This is a follow-up to many of the points the Admin is making about society at large, and specifically to his recent article on education. One of the things I see is that the young have had their expectations raised re their careers. An ever increasing number of young people are going to college. Many of these college-educated young-people are modestly talented, and many receive very poor college educations indeed. But they nevertheless expect that they will enter the ranks of white collar professionals and managers. Life does not work that way.
The nature of my business is such that these modestly skilled and educated young people could succeed in work at my business, and could make a reasonable living.
But it is unlikely that they would ever come to work for me – the work does not fit their expectations. It is factory work, at the start, graduating into low-level supervision, then supervision, then lower level management. It is work unlikely to progress beyond that level. But it pays reasonably well through these levels. Factores are often not clean, pristine places to work, and they certainly are not prestigious. Adding to that, these are some of the requirements I have for my employees:
1) all employees of the business must be prepared to do any task that is assigned them. We are a reasonably small business, and at times the situation may dictate that people be assigned outside their normal roles. They may be assigned to clean toilets, or to garden, or to wash vehicles – whatever is needed, dependent on the situation. This means me, too – I have done any and all work that needs to be done.
2) the standard starting time is 7 AM. The standard work week is 40 hours. Overtime is generally available but not not necessarily mandatory. However, at times I do require overtime, and at times it will be manadatory, if conditions warrant it. If this impacts on an employees personal life, that is unfortunate but inescapable (I am not talking about missing a brother’s wedding, but I am talking about if it means missing one of Little Johnny’s Little League games). I may also require the occassional weekend of work, and the occassional evening work. Examples of reasons this may be necessary: say a machine breaks down and it takes a few days to get a part in, and production falls behind. The only option to catch up may be to work evenings and weekends in order to support our customers. Failure to support our customers means we lose work, so failure to do the evenings or weekends means people would lose their jobs, and my business would suffer, and people would become unemployed.
3) I require employees to come to work unless they are ill or for other valid reason. People that miss a lot of single days due to “illness” tend to be viewed with suspicion. Remarkably, those employees are almost always young people, and the most often missed days are the days after payday and Mondays.
4) I require that employees show up on time.
5) I require employees work when being paid to do so.
6) I require that employees follow all established procedures, with respect to production controls, quality systems, and most particularly procedures with regard to safety.
7) I require that employees respect other employees, and leave them alone to do their work in peace.
8) I require that employees obey the work instructions of their managers and supervisors.
That about covers everything I require of my employees. In return, I try to ensure they are reasonably well paid, and that they are treated with respect. Employees that do not meet the requirements as listed above generally soon find they are available for work elsewhere.
My experience is this – most young people (and by that I mean from around the age of 25 and younger) will not meet these requirements. They will not come to work regularly, or will be late, or will refuse or attempt to refuse required overtime as it interferes with their planned date or party, or they will inordinately question instructions to the point of refusal, or they will fail to follow procedures as they deem them too restrictive, etc. They also find the work too limiting, not fulfilling enough, and with insufficient advancement opportunities and prestige.
I have a lot of experience in this area. I have hired literally hundreds of young persons ( I guess I am a sucker and feel that people deserve a chance). A very small percentage of young people will meet the business requirements. I understand that Boomers have created a great many problems. But I can assure you, the Boomer generation is not the only generation with extreme issues. The younger generation is full of expectation of fulfilling, enriching, well-paid work, to be done in a liesurely unstructured fashion. I cannot offer such work, and do not know of any by personal experience that can.
I know many may consider some of my conditions of employment overly harsh. But it is the putting of work first that allows the business to survive. There are times that personal sacrifices must be made in order to maintain the health of your business or employer. For me, work has never been easy, and I do not understand the concept that it should be easy. It is not the nature of the world as I see it. I also believe that the attempt to make the world an easy place has lead to impending disaster.
A post every worker needs to read.
It has always baffled me when people asked me, regarding whatever dull but well-compensated job I had or aspired to, “But is that what you really WANT to do?”
In my naive younger days, I’d replied well, no, but I don’t go to work to do what I “want”, but to get a paycheck in exchange for doing what my employer wants. Somehow, many people out there thought that since I am a woman I was working to amuse myself. Some remarked on how “bored” I must be doing such a job.
