The other day, I made a statement that my experience is that people lose their jobs through “fault of their own”, and that those that say that many people lose their jobs “through no fault of their own” do not know what they are talking about. I believe that this attitude of “through no fault of their own” is reflects a major shift in the attitude of the populous – that people do not want to face reality, and that they need not be responsible for their own actions. To me it is similar to the way teachers can no longer grade papers in red pen for fear of offending the child, and that the child that finished last in the race still gets a ribbon or prize. People are afraid of acknowledging what is true – people do not lose their jobs for no reason. And those that do lose their jobs have played a significant part in the loss of their jobs.
I have literally fired thousands of employees in my career. A great many of these I firings I have done personally, and many more I was a senior decision maker. Following are some random examples of firings I have been involved in. Some of them reflect mass terminations, while others are examples of individuals being fired. I lost no sleep over any of these firings. They all occurred through the fault of the employee:
– 1700 workers who lost their high paying union jobs because they failed to acknowledge that the company was going broke and that they needed to accept a pay reduction if they wanted to keep their jobs. Only after the plant closure was announced did they come to their senses and agree to accept the cuts. But it was too late. The plant closed, all of them lost their jobs, their property values plummeted, as they lived in a small town where almost everyone owed their livelihood to the plant, and the town went into depression.
– The workers who lost their jobs because they missed too much work
– The workers who lost their jobs because they failed to return from vacation on time, “because they felt like a few more days in the sun”
– The workers that lost their jobs because they refused to obey safety regulations
– The guy I fired because he blocked my maintenance men from taping up an electrical wire that had come loose from its mooring, saying that only electricians could do that work. Government inspectors determined I had acted prudently (he reported me after he was fired), and had done the right thing.
– The guy I fired for dumping a carload of trash onto my parking lot
– The guy I fired for abusing a customer who came to pick up goods
– The guy I fired for writing obscenities on a part and then sending it off to a customer
– The guy I fired for throwing parts around in a fit of anger
– The guy I fired for dropping a very expensive piece of equipment when lifting it with a forklift. I had just told him not to do it, and to wait while I organized a proper means of lifting the equipment. He thought he knew best, and caused around $10,000 worth of damage. When asked why he had done it, he simply shrugged. I had him thrown off the property on the spot.
– The guy who took a blow torch to a $2000 bit of equipment because he couldn’t get the chuck loose, destroying the specialist equipment.
– The guy who left the valve open and drained $3000 worth of chemicals on the floor, and almost caused an EPA disaster
– The guy that went to the car race and called in sick.
– The guy I fired for climbing 20 feet up scaffolding (and so jeopardizing me personally should he have fallen and killed himself)
– The people I have fired for abusing and threatening other employees
– The guy I fired who called in sick who was actually running his own business on the side
– The myriad folks I have fired for theft
– The folks I have fired for malingering
– The people I have fired for throwing things in the plant (amazing how often this one has happened)
– The people I have fired for refusal to follow instruction, due to them “knowing better” and their methods “being better”. (If they are going to breach work procedures they best get this right, as mistakes cost me money, and if they get it wrong they get fired. If they approach me or a manager first, then they are OK – I am almost always willing to give an idea a try. )
– The lady I fired for shooting her boyfriend on my site. (I would not have really cared one way or another if she shot him of-site, as he was a cheating scum-bag, but I cannot let employees run around shooting other employees in my plant. I just can’t do it).
– The guy I fired that laid hands on me when he didn’t like his job assignment
– The guy I fired who came in and worked overtime when I told him he was not so allowed. He told me he would be in anyway (what the fuck???) as he needed the overtime and it was his right. I advised him against his decision, but he thought he knew best.
The above were all clear-cut cases of having lost their jobs through “fault of their own”, in my opinion. I have many more examples, but these are the ones that come to mind. Now let’s take a look at those times I have had to reduce the size of the workforce because of drop in sales or as a result of having to make a company viable that was losing money because of a bloated workforce. The reductions in these instances have ranged from a few persons at a time to hundreds. The argument many folks would make about these cases would be that these people lost their jobs through no fault of their own.
