I have a helper like that who I unfortunately lost to a full time gig.
He's ready and raring to go. If there's a lull in activity, he's looking for something else to do. If we show up to a project site and I'm speaking with the client, he's not standing around waiting for orders, he just starts unloading or unraveling extension cords, etc. He's always looking ahead to what can be done when the current task is finished.
He's the kind of guy I buy lunches for and he actually told me I had to I had to stop doing it. He's the kind of guy I "round up" for when it comes time to pay. He's actually told me on a couple occasions that I paid him too much. I think he just knows, now, that I like to tip. :-)
My point originally is Robert's reference to "all" when there are exceptions. Yes, people do steal and it comes in many forms. Merchandise, time, tools. whatever.
Sounds like he did put together a good crew and working for the job rther than by th hour thy hustle more. Of course you have to have the right people that don't take shortcuts.
Want $15 and hour? Just work hard, learn to do things, show up, try hard. You don't need a college education to make a very good wage if you learn a skill and make some effort. Personally, I don't want to hire a $15 guy, I'd rather have the guy trying to make $30. He has ambition. He may not start there but can get there over time.
I thought most of the people asking for it were ivory tower do-gooders who if they ever broke a sweat in their lives did it on the tennis court. It's one of the things the Democrats just plain don't get. The fix for the problem isn't to raise the minimum wage, it's to bring enough decent jobs back that people don't _have_ to work for minimum wage. That's one of the big things that cost them the election.
Here you go again arguing for the sake of arguing. Some times you have great input an information and other times you just argue for the sake of arguing with nothing of value to contribute.
Bi-polar. Seek help. There is medication available.
What seems to be lost here is that people actually have control over their life and business.
Don't like your boss? Quit Don't like your employee? Fire him/her
Most of us have put up with a tyrant boss for a time but smart people make an exit plan and execute it.
I'm sure we all have some stories on both sides for employer/employee abuse. I know of a company that pays at least 20% more than others to its supervisors. Why? The money is the only reason they put up with the crap they have to deal with.
If an employee steals, fire him. State laws vary, but usually, an "at will" employee can be let go at any time for any reason. Some employers will put up with some nonsense as the employee has exceptional skills. Your choice to make.
Wow, this has gone from surreal to bizarre. Who is treating employees like dogs? Who has a "master/slave" relationship with their employees? Who is abusing their employees with their tyrannical ways?
I showed one of my good guys that has been with me for a few years now this post and he laughed his ass off. He immediately started with "hey dude... I wanna go get an oil change this afternoon while I am on the clock. Can I get you to pay for it too?" and "Robert, since it is so hot, I need a nap now and then during the day. You OK with that?" Now the joke across the boys is that they are all abused by me and I owe them lunch.
Due to the extreme near hysterics here, I ran some of it by my fellow busin ess owners, and they all got a pretty good laugh. None took any of it seri ously.
In my end of business, construction, it must be quite different than the ot her business many here have participated in. No doubt with the surfeit if retirees, the business model of today is different than even 20 years ago, making it hard for some to understand.
Today's employee/employer relationship in the world of small business is mo re of a group effort, with the owner being at the front of the parade. Mos t small business owners feel like they work for their employees to some ext ent, and none feel like they run the business. With the State employee com mission ready to hear ANY grievance, television attorneys (here, anyway) sc reaming for you to call them if you feel you have been wronged in any way c onceivable by your employer, the stringent NLRB rules that are an umbrella for any state/federal guidelines that must be followed, the increased burde n put on businesses for reporting employee activity and the need to keep ac curate records on each employee in case any of the above examples are off a tick, no one I know feels as an employer that they work for themselves.
I will agree that everyone here is would be the kind of employee that someo ne would consider a gift from on high, you might be surprised at how you ar e treated in today's business world.
If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't be self employed. I should have go ne 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 bi g in their day. 30 years, and out. Then (having most likely achieved all I wanted) I could sit back and joint the lecture on how the world works fro m a cocoon of security firmly wrapped around me at all times. Sure, I migh t have missed a promotion, been wrongfully fired (but eventually rehired) a nd had the other travails that plague corporate folks. Some of my friends have done that, but that wasn't my path, and truthfully, I am no sorry. Wh at gets me to think about these things is that there are indeed plenty of p eople that sleep during the work day, shop, walk off early when they want, run personal errands during the work day, and generally do as they please w hile getting paid. I feel like an idiot for not signing up.