Not half as bored as I am when I’m broke and jobless, I would reply.
These days I say, yes, this is what I WANT to do because what I want is a steady, medium-or-higher income in work that will not disappear because of a change in fashion, or because it is insanely speculative by its nature. What I want is a good life, which to me means financial security, money left over to put away and to acquire things that comfort me and give me pleasure, and the chance to build wealth by managing my money correctly. What I want is an income that is absolutely and totally mine and to be able to live life on my own terms as much as possible.
And in order to get the wherewithal to do that, I have to agree to do what some employer badly needs me to do, no matter how “boring”, unpleasant, or downright dangerous and difficult it might be.
Value for value, a concept lost on the entitlement babies of the past 60 years.
Lol, ditto. The word work has meaning. That college education is supposed to ensure you move up a little qucker due to your abiliy to think. Not so any more. It just means your a liberal, most of the time. Another gift from us baby boomers.
I’ll address your list and see how it matches up with my performance, and judge it TPC is hirable.
#1
Where to start. The things I do that are part of my job description.
Keep up with the QC work, and help design new procedures.
Keep R&D moving forward, as well as innovating my own ideas
The things that I do extra:
Everything. That lab is mine to run from top to bottom. I wrote the entire SOP manual (hundreds of pages of documentation).
I compiled the MSDS and keep it up to date. I wrote the CHP and I installed engineering control bringing our labs 30 years forward to the modern age. I implemented an inventory tracking system and now the administration actually knows where their money is going.
I also do all of the lab laundry and other housekeeping.
Lastly, I help troubleshoot problems in production and maintenance, not just at our plant, but also at one of the contract plants we use to make our product.
I do all of the labwork that takes place there, with almost no exception.
2) I’m at work by 7:50 most mornings. First samples don’t come off the line until 10am at the earliest so before that I usually start new experiments. I leave at around 5:30 and take a 40 min lunch break from 1-1:40 (20min to eat, 20min of “nap” time where I listen to music and cat nap).
I put in about 45 hours each week during the normal work week at work, work 2-3 hours most Sundays (running a lab solo is tiring, so Sunday is laundry and dishes day, usually set up a 48hr run on fri afternoon and check it sunday). I also do research 3-5 hours a week during the evenings.
3) When I miss due to illness its because I think its in mine (and the company’s) best interest if I do so. I can’t think if my brain is fogged with flu meds. As for pay days, I’m salaried and on direct deposit. I’m not even sure what days of the month I get paid on.
My wife could probably tell you.
4) See above.
5) “Work smarter, not harder.” Ironically, in my position its when I look like I’m sitting down doing nothing that I’m working hardest. Putting together a rigorous experiment or doing calculations is a lot more difficult than sweeping the floors…..but people think I’m hard at work if I’m dusty and my boots have mud on them.
My point is that the “I’m paying you to work, so work” mantra is often misplaced. Useful in manual labor (if you are bored enough to lean, you are bored enough to clean) but anything else and its mostly just harassment (unless they are on youtube all day or something.)
6) I literally wrote the book on lab safety, and follow the same standards when I’m in the plant. People think I’m nuts, but at least I’m not a liability.
7) I work alone generally, so this one is easy.
#8 How else will I sink my Boomer boss’s job if I can’t copy his work exactly? Of course I do as he says!
What do I expect from my company? These are in no specific order….
#1 Competitive pay and benefits. Not competitive by 2000 standards either, competitive by TODAY’S standards.
#2 Appropriate resources for the task at hand.
#3 Upward mobility, either through promotion OR experience(ie: adding to the resume). If you are stagnating at a job learning nothing, its time to move on.
#4 A safe, and honest work environment.
When I first transfered across the country for my last job I worked seven days a week for five weeks to get that sucker on track.
Thanks for the input all. I love hearing from the business owners, especially. Nice TPC post, and KaD.
TPC – in at 7:50? You slacker. And you take lunch? My employees are in manufacturing, so I need them to work while they are here. Thee tasks are for the most part well defined and do not need to be plaaned, so working during the time I am paying them is essential.