But I disagree. Why? Because I know how the people were chosen that lost their jobs. I chose them. And this is the criteria I used:
– Who missed the most work?
– Who is the most skilled?
– Who is the most willing to work overtime when needed?
– Who was the most likely to refuse overtime?
– Why did they refuse overtime?
– Who causes problems with other employees?
– Who is flexible when it comes to asking them to do or learn something new?
– Who is undertaking outside training to improve their skills?
– Who is argumentative when asked to do something?
– Who is happy to train other employees?
– Who reads and writes the best, and can do math?
– Who is the most cross-skilled?
– Who would be the most difficult to replace?
– Who treats the business as it is his or her own?
– Who keeps a neat work area?
– Who obeys all safety regs?
– Etc.
I actually create a matrix, where I rate each of these attributes on a scale of 1 to 5, and weight them according to the value each has to the company. For instance, cross-skilled gets a higher weighting than does who is undertaking outside training. I add up all the points for each employee, and thus create a ranking. If I have 100 people and need to reduce that number by 30, I take my ranking and count up thirty from the bottom and draw a line. Those 30 go.
Notice what I do not do? I do not go by seniority, and experience means very little to me. I care only about what the person can do for the business, and who have shown they will take care of the business.
And so there you have it – the 30 that have it lost their jobs through fault of their own. They did not compete well enough. They did not care for the business well enough. They did not train themselves well enough. They did not come to work often enough. And never have I seen a situation where all 100 were good “employees” – far from it. The thirty in this example would have been poor to marginal employees. And so when push came to shove, through “fault of their own”, they lost their jobs.
There have been a few times when people have indeed lost their jobs through no fault of their own, and I grieved over it, and regret it. And each time it was similar to this: the people were mentally or physically handicapped in some way. I have a history of trying to employ people many would think to be unemployable. I do it because I think it is right. If I have 100 people, there will be a handful of folks employed that are generally considered unemployable. So long as they are willing to give a good effort, I will try to employ them and find valuable work for them – cleaning, low skill, repetitive work, work where I can tolerate minor quality mistakes, etc. But if I need to reduce the workforce down from the 100 people, I cannot absorb the cost of employing these people because they become a greater percentage of the workforce as the size of the workforce drops. And so I am left with no alternative but to let them go in those situations. It is extremely stressful for me, as I know they will not be employed elsewhere. I try to rehire them when opportunity allows, but that has infrequently been possible. These people do lose their jobs through no fault of their own.
There are other reasons I consider that people lose their jobs through their own fault. For instance, they allow unions to destroy their companies. They vote for people that do not support their interests. They buy imported product in preference to local made – when I looked at the make-up of the vehicles driven by my employees last week, which I do often, the imported cars vastly outnumber the locally built. This all puts pressure on their companies, and causes job loss, indirectly at least, and directly at times.
When I interview people for work, even in tough economic times, the numbers that show up inappropriately dressed is appalling. The number that wants to dictate terms of employment to me is astonishing. The number that vastly overestimates their market-value is horrifying. These people remain out of work through “fault of their own”.
The idea that people lose jobs through no fault of their own is wrong, and it is dangerous, and it promotes the idea that people do not need to be responsible for their own actions and decisions. It is make-believe. People must take responsibility for themselves, and the idea that people are unemployed, or lose their jobs through “no fault of their own” serves to tell them that they are not responsible for themselves, but rather that some greater force is at play, and that there was nothing they could have done to change the situation. As I have shown above, out of the thousands of people that I have fired over the years, all but a handful controlled their own destiny. They lost their jobs through “fault of their own”, and I am not going to coddle them by saying otherwise.
“RE – I do not know what it is you describe but it is not a company. EOS.”-ll[poh
Ignorance is no excuse here.
Its the type of “company” formed in tribal societies for the purpose of creating large capital equipment such as fishing boats no individual can produce by themselves. It was the most common type of any creatd prior to the advent of the Capitalist meme. Such companies existed for millenia prior to the current monetary based system.
It is sad that considering you have Native ancestry you are unware of such cooperative organizations. The main qustion is whether your igorance is willful or just stupidity. I suspect the former, your prose indicartes you are somewhat intelligent, so I can only conclude you willfully ignore history.
