Octapharma Plasma Inc

An excellent group of employees makes this place a very nice experience.

This place sucks for a first time donor. You’re forgotten about more than half the time. After you’re all set up, it’s pretty good!

Where else are you going to earn $ 240+ per month for 3 hours of time each week? They have gotten a lot faster here — I get in and out usually in about 1.5 hours start to finish. Payments are better, too. I get $ 65/​week for 2 donations so that makes it worth the time. The folks working there as of Nov 2013 are mostly good. A couple duds are gone but so are a couple sweethearts.
They’ve made the donors clean up their language and I don’t see really scary folks there anymore. Bring a warm jacket because they keep it COLD — that is really my only complaint. Doesn’t need to be 32 degrees where you donate. But It is what it is — a way to make an extra $ 200+ each month.

If you can donate 2x a week it’s worth your time. As long as you have about an hour and half to donate. If you are in a rush you will be frustrated.

I was a rejected donor because I’ve had prior seizures/​been on seizure medications. My husband still donates once or twice a week.
I doubt this place would have as many donors if located in Naperville or Wilmette. Location, location, location — and boy have they picked it out!
If you need some extra cash, and you have some extra time, this is a great way to do it. Yes, some of the employees are rude and unprofessional, but they’re dealing with some sketchy people. There have also been some quality employees here. Essentially, it’s free money (I believe you can earn $ 15−30/donation depending on your weight) and sucks a lot less than 3 hours folding sweaters at the Gap, now doesn’t it?
Be patient and bring a book while you wait. Or keep your ears open and enjoy the weirdos that come in here.

This place is pretty solid. I wanted to make money just as most people want to do, so I went over with a friend one day and started the process.
As with most plasma places, your first visit will take a couple hours, but it really isn’t that big of a deal. For your return visits I’ve never been there for over an hour between first walking in the door and then finishing.
Their payment goes as follows:
First Visit: $ 35
Second Visit: $ 40
After that it depends on your weight. If you’re over 250lbs or something like that you receive $ 20 and then $ 28 respectively for your next visits.

I wanted to donate plasma to help purchase winter boots for a poor child in need… or I wanted to get a little extra cash through blood money to buy these Rockstar kicks I saw online. Po-​tay-​toe, Po-​tah-​toe.
So I drive out to OctapharmaPlasmaLabShantyTown, USA. It’s neighbored by old businesses and homes with boarded up windows. The lot has been ground up to rubble in most spots and I ran over not one, but two pairs of abandoned baby shoes before I even reached the point where parking space lines are painted. There’s a car that appears to be rusted to a front parking spot, some guys working on a broken down truck, and a big old building with the Octapharma name on it. I proceed with caution (this means that I wait to check in on foursquare until I’m safely inside).
Inside looks like an emptier version on the DMV waiting area but more sterile in that it appears even colder, and less sterile in that it appears less clean. I still continue to the counter… feeling a bit like Nancy Botwin’s first trip to her drug lord while I sip my Starbucks green tea and pull my shades from my eyes while everyone (including a gentleman wearing a large platinum necklace with a medallion encrusted with ‘diamonds’ in the shape of Stewie from Family guy) stares at the one thing that doesn’t belong. I approach the front counter. Obvi, I’m a newb.
I brought my license, my passport, some of my mail, and my certificate for passing my emissions test (I don’t know, it seemed like a valid form of identification at the time). I get checked in and I’m told that I can prob be out in 2.5 hours since no one new had come in for the past 3 hours. The people checking me in are wearing lab coats but are younger than me and lack some serious social and professional cues. They bicker back and forth about how long it will take because apparently the ‘physical’ takes a while. I believe the physical is not what a normal person with health insurance would consider a physical. I think their physical consists of *maybe* peeing into a cup and asking a few questions to make sure I didn’t shoot up H in the waiting room… but I can’t be sure because I never made it that far. I was lacking a social security card … though I’m positive I could print up one on my own and pass it off here as they only glanced at my IDs to begin with.
Prior to it being decided that I needed a SS card to donate, the young man and girl (who was trimming her split ends in her lab coat as she talked to me) argued over who would have to take me back to «Do me up». Awkward? Yes. Then I realized that «Do her up» was Octapharma employee speak for the questionnaire and ‘physical’ part of donor process and that these people honestly didn’t know any better than to speak that way. I think between the Swiss plasma company and the American public school system something was lost in translation.
I left without donating anything or getting any compensation and after telling my BF what had happened, he asked that I not go back and I told him I thought that was prob a good idea, too… though, really I was going to leave the decision of going back up to fate. If I had a copy on my SS card on hand at home I would go back, and if not, I would scrap the idea and write a review for my shiteous experience. Guess who didn’t find her SS card?
The 2 stars as opposed to one is because the young man at the front desk was nice and tried his best to do a decent job and because the building appears to be in moderate to decent shape and I felt like even if it were to collapse or have some seismic catastrophic disaster, that its sturdy foundation (of abandoned cars, run over baby shoes, and rubble) would afford me a few minutes to safely flee from building before it’s demise.
And after all that I still forgot to check in on foursquare. Whatta Bust.