@LLPOH – “TPC – in at 7:50? You slacker. And you take lunch? My employees are in manufacturing, so I need them to work while they are here. Thee tasks are for the most part well defined and do not need to be plaaned, so working during the time I am paying them is essential.”
I know, right? My boss is in at 8 on the dot though, and leaves at 5 on the dot so I don’t feel too badly about it.
As for the others, you really can’t compare R&D to manufacturing. The jobs are just way too different.
Exactly, the worst thing parents have done is made their kids lives so easy. For two generations we have raised our children and taught them that we live in a world without consequence.
These kid’s don’t want to start at the bottom and work their way up. They want to start at the top end. They don’t give a rats ass about doing a good job, they “want” a salary.
Then the kids buy a home they can’t afford, fill it with furniture using a credit card, buy a car on a fifteen year loan, and whine it’s the banks fault when they lose it all because they can’t function as an employee.
Then they move back in with mom and dad, this is the future.
If you could afford my salary, you’d have a resume in (especially at a generally 40 hour week). That’s typically not what most people are experiencing as problems when it comes to finding work. Most of the millennials I know are working the types of nonstandard hours that makes 7 AM look really tame.
Now, are there some princesses and primadonnas with the millennials, there are some. There are some no matter where you go. My parents, however, have noticed they have more of a problem with every age group, but mostly their own in regard to the things that really matter (most specifically doing what they are told). And yeah, some people hafta lose a job or two before they learn how to work. That’s a shame, but that’s how it is.
My job fires people all the time, but one of the things they’re not good at is recognizing good pickups. It’s luck of the draw, and we lose 25% of our new hires within a year. And yeah, the millennials will get canned because they’re not meeting those minimum professional standards (sickleave abuse is a pain in the ass for any job) and personally it annoys me when you can’t be bothered to show up 10 minutes early to begin working at the time you’re supposed to. But just as often we fire Gen Xers (usually for not having the skills) and Boomers (for either not having the skills or being obstinant).
Kepi – my factory workers average more than $50k per year, and still I struggle to get quality folks. Go figure.
What’s your starting?
One of the things my job does that mystifies me is that they advertise base annual pay when we have all this mandatory OT, which jacks up your annual by at least 20% as long as you work it. They list that there’s these long hours, but they don’t list the actual take home you’ll be pulling as long as you don’t call out sick. And I sit there and think “no wonder they get such a high rate of toss aways, they’re totally selling the job all wrong”. The only reason we’ve got as many good people as we do is because the economy is tanked out. If it ever turns around, you’re gonna see all the folks who’ve been good leaving pretty quick, especially those of us with degrees.
Around $18 an hour plus benefits plus overtime. Overtime adds a lot to the overall wage.
I cant identify with your article,i always showed up early and did more than i was asked.Mabe its the kids nowadays or your part of the country.
I was always told that men who are married were better because theyve grown up and have others beside thenselves to think of.
Llpoh: What would you do if you caught someone trolling tbp at work?
I used to love trolling tbp at work but now I just hurry up to get to school with a meal and shower in between. I swear I’m gonna fire my boss, he’s a slacker.
In this economy I really don’t understand why you’re not getting resumes from college grads. That’s a pretty fantastic starting salary, and it includes benefits. It might be your part of the country, but where I’m at is significantly under the national average for unemployment and has an unfortunately high cost of living and a base of $18/hr plus benefits is very competative starting.
Ron – you would be amazed to find out that you are the exception and not the rule. Married men are a much better bet, in general, if you are seeking employees.
Kepi – it is the fact that it is a factory, it is not a “clean” job, and it does not meet their expectations for themselves.
Colma – my work computers are for work activities only. Some personal stuff during breaks. Depends on the circumstance. I have had to have a couple of chats re use of computers. Mostly not an issue.
If it were you, I would say a forced circumcision would be in order.
Have people actually told you that the “cleanliness” of the job was the factor? When I took my first job it was an office job not because I prefered office work, but because I was told by parents, professors, etc. That working a blue collar job would stiffle your future potential by preventing you from having that office experience.