I think the last really large companies that I know that employ pretty Drac onian measures (by this group's standards) for their workforce is Amazon, T oyota, and for new hires, USAA. All have a huge presence here, between Toy ota and USAA alone they have over 30,000 workers. So everyone here knows s omeone 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 undoc umented. 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
- no sleeping during your shift
- no eating during your shift (unless medically needed such as a glucose ta blet for diabetics)
- no personal errands while on the company clock
- no cell phone used unless on break or lunch
- no unauthorized time off
- sick days are valid only if the employee calls in. Excessive absence may require proof of doctor visit
- you must take all Federal holidays
- no unauthorized overtime (recent rules mean that even salaried people can not work more than the Federal mandate even under salary)
- you have to maintain a clean appearance, observe personal hygiene, and dr ess appropriately (each has their own dress code)
They all pay low to start, wanting to separate the wheat from the chaff, wi nnowing out the folks that don't want to be there. Your commitment is an i ndicator 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 personal ly.
My painter called this morning... "Robert, I am running a few late. Just w anted 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 shit..."
So he is 30 minutes late. Blows my morning schedule up. He works for a co uple 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, as well as they days he takes his kids to the doctor because his non working wife doesn't want to, or has to take a 3 hour lunc h to resolve something at the kid's school. But he will get in around 5 1/
2 hours today as I don't pay for wife fights. By Friday will have forgotten all about it, and will wonder why his check isn't full. He had a short we ek last week, and I gave him a chance to make up the hours on Saturday, but since he and his wife are fighting he decided to pass. Then he shows up l ate today.
I would say with the last 20 years or so under my belt, this is a typical w orker. His upside is that he works like a demon when he gets here, but whe n 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 reliabl e and show up on time, they have pride in their work... they own me. I hav e a couple like that. They don't work for me full time as they get a few s ide jobs, the go off and do those for a handful of cash (no doubt unreporte d) 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.
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, bu t 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 w ork, 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 underst ands his responsibilities. I love having him around.
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 t he 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 compan y truck once after he had gone missing for about an hour. That didn't go w ell. For me.
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 any time 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!"
Now they have all seen this:
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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 g uys faces when they think about it. Hopefully this week they will stop ask ing me if they can go get an oil change during the day. They are having wa aayyy to much fun with this.
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 b est oil change deal, I will pay them to fix their own mistakes. MY next pe rfect 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 t hen.
Seriously, how true is that? While there seem to be more lazy, uninspired lazy worker than ever before, there are some that really want to work. And once they get the hang of it and decide it is a good thing, they want to d o it. They found this out in the Great Depression; the fact that """at tha t time""" most people wanted a sense of accomplishment, and that hard work wasn't beneath them. They liked the even exchange of a full day's work for a full day's pay. It worked well back then, but it was a different ethos. People lined up at the CCC, WPA, etc. to get a chance at a road building, timber management, or other manual labor infrastructure jobs.
I am probably living in fairy land, but I think there are some of those fol ks still around that would excel in a system of fair pay for a fair shake a t work. Minimum wage was never meant to be a livable wage, it was never me ant to be wage to use to raise a family after you receive the rest of your govt bennies. Those jobs were to teach you how to work, teach you the impo rtance of being a team player, and to teach you the relationship of the emp loyer/employee. They were never about earning enough when flipping burgers that you could earn enough to raise a few kids,live in a neighborhood of y our choice,etc. You can't do it on $15 now, but that is the way it was sol d by the govt.
I knew this would happen, and my fellow business owner remember me talking about this the first time $15 came up about 3 years ago. Business will fin d a way around the $15, and it will be fine. And it is.
My amigo in the food service industry has reported back to me that they are getting in more prepackaged food to sell than ever before. I tasted his n ew samples of guacamole salad, carne guisada and barracho beans and they we re great! So for every one that buys enough of his product (which is quite good) they will be able to fire at least a couple of prep guys in the kitc hen and use the premade products. A couple of tweaks (more garlic, celantr o, etc.) and it is their own recipe. So the business owner (not the worker , his family, or the community) will benefit from this. Likewise, he emplo yer has two employees he doesn't have to manage or worry about.