RE
I thought the whole CONTEXT of this post was to provide a counter to the liberal mantra of justified entitlements “through no fault of their own”.
This might be were its taken to a whole ‘nother level and the original CONTEXT gets lost in the melee. I hope not because a valid point was made and should not get over shadowed.
“Those who manage the company are servants of the customers” — RE
It’s symbiotic. A company can’t survive without customers. Customers can’t get the product (or service) unless the company is profitable enough to survive.
I lectured my employees constantly to “not piss off the customers”. That said, there was a line that the customers couldn’t cross and most knew where it was. I had competitors and had to do it better than them and did. Not for one minute did I ever consider my business to be for the needs of the community. It wasn’t for the benefit of my employees either although they thought they were doing me a favor by coming to work. My only motivation was for profit and I did it by working hard and by being honest.
llpoh
I’ve been real busy lately with business, new home, personal/professional development and in general, life. I’m learning the hard part of life is to find a healthy balance with business and family and everything else. This is going to be a challenge for me but hopefully, I’ll find the right balance and be content with it. I have already accepted that my drive and ambition to build something great in business in my lifetime will come at a cost and sacrifice.
Man, your posts are awesome. It’s too bad you don’t live in Texas. I’d love to meet with you sometime and pick your brain on business related concepts, ideas, and experiences. It’s hard to find other sharp people who are really passionate about business that I can sit down with and have good business discussions. I’m trying to find a mentor but it is hard. I do meet with an extremely successful small business entrepreneur about once or twice a year but he doesn’t live in Texas and just travels here for biz from time to time so it’s hard to develop a close relationship. Most of my mentoring has come from my self application and reading massive amounts of quality content via books and online. I feel like a mentor would take me to a whole different level faster than my self application and studying of business related literature. I guess I just need to be patient.
Anyway, I’m doing well and hope all is well with you.
Jmarz – all the best. Ou are doing the right thing now. Do the hard yards when you are young, get skills and experience, be financially prudent, and hopefully, though there are no guarantees, when you het your forties or thereabouts the dividends will be paid. Keep your chin up – sometimes mentors find you. Thanks so much for your kind words.
RE – seriously, we are not tribal. Not yet anyway. I know about co-ops. But you are saying that tribal co-ops are the way to go. Who is being ignorant or stupid? You are proposing dark- ages organization for the modern world. It will not work. And those co-ops are not companies. But then you know that and are being an ass. They are what you want to see replace companies. Good luck with that.
This place is as good a question as any to ask this question:
I commonly see the following statement put forward “We need Mexicans because they do jobs that Americans WONT”
Is it that American’s won’t do the job? Or is it that we won’t hire American’s for the job because then the employer has to pay a shit ton of extra fees over the actual worth of the job?
Lets say a job is worth $8/hr to an employer, max. Now, if they hire a legal worker then it comes out to be a lot more than just $8/hr….something like $10/hr? Anyway, by hiring an illegal worker they can get away with paying less than the maximum they would have to pay for an actual citizen.
Maybe the problem isn’t laziness, but that we A) have too many other costs tacked on and B) minimum wage isn’t being used effectively to manage the labor pool.
With unemployment so high, they should be lowering minimum wage not raising the damned thing.
TPC
The anecdotal evidence from out west I’ve read is the few Americans that turn up as itineranl pickers (i.e., off the books) can’t last a day. Tomato picking just ain’t worth it to them. This was after a crackdown on illegals.
TPC – the Mexicans will do work that the average citizenwill not, as the average citizen can collect enough welfare to survive and so is able to turn his or her nose up at picking beans. If it were a matter of work or starve, you would suddenly see all of the illegal Mexicans displaced by Americans, and they would return to their countries of origin, in my opinion.
Fact is, most employers do not get relief from the add-on costs when hiring Mexicans, as that means they have to pay them cash, and cash is not easy to come by.