What if someone came to an interview dressed as a WINNER!?
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Llpoh, I had an employee that refused to wash the company car on a hot summer day. About a month later he informed me when he was taking his holidays. As a small company the maximum I allowed to be away for holidays at one time was 2, he would have been 3. He quit. Of course, he wasn’t missed at all.
When I was a kid, I wanted to impress my boss with how much I could do. I wanted to learn it all and wanted to be promoted. Not just for more pay, but for more of a challenge as well.
The majority of those I hired during my last few years in business thought their job was to just show up and put in enough effort to not get fired so they could get their paycheck.
I wish I had seen an article similar to yours many years ago so I could have posted it in my warehouse. Just maybe, they would have realized that I wasn’t nuts to expect more from them.
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Bling bling
Im trying to figure out what in the hell Kepis company produces.
They cant access the internet from their consoles but must get up and walk to a terminal to read email but there are noisy machines nearby to distract them for their work which is filling out pointless paperwork. Kepi gets paid a crappy wage and now, above, claims a high salary
I call BS Kepi.
I might consider working for llpoh except for two things.
I didnt get the company car dirty or leave the used condom in the backseat and I dont do windows.
Anon, it’s called “things change in 9 years”. I started out of college making a really crappy wage, I worked hard, I talked my company into paying me more. Then I got another job that paid well, but required a significant time investment.
No one gets to refuse a job I give them. Ever. No exceptions.
“1) all employees of the business must be prepared to do any task that is assigned them. We are a reasonably small business, and at times the situation may dictate that people be assigned outside their normal roles. They may be assigned to clean toilets, or to garden, or to wash vehicles”
Factory employees make shit gardeners.
You’re doing yourself a disservice requiring grind workers to keep living plants alive, healthy, well cared for, and attractive.
However it is a common mistake. Few bean counters understand that living things require specialized care to keep them in good condition.
Which is why we have a country full of trash trees and shrubs, ugly lawns, parking lot half-dead landscaping, and numerous other unsightly crimes against the beauty of the plant world.
It’s America. We’re all about the bottom line.
Okay, seriously?
I’ve seen this argument numerous places that duty X needs to be handled by a specialist. There are occasional times where that’s correct, but in most circumstances it’s just not true. Now hearing that factory workers can’t handle gardening I’m just…
Okay, putting something in the ground and controlling water flow so that it grows and doesn’t drown is like… HUMN 101: Introduction to Existing. Any ablebodied human being with very few exceptions can grow things in a garden, change their own oil, replace their toilets, drive stick and install dimmer switches. If you’re over 18 and not on disability and you don’t know how to do these things, go learn, because there’s just no excuse.
After the “I’m a good boss, say you love me” post,
Why not “what I expect from my favorite porn site”, or “what I expect from my golf buds” or “why my cleaning lady should duck”…
WHE DON’T GIVE A FLYING FUCK. If this is recognition or gratitude you’re looking for, you should have run for governor.
“Kepi says:
Okay, seriously?
I’ve seen this argument numerous places that duty X needs to be handled by a specialist. There are occasional times where that’s correct, but in most circumstances it’s just not true. Now hearing that factory workers can’t handle gardening I’m just…
Okay, putting something in the ground and controlling water flow so that it grows and doesn’t drown is like… HUMN 101: Introduction to Existing.”
^^^^
I rest my case.
Verdict: guilty as charged.
Excellent article, Llpoh. Good comments also!
Good post llpoh, 50k seems to be pretty goodbut i havent seen what state/geographical area you are located in.
50k in eastern pa isnt equal to 50k in illinois or 50 k in NC, so where are these jobs?
I apologize if it was already stated, i just didnt see it in the post or comments.
No matter where you live $50k a year is going to afford you a life that’s pretty respectable. It’ll vary place to place, sure, but nowhere takes $50k and makes it only worth $30k.
Loopy, I agree , the majority of the modern sugar sucking, IPhone pecking brat pack would not have survived 15 minutes in the mfg plant I started in.
