Employee gets goverment check and quits.

alonzo83 · Feb 11, 2017

I am at a loss.

This is the second time this happened.

First time around on the previous guy his girlfriend got a check for 15k from social security for her kids.

This time a different employee got a check for about 5k and it seemed like his job mattered a whole lot less and started skipping out of work.

Come friday he tried to leave work early and I called him back in to finish the day's work. He came back finished the day and quite.

Does anyone have a formula, a hot line or a support group that deals with weeding out short sighted shitheads?

roll-a-leblond · Feb 11, 2017

He did u a favor

Bondo · Feb 11, 2017

roll-a-leblond said:
He did u a favor

I totally agree. People just don't care as much anymore about their jobs. I would have taken the 5k and put it towards a house and been very happy as an employee.

Even here in farm county NJ. Mexican are forming their own companies, or just finding ways to get free money. It's just like machinists around here, once the old timers are gone, so is the entire work force.

Sent from my 2PS64 using Tapatalk

michiganbuck · Feb 11, 2017

My buddy Phil with having a successful boat shop hired a young guy and agreed to train him to be a boat mechanic. Start $12 and expect going to $20 or more in two years. Yes this was back when only the big union shops were making that kind of money. Guy worked for two weeks then quite because adding all of his free money from unemployment and the like he made more than $12..Yes I don't know how he got back on free money but he did.

I think anyone who can answer a phone and/or drive a car is able to work and should not be on free money.. but yes there needs to be jobs for that to work.

Free money should not be as much or more than a working wage..It is a hard call because people truly in need should not live like a beggar.

gustafson · Feb 11, 2017

how much you paying these guys?

5k don't pay much rent or buy much food

alonzo83 · Feb 11, 2017

It really burns me because we were in the process of training him and he was just getting to the point he could weld half way decent and perform some work without instruction.

So we invested a lot of time and money into a guy that got butthurt because I made him come back in and not put up with his disappearing act anymore.

I know some are going to say that we get what we pay for, after taxes were taken out, the guy actually made more than me if he stayed a full 40 hours a week.

Sad fact of the matter I can predict his future. 3 weeks from now he is going to be broke as a joke and half as funny, scrambling to find employment.

At this time I no longer want to hire anyone. I had the guy that came in and kicked ass for exactly three days and quite mid day to go get drunk, the guy who almost burnt his finger off with the plasma torch because he was wearing jersey gloves and not leather like we had provided, and two guys that thought a big government check has made them independently wealthy. Last but not least the kid that had a learning disability and had to be coached on the simplest repeat jobs.

At this point I think we need to start raising up prices to shed the excess workload that the three reliable men in the shop can't handle. Stop trying to grow the business with employees and try growing it through automation. "A robotic welder doesn't get temperamental around tax season and it will never have a drug problem."

garyhlucas · Feb 11, 2017

Hiring the right people is the hardest job an owner does. The desire not to admit you made a mistake is why the wrong ones are still working for you. However it does sound like you are fishing in the sewage pond not the lake. I like to hire people who are smarter than me. Lots of bosses don't like to have an employee that can show them up. That of course costs more money. However you can't just look at what you pay an employee, you have to look at what the return on that employee is. The number one thing I look for in an employee is ownership of the job.

I had a young guy working for me and gave him a task of punching holes in thousands of short pieces of channel. I came out in the shop and he was going so slow I thought he might be asleep. When I said something to him about it he said "I hate this job it's going to take all week!". I put another young guy on the job. I came out in the shop and he has optimized the process and is going like a bat out of hell. When I commented on it he said "I hate this job, I'm going to finish it today!" I fired the first young guy a short time later. Twenty years later he is still a worthless person on the government dole.

I am really lucky right now. I am doing a startup and have a great bunch of ambitious and respectful young guys working under me, after firing a couple, and couple that quit. I admit I made some bad hiring decisions too.

AARONT · Feb 11, 2017

And people wonder why companies aren't willing to train. It get's difficult to spend a bunch of time and money on entry level people when you know 90% of them aren't going to stick around.

One of my best guys is leaving at the end of March. It's awful trying to find someone to replace him. His old lady misses the west coast so she's dragging him out there. We've tried everything to change his mind, $5 more an hour, extra 2 weeks vacation, whatever hours he wants. Sometimes you just can't win.

WILLEO6709 · Feb 11, 2017

Sometimes you can't win. Unfortunately most of the really good people HAVE jobs.....and finding a young person to bring up in the trade through OJT seems more and more difficult.

true story from years ago.... a factory had a maintenance guy that would work long enough to pay his bills for the month then be gone until the next month. brought up at a review and the employee quit on the spot. His boss just asked him what the company could do to improve his attendance. Ya can't make it up.

