis customers) to write letters of recommendations for us for the Actavis fake interview taking time out of their day, and then we find out there really was no job opportunity and it was all a scam and it's funny how immediately after Actavis hires 200 new reps who didn't work for WC nor are trained in our disease states. So for all of you nasty immature drug reps who think WC is the worst company ever, news flash WC never did the horrible things that Actavis has done.
I hope everyone lands on their feet. To the new green reps who don't have much experience hey at least you got your foot in the door and maybe can get some interviews. For the rest of us who have experience were successful and are dynamic reps I hope we all find a great new job where will can be happy. Happy Holidays!