It was physically demanding , dirty and dangerous. No women were hired to work the floor. Production quotas were to be met ,even if the crew had to work through both breaks , lunch and on into the night.
The pay was minimum wage sweetened by bonus pay which was set at per unit pay.The more you built the more you were paid. And, the pay was damn good…if you were willing to bust you’re ass while there.Slacking did not exist anywhere in the plant…not even in management
But, if you-for any reason, no exceptions- missed clocking in by 7 am you lost your bonus for the week.You received the minimum wage , but no bonus.
Miss work 3 time during a quarter and you were terminated.No exception.
Many people would come to work 1-2 hours before 7 am -sans pay-just to get their work station prepped to keep up with the production line.
Management was picked from the best and brightest working the floor. The average time working the floor , before moving up to management was 12 years.No exceptions.
There was no turnover. Did I mention the pay was good?
You had to have a contact on the inside else you weren’t getting in.Jobs were very scarce and there were hardly every any openings.
As a snot nosed work hungry kid, I managed to land a job at this plant due to trade skill and knowing someone on the inside.
I started off doing the most menial, albeit physically demanding of task, but quickly moved up to more possible positions managing entire lines.After about 13 years of bouncing around the plant divisions (12 hundred employees) doing anything and everything asked, I was chosen as the plant manger for a new start-up….end of story.
The point of this story was establish a foundation of I know from whence I speak.
The boomer’s that gave 100% and stuck out the dirty work for years to move into management gave way to a new generation of coddled curs who couldn’t make it a week on a production line before they would throw in the towel.
The kids we raised -and therein lies the boomer blame -would not do the dirty work we endured to make their lives more comfortable than ours.
We then turned to temp service for labor picked the illegal alien and vibrant youth culture.Needless to say this not only affected quality of product , but job environment as well.
It led to a veritable war betwixt management and the third world culture we were forced to forced to employ.
Quality fell, morale collapsed pride in workmanship disappeared and the company slowly died of attrition.
Moral of this story.
Strict discipline is requisite in good times if standard of excellence are to be maintained in bad…no exceptions.
Llpoh, do you accept children under eight?
All seems like a wastes of time and energy. People graduating college should aspire to work for the government. More job security, higher pay and more meaningful work.
And by meaningful work I mean doing “public service” helping others and saving the environment.
Not to mention getting to pontificate about greedy corporations.
kepi,
i am a degreed mechanical engineer and live/work in PA south of Harrisburg. My best friend works in IT and has a CS degree but lives and works in NYC, he makes 110% more than what I make. Our standards of living are not equal, my standard of living is actually higher because the dollars are not equal, they don’t buy the same things whether it be food, rent/mortgage etc… in each location.
my point being that 50k working in a factory in NJ or surrounding Philly would allow you to get by and not be destitute but 50k in most parts of Alabama would allow you to be a responsible home owner and actually get ahead of the curve assuming you weren’t fathering multiple children with multiple mothers out of wedlock.
in other words, 50k might be “respectable” (whatever your definition of that is) almost everywhere but it absolutely could be worth 30k someplace else.
llpoh,
i delivered newspapers from age 11-15, lifeguarded, scrubbed toilets, washed dishes, shoveled snow, did landscaping and cleaned those 14 foot champagne glass hot tubs that were so popular in the resorts of the Poconos. I think I saw 3 lifetimes worth of used condoms in that 4 month span, beyond yuck!!!
But I went to college, got a degree in engineering and now work in product design.
I am sure you have stated it before but I was wondering your take on min wage laws.
I see it as keeping young people (15-18) out of working the disgusting jobs for little money, this in turn makes them sedentary, dependent on mom and dad and forget that these jobs need to be done by “other people.” Cleaning/detailing a car for $10/hour might seem like it sucks but it is a lot better than cleaning public toilets for $7.50/hour. If you never do the latter, the human mind thinks the former is the worst thing possible even if that is far from reality.
I am still interested to know where your facility is located geographically in teh US to compare to the manufacturing wages of the facility I work at and get an understanding of what standard of living someone working there could have.
thanks again for the post.