“But you are saying that tribal co-ops are the way to go. Who is being ignorant or stupid? You are proposing dark- ages organization for the modern world. It will not work. And those co-ops are not companies. But then you know that and are being an ass. They are what you want to see replace companies. Good luck with that.”-llpoh
Au contraire, mon ami! In fact precisely the opposite is true, the for profit capitalist model is going broke as we speak.
Were it not for Goobermint subsidies and bailouts, the aerospace and automotive industries would have gone belly up years ago, along with all the suppliers to these companies. Similarly the construction and real estate companies also are going broke, kept floating another day only by rolling over their loans with bankster funny money.
The days of leechfuck capitalist pigmen extracting profit from the resources of the earth and the labor of others is just about done now. I don’t seek to place the model on the “modern” world, but on the post-modern one coming down the pipe. In fact the company I started, Doomstead Diner, Inc is so designed.
You think you can continue to extract a profit in the automotive bizness? Good Luck with that. 😛
RE
It’s high time for a new pinky ring and some new $150 sunglasses….
And some high-end hippy cigarettes.
Waiting on my scholarship check. I think I’ll forgoe the new laptop.
I also have some terms for employing my excellence for the Boomer boss who’s obviously milking my graces untill he can get a government check….
TPC, great question.
Years ago, after Clinton’s Secretary of Labor had made such a statement, some group looked into into the “truth” that illegals do jobs Americans don’t.
The truth is, there are NO jobs that “Americans” won’t do. Every single job that illegals are being exploited for, had good percentages of Americans doing them too.
The problem is that we “Americans” HAVE to obey American laws. If we work to support our families we have to have health insurance – or we pay cash. We have to buy our own food from the taxed and regulated grocery, we have to pay for rent in apartments that have to comply to zoning & federal law, we have to have car insurance and plates on our vehicles, we have to work under a system that automatically steals 7.65% from both ourselves and our bosses. We work under a system that has layer, upon layer, upon layer, of rules and regulations or we can’t work at all.
The illegals have none of these problems. They live in the black market, illegal apartments, stolen goods, drug trade, prostitution, welfare fraud, emergency room doctoring. They don’t care about insurance, or legal registrations, they will just ditch the vehicle and disappear into the night. It’s a lot cheaper there. And they aren’t able to be tracked. Government forced responsibility for wrong-doing only applies to us idiots that live in the light.
But, as usual, we miss the point. The reason that illegals get jobs has more to do with the EMPLOYERS, than the workers.
Most businesses that employ illegals are nothing more than modern day slave holders. The Democrats continuing to encourage illegal immigration is nothing more than the equivalent of the Democrats before the Civil War screaming about profitability and costs instead of human dignity.
Companies (slave owners) that employ illegals (slave) have unfair trade advantages over the companies that are non-slave owners. There costs are remarkably lower than their competitor whom is forced to follow the laws.
Shocking. Not.
What is shocking is that the average Democrat is too stupid to see the truth. Nancy freaking Pelosi’s companies have been busted numerous times for employing illegals.
21st Century slavery is what it is. There are horror stories – nationwide – about illegals being killed while working and buried in the back forty. Companies setting up entire worlds where at the end the week the illegal owes the company money for subsistence living and 16 hour days. The horrors are documented and numerous, but the MSM refuses to bring these realities to the public. You would think that the bleeding hearts would be all over this shit. Instead, they bang the drum and want to encourage even more of it.
Two Americas. One for the connected, one for the rest of us. Ours is shrinking.
RE said:
“Au contraire, mon ami! In fact precisely the opposite is true, the for profit capitalist model is going broke as we speak.
Were it not for Goobermint subsidies and bailouts, the aerospace and automotive industries would have gone belly up years ago, along with all the suppliers to these companies.”
Well no shit Sherlock! But the industries you pointing out here do not participate in free market capitalism and they have not done so for quite some time! Take away the subsidies and the business models of these industries will change to fit the market.
Take the airline industry……without subsidies they will no longer offer 19 flights daily from Denver to Vegas where each flight is 80% empty. Remove govt interference from the auto industry any and the $75/hour take home pay of UAW’s will reduce to the point of sustainability. Nine hundred color options on cars might be reduced to 20.
