Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On 6/19/2017 12:21 PM, wrote:



If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't be self employed. I should have
gone to work at a government job, a civil service job, gone to the
military, the public utilities, or even one of the big monster companies
that were big in their day. 30 years, and out.

A policeman here in CT was able to retire before some questionable
disciplinary situation. He is 54 years old and his pension is $127,000
a year. You may be right.




I think the last really large companies that I know that employ pretty
Draconian measures (by this group's standards) for their workforce is
Amazon, Toyota, and for new hires, USAA. All have a huge presence here,
between Toyota and USAA alone they have over 30,000 workers. So
everyone here knows someone that works at one of those.

Here's the nasty rule of employee law they use on their employees:

- you must be at your station WORKING when your shift starts. No
excuses (car broke down, grandmother #6 died this morning but I cam to
work anyway, wife sick, kid sick, ate something bad, dog ate my
homework, etc.) go undocumented. Excessive documented absence means termination

- no more than 2 bathroom breaks in the morning, and nor more than 2 in the afternoon

- you have one break you must take of 15 minutes in the morning, and one in the afternoon

- you must take lunch every day
some rules snipped. . .
In a large company those rules are common and really, the break and
bathroom time is reasonable. I know places with less breaks.



They all pay low to start, wanting to separate the wheat from the chaff,
winnowing out the folks that don't want to be there. Your commitment is
an indicator of your earnest attitude to be a good employee.

All that sounds great to me! But I can see that for most here, that
wouldn't fly for a second. And as an owner of a small business, I can't
be that stringent because employees take everything (like here) very, very personally.

That is why I never worked for a company like that, especially in some
of the non-thinking-robotic jobs. I'd go nuts after an hour on an
assembly line or processing paperwork over and over. .



My painter called this morning... "Robert, I am running a few late.
Just wanted you to know so you can wait for me. Got into again with my
old lady... she always waits until I am walking out the door to start her ****..."

So he is 30 minutes late. Blows my morning schedule up. He works for a
couple of hours and says, "hey, I will need to get off early today to
pick up the kids from school. My Mom has a doctor's appointment today
so she can't pick them up". He thinks since he is a responsible father,
I should pay him for the whole day,

Does he do a day's work? He is best paid by the job rather than the
hour. This is a $xxx job and has to be done by nest Tuesday.




I would say with the last 20 years or so under my belt, this is a
typical worker. His upside is that he works like a demon when he gets
here, but when distracted makes as many mistakes as daily progress. So typical.

When I get a good employee, I treat them like gold. They don't lie to
me, they take care of my tools, they work hard for a full day, they are
reliable and show up on time, they have pride in their work... they own
me. I have a couple like that. They don't work for me full time as
they get a few side jobs, the go off and do those for a handful of cash
(no doubt unreported) and they call me when they run out of work. Great
guys, good workers, a pleasure to have on your job, but lucky me, really
crappy business men.

Yes, that sounds ideal. What if he need an oil change?


One of them gets more done in 6 hours than anyone I have had doing the
same job gets done in 8. He has pretty bad health, so he doesn't work
fast, but not a wasted stroke from him and he never takes a break, only
a 30 minute lunch. I don't mind paying him for a full day. But he
doesn't sleep at work, he doesn't walk off to do personal crap during he
business day leaving his coworkers in the lurch, either. He knows he is
important, and understands his responsibilities. I love having him around.

So you see my point. He gets his work for a full day done is 6 hours.
You don't jump on a guy like that if he takes an extra smoke break.
Maybe if he took a short nap he could get even more done.



As you guys have said that I would be an ass to work for, I cannot
imagine what it would be like to have you guys as co workers (the
correct term for small business employee/employer relations in my mind).
I cannot imagine the job site rolling along with all of us working,
tools in hand (including me) what my reaction would be to have a guy we
were counting on saunter up the job when he felt like it. I did find an
employee sleeping in my company truck once after he had gone missing for
about an hour. That didn't go well. For me.

Depends on what they are doing. If a crew is needed for a particular
function, yes, they have to be there to work together. But if I'm
painting the ceiling i don't give a damn when the plumber in the next
room takes his nap.




Nah... I think only -MIKE- gets it because he is rowing the same boat.
You can only work with the workforce that is available. I'll take my
guys anytime over the rest of the crap. I think too, my employees are
pretty happy as they know what is expected of them, and that I will back
them as needed. They sure have been enjoying giving me a lot of crap
after I read some of this to them. One even conjured up Monty Python's
"help! help! I'm being repressed!"

Good. Then it does not matter what the rest of us do.


Now they have all seen this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtYU87QNjPw

And I am listening as of last week to bad replicas of English accents
while being accused of "repression". At least this thread puts a smile
on the guys faces when they think about it. Hopefully this week they
will stop asking me if they can go get an oil change during the day.
They are having waaayyy to much fun with this.

I never asked, I just went. No one ever tracked my time. At the end of
the month I got the same pay check. Always got a nice bonus at the end
of the year too.



They are a confident group, and should be. I stand by all of my
decisions; if I tell them to do something wrong, I pay them to fix it.
If they make a mistake and it wasn't because they were shopping on their
phone for the best oil change deal, I will pay them to fix their own
mistakes. MY next perfect day will be my first one. I don't make daily
mistakes, but I make up for that by making some really big ones, or several a day.

I would really love to hear the collective's take on things when they
have 30 years of being a check writing employer. Wonder what it would be like then.

Robert


I did not personally write the checks but I did have budgets for labor,
material, utilities. Gas can run $30,000, electric $15,000. I maintained
them rather well over 27 years. I've spent some time with the labor
board too. Never lost. We also used temp labor for some unskilled
jobs. Total about 15 employees.



I signed the checks for a business but even then it was not the same as
signing checks for my own small business. When it is your money you think
a bit longer and harder about signing that check.