You didn’t build that LLPOH.
operari sequitur esse
Dear Burning Platform Readers,
I have to be quick. I just washed Mr. llpoh’s car, and he is inspecting it.
I fear that Mr. llpoh is a raging closet homosexual, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I walked by his desk this morning at 7:05AM and I saw him looking at a very fat man. This man even had man breasts. He looks at a LOT of fat man pictures all day long. Please intervene and help him with some guidance.
Oh shit! Here he comes! I must go water some plants. Bye!
Sincerely,
More Terrified Than Ever
FUCK ME!!!
I forgot to sign on as the doppleganger.
What a dumbass. Jeezus.
Stuck – i am gonna tattoo your ass. But very funny it was. But you know I cannot let it slide. I will get to you later.
LMAO…all dopples will now point to Stuck, the only T-Rex ever with very long arms.
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Love your insights Llpoh!
I had my first – true – managing gig in the late 80s (I was in my early 20s) and I have noticed that EVERY year it seems that society is producing less capable individuals.
My dad, even in the depths of his alcoholism, worked 10 plus (usually 12) hour days and weekends. His rules for us kids working (and I took my first real job at the age of 10), were pretty simple:
1. Show up on-time and if scheduled, unless dead, or nearly so. Call and face your boss if you aren’t going to show.
2. Your job is whatever the guy that signs the checks (or is assigned to manage you) tells you it is. No exceptions, no whining, no bitching, and don’t you dare ever say, “it’s not my job.” And you agreed to your wage when you started. Don’t like it, find a new gig, don’t “punish” your boss by fucking off because you feel underpaid.
3. Work is a necessity, you’ll be spending most of your active life there, so make something of it. If manual/tedious make it a game and compete with yourself. Busy time goes faster than idle time. And those that are happy to take on more work are generally the first to be promoted and the last to be employed if things tank. Plus they learn things that will either bring more money, or more opportunity. Don’t be idle in either your time, or your mind, while on the clock. Let your boss pay to teach you new skills, college will never do so.
I later realized that in highly-unionized Michigan, my dad and his teachings were foreign thoughts here. In highly unionized families, the teaching go more like this:
1. The company is lucky to have you and as such, will/must comply with your personal life schedule.
2. The company is run by rich men that screw you every chance they get. Screw ’em back my never doing anything more than the bare minimum.
3. Work is optional, pay is mandatory. If companies do not adhere to that, they are not worthy of your best effort.
4. Every change that is made/discussed is for one reason only – to screw you over.
If I remember correctly, you are in Illinois. That explains a lot.
My son’s friends (late 20s, early 30s), were raised by mostly union parents. Out of about 10 boys that he has known for the past 12 years, only 1 (other than my son) has held a job more than a couple years.
The unionist parents have seemed to instill a great hatred of work, business and those that claw their way up.
Our schools are run by highly unionized individuals too.
Working hard, and the sheer holiness of doing so, is no longer held up as a standard to be emulated. It is held up as an archaic notion that is to be spit upon and denigrated.
And we wonder why kids have zero clue as to how easy it is to be successful in this world? I don’t.
I am thankful everyday that I bucked the advice of my peers and neighbors and raised my son the way I did. He is a much better man for it, and he has a much better chance of survival and feeding his family than most others do.
You, Mr. Llpoh, would love him as an employee, but sorry, he works for me.
I worked with a guy once who was supposed to work a 5 days week. He only showed up 4 days a week. I asked him why? He said I can,t afford to come in 3 days a week. He did not last long.
Kepi:
50k in SF…….. nnnyyaaaaah:
Not so good.
Kepi:
50k in Northeast New Jersey = near poverty level.
Not so good.
llpoh
On a more serious note ….. your list of 7 things you require;
Well …….DUH !!!! And I mean that in the most respectful sense! These are things I learned in my very FIRST job …. assembling the Sunday newspaper.
Goddamn shame that folks don’t learn these BASICS ….. by the time they’re 12 years old.
I once worked in a factory. It’s an interesting accident of fate (or maybe providence) that I didn’t end up in lower level management there forever.