The fucking govt taints and eventually destroys everything it touches.
In free markets, employees do in fact exist to serve the interests of the business owners like llpoh said! If you hired me at your business and I came in changed everything to serve MY needs instead of the needs of your business, how fucking long will you keep me around?
I wanted to ad that unsubsidized businesses survive only as long as they continue to meet the needs of the customers. Subsidies simply promote living beyond ones means and that applies to business and individuals equally.
The current so called “free market” is more like a poker game where some of the players are working together, some players are cheating individually and so are playing honestly by following all the rules. Guess who is going to get crushed first!??
What we are witnessing is the collapse of the corrupted, subsidized market. Austerity is coming whether we do it willingly or not.
I don’t blame llpoh one bit for finally pulling the plug. When the business or profits no longer meet the needs of the business owner, its game over.
llpoh: Good post and good comments.
We have become a totally government regulated economy with the largest corporations getting unfair advantage over the small corporations and companies. Homeland Security is now an added cost and impediment for business. We have too many laws to comply with. These laws have become a noose around the neck of business. All this extra cost and impediments is sucking the lifeblood out of our economy. Unions are now the target for their employment policies but the government policies are worse to deal with because their policies are written from statutes that we cannot seem to change or sunset.
Looking at the bigger picture global corporations and banks could care less about nationalism. They put their money where it works best for them. They could care less about workers and their policies show it. Their local management only follow the directives of the people that count the beans who only look at the bottom line rather than what it takes to create a profitable bottom line.
What I see going on is the vision is dimming because these bean counters have run out of ideas. Local employees that have sweat in the game along with good ideas are not listened to. Corporate management is becoming brain dead because their own policies are now working against them; because the economy has changed and they have no idea what to do, because these management teams have eaten their own shit (their own policies) and don’t know how to change the script. It is the same way with government.
A good way to explain the shit happening is to look at the candy manufacturers. Years ago candy bars were made by many different companies that competed with one another. All these different companies were bought up by only a couple of corporations then quit innovation. Because they have a monopoly they don’t have to compete. Now what they do is figure out schemes to use less quality ingredients so more money can be extracted out of the customer for the stakeholders that have no sweat equity in the business other than their money. Fast food and corporate restaurants have also become this way. The airlines have become this way. Monopolies and government regulation have ruined innovation. It has also ruined the attitude of the employee. Look at the unemployment rate? One would think with unemployment this high companies can easily find quality employees. I would submit that one reason good employees are now hard to find is because of corporate policy. Corporate policy is cold. The corporate style looks at it’s employees as they and us. Much of the management have poor social skills. Because of this problem with management they ruin the sense of loyalty to the company that is needed from the employee.
So llpoh, when it comes to getting good productive employees it is a two way street. This is sorely lacking in the corporate world. Without good employees a company is nothing but a dunghill with it’s days numbered. I expect in the days ahead many of these dunghill corporations are going to be in the news as the latest casualty of our contracting economy.
Teresa – I think you would be surprised at how many illegals work at ” regular” jobs.
IS – good points.
Tbird – much of what you said I agree with. Corps act as they do because the sheeple do not make smart choices, and the corps exploit that fact. Caveat emptor. But the buyers are too stupid to beware.
LLPOH, not shocked at all. I’m an accountant, I realize the boon the government gets when an illegal works a legal job. Which is the exact reason why the Dems refuse to back, support and market the e-verify for SS numbers.
Illegals working legal jobs would be an easy fix. What continues to horrify me is the treatment of people in the non-regulated jobs. Just like hookers make easy murder & fraud victims, so do illegals.
If a person breaking our laws doesn’t get his tax money “back,” I could care less, that was his choice.
But being sold into slavery while risking everything for a better life is evil. Complete evil and I hope the Dems that believe in Heaven are given a full explanation before being judged.
TeresaE: Many people no longer have a belief in God so they can’t see past their life; they have no conscience. Man are they in for a big surprise when they leave this world. All one can do is pity them. But it sure makes life rough for the rest to tolerate them and their evil ways. But we have to stand up to them because of the denial spirits they are, they will lay in the road in front of us and tell us to go around them.