Cost saving innovations driven by the market have some long reaching implic ations. Now several restaurants give you discounts if you order by app. B etter still, several restaurants now that have limited menus are asking you to order with a tablet on the table, no wait person! How many jobs is the employer able to cut? Say at Outback (where I saw this) they were able to lose 3 full time waitresses, you could now shift that pay over to busboys and dishwashers to make that $15 work.
But perhaps not for long. There is already a dishwashing unit available th at will sort and stack plates, and put the silverware in a hopper to be was hed. ONE busboy can now clean a restaurant, and one guy can unload the dis hwasher if they have this machine.
The whole $15 an hour minimum seems like a good idea, but we will have to s ee. No one will want high school kids that are learning just to come to wo rk at $15 an hour. When businesses find out what they can save by updating equipment, procedures, etc., they will pay $20 to a reliable dishwasher th at can operate their machine because they were able to get rid of 2-3 other jobs entirely.
Be sure about this; McDonalds is used to getting a black eye over their emp loyee treatment for issues real or imagined. Their long studies that inclu ding tinkering with their own menus have revealed that people will not give up cheap, fast food as a "go to" choice. So something has to give. Highe r wages with less employment, or higher wages and higher food costs. McDon alds experiments reveal that people want it both ways, but in the end the d on't want to pay $X for a hamburger. They want cheap and fsst, and oh... d on't forget to take care of the worker after you take care of me first.
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.
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.
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. .
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.
Yes, that sounds ideal. What if he need an oil change?
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.
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.
Good. Then it does not matter what the rest of us do.
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.
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.
How many of today's workers were around during the Depression? How many learned from that experience?
If you're that good, you would be worth more than $15/hr. People can only be paid what they can bring in, in economic benefit to their employer. If they're doing $30 worth of work, they can make more. I they only do $5 worth of work and the minimum wage is $15, they have no job.
Businesses will be fine. Get used to dealing with kiosks in fast food restaurants, though. There won't be any workers. High school kids will be unemployable. There will be no working one's way through college, either. Get used to even more crushed under the burden of college debt.
Sure. More jobs gone.
Sure. More jobs gone.
See above.
Wrong. See above.
McDonalds is not the employer. Their franchises employ the minimum wage workers. I can't imagine that every one is the same. Seems to me it's just more leftist tripe.
Not sure whether you were agreeing with my findings and opinions or relying on some sardonic observation in your comments to carry your thoughts. Read ing of current market trends and predictions of the effects of a $15 dollar wage is not a good idea. My observations aren't unique, and certainly not original. Nor are the long term predictions for the ramifications of a $1
5 minimum wage.
I have not dog in that fight and at this point don't really have the time t o worry about what the politicians trying to recreate The Great Society are up to. Minimum wage workers only represent my cleanup guys and overall la bor, which in my end of construction only represents a small part of my ove rall job cost. They are easily passed to the consumer by me, so no harm, n o foul.
Guess it's easier to label, dismiss, and call names to things you are unawa re or simply ignorant of. As of this time last year, it is reported that n early 20% of McDonalds stores are corporate stores. This may be at odds wit h your own research, but I will take Motley Fool's piece on this subject ov er your research. No offense, and if you have any information that McDonal d's owns no stores, I will contact MF myself with your findings.
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McDonalds has spent millions using some of their own stores are test beds f or labor relations, product placement, product, training, etc. They regular ly release their findings to the public, and their findings can be anywhere from mundane to nearly incredible depending on the subject matter. While they are currently trying to get the franchisees to take the whole burden o f overhead on themselves, they haven't done it yet.
I read recently that there is a movement to make McDonalds responsible for wages and labor compliance issues for all stores, including franchisees. Seems wrong to me.
From that article and something I saw on Bloomberg, McD's said they were wa nting to have around 5% (it's a goal, anyway) McD's ownership of their own so they can continue to use the restaurants as test beds.
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.
Mine too. But with "my" business I also put more thought into things other than business related. Vacation this year? Lots more goes into this when using my money, do I want to eat this week, can I wait to pay a bill until next week?
It makes a big difference when some one else is spending "your" money.
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