It was honorable work, but it was monotonous, hot, dangerous, and boring. I worked the evening shift, and a guy who worked on my machine on the midnight shift lost his arm one night after I went home. It was his own fault, no doubt, but he still lost it.
Maybe everyone should have to do this kind of work for a year or so (I hung in for about 2 years) before they attempt college. It was a major motivator for me. I never wanted to go back.
I now have employees, and I have about the same expectations as Lipoh, although my help has it better than factory workers do. But I have a small, well trained staff that works together, in an efficient and highly effective way. That’s because I pay them a bonus on their production.
When you give workers even a small stake in the game, it changes their attitude about work completely. if I have an employee who is dragging us down because of absenteeism, poor work ethic, or bad attitude, my team will generally run them off without me having to lift a finger.
The worst things about having employees are:
The taxes I have to pay on their behalf
The ever increasing cost of health insurance
The inequities of the State unemployment system
Government mandated paperwork…
And now, government mandated training, which has gotten a toehold and is yet another growing tumor placed on my business by a government that doesn’t care whether we make a profit or not.
All sounds very reasonable LLPOH.
But god I hate working for others.
@TeresaE – “1. Show up on-time and if scheduled, unless dead, or nearly so. Call and face your boss if you aren’t going to show.”
This is less “@TeresaE” and more “at everyone else.”
I’ve worked through many sicknesses in my time (obviously not as many as people who are older, remember experience is relative here) and I’ve noticed a few things about the practice.
1) Sick people are not effective workers.
2) Sick people are all too frequently “going through the motions” and generate little if any real results while they are ill.
3) They take longer to recover, reducing their efficacy for more days than they might have otherwise if they had had the opportunity to take a day/afternoon off and just sleep.
4) They are more likely to infect other employees.
Now, obviously all of these depend on the severity of the illness. The sniffles hardly qualify as sick, but someone with a temperature of 102˚F+ for a couple of days probably needs the day off.
My question is: Am I way off base here? I genuinely want to know. I have a few small business ideas, and have no intention of working for someone else for the rest of my life. Some advice/outside perspective would be nice on this topic.
Tpc – when you have your own business, your attitude and understanding will change. Reading through the above, you should easily be able to see the common thread – business owners understand this stuff and almost universally are of the same opinion. Non- business owners – ie you for instance – have lots of great ideas about the right way to run a business.
FOr instance, regarding absences. When someone is absent, I have to rebalance my entire workforce of 100 around that absence. I cannot say “all will be ok, I will catch up tomorrow”. No – that does not work. I do not have even one job that is able to skip a day of production. It would put the entire plant late on deliveries,. So I need people to come to work, or it is a huge cost and headache, and if absenteeism skyrockets the whole business is at risk.
It is for this same reason that being late is not allowed. I have to balance the plant to the workforce. If someone is late, I do not know if or when they are coming in. I have to absorb the cost of rebalance if they are late, and then an additional cost to rebalance when they arrive, whatever the hell time that is.
I require this stuff as if I do not have these things in place it costs money – my money. And if left unchecked it will bankrupt the business. My expenses are $100 per minute plus materials and overhead. I do not like losing a minute – it is the same as tearing up a hundred dollar bill and flushing it. I estimate that every employee wastes 20 minutes per day. That costs me $2000 per day. And that is despite running a tight ship. If the ship were loose, the cost would be unbelievable and the company would go broke.
You are in for some attitude adjustment if you start employing folks with your own money. I guarantee it.
LLPOH docked this guy’s pay after his arm got cut off in the factory.
llpoh
Go over to the Inspirational post. I posted a picture of you.
Of course sick people need to stay home. It’s the abuse of the “sick day” concept that creates the problem.
I, myself am seldom ever sick. Less than one day a year. It’s remarkable how much more “wellness” the average business owner experiences compared to his/her employees. LOL.
Many employees consider sick time to be a right…and however many sick days you will pay for…that’s exactly how many days they’ll call in.
But I have one employee who is so faithful that she would never call in, so we sometimes do have to actually send her home, against her will, when on the rare occasion she is ill with some kind of bug.
Repeated call-ins on Mondays or Fridays? Fire ’em. Save yourself the grief.