Chip Chester · Feb 11, 2017

Bondo wrote: "Even here in farm county NJ. Mexican are forming their own companies, or just finding ways to get free money."

Overall, I sympathize with the group's plight. I'm not sure why "Mexican are forming their own companies" is a bad thing, though -- except perhaps increased competition. But remember, you did it.

Chip

EndlessWaltz · Feb 11, 2017

Hiring good employees isn't hard, it's keeping them that is. A guy shows up, doesn't make scrap, and does right by the company and you want to pay him $12 isn't going to fly(not saying you are..just saying)

Hire students from school! Start them at $14hr and give them a dollar raise after 90 days, then tell them at the years end they will be at $16, then a dollar every year till 5yrs. Then ask them point blank if they think they can make more in 5yrs somewhere else that isn't a lawyer. That gets them to stop and think. if they had a high school shop class, level headed, and showed up at college they are worth hiring! Plus they will know CAD already decently enough. If you have local tech colleges within 2hrs contact the teacher and ask to stop by sometime when they have all the students there and check it out, offer advice too even.

guest · Feb 11, 2017

alonzo83 said:
At this point I think we need to start raising up prices to shed the excess workload that the three reliable men in the shop can't handle. Stop trying to grow the business with employees and try growing it through automation. "A robotic welder doesn't get temperamental around tax season and it will never have a drug problem."

I cut my last employee loose several years back and gave up on trying to grow the biz. I make more by myself than I ever did with employees. I have a buddy with a shop and when I get jammed up I offload some work to him so I don't have to turn away a customer. I make a little bit on the offload and I'm busy making something else anyway so giving up margin on the offload doesn't bother me.

Hang onto the employees that you can rely on and actually make you a little money, push the low-margin jobs out of the shop and keep the winners. Pay off any debt, take the money you were spending on deadbeat employees and put it into capital improvements.

When I'm not in the building, no one is in the building, so things stopped growing legs.

"keep it small and keep it all"

cmccull166 · Feb 11, 2017

when I have a job in shop Im losing my ass on I have a really bad attitude(like this one in front of me and Im here on a Saturday) :angry:

when Im making money Im happy to be here.That said 14.00 is a crappy wage.

20.00 and raising a family makes a person a broke consumer.
I see new Tahoes driven around town I dont know what their lively hood is.. but I know whats its not.

Alloy Mcgraw · Feb 11, 2017

The law is set-up to protect the employee only, and not the business owner.

Certain questions I feel would help aid me in the hiring process I'm not allowed to ask.

You adopt in some respects when you hire.....Current laws discourage hiring imo.

I don't feel I can make a competent decision if not allowed to ask all the questions I want. Being that we business owners are limited in that respect, we end up with a lot more duds then we would if allowed to.

Business owners are really expected to carry the burden of people the government knows will fail on their own.

sean9c · Feb 11, 2017

I was making more than $18/hr as a machinist in the 1980's. I think a more important question is why wages haven't gone up. Who the hell can live on $20/hr these days?

DMF_TomB · Feb 11, 2017

when i lost job from company bankruptcy after 32 years i had other unemployed former coworkers tell me dont bother taking any job for less than $20./hr
.
personally i was grateful to find another job in 6 weeks. at 50 years old i did not want to be unemployed long term til social security age. also your job identifies how we think of ourselves. i am a machinist. obviously if unemployed for years that becomes harder to say, more like i was a machinist or used to be a machinist.
.
at new job after 14 months i applied for internal company transfer job in different department. i now work on bigger cnc machines. it makes job less boring if you let employees move around or do different jobs every so often. when boss dont care if employee does same job for years and they might get bored and hate their job, dont be surprised they leave job. in old days journeyman trades people, journeyed that is they moved around to work at different companies.

Bobw · Feb 11, 2017

I don't undestand it..

Had a kid last year, local, doing some odd jobs here and there for me, I was paying him well,
treating him well... He was reliable for about a week, and then he would only come around
when he was desperate for money...

"They are going to shut my electricity off today, can I work for a few hours? and borrow a few
dollars and I'll make up the rest tomorrow?"

Stuff like that all the time... Never dawned on him that if he was here last week when I needed him,
he would have HAD THE MONEY to pay his electric bill...

Messed up part, the kid was 19, with a 2 year old and another on the way... Those kids are going to be
Fucked Up.. And then some teacher is going to have to deal with them.

Some people are simply allergic to work.. And there is ALWAYS an excuse.. If they put half the effort
into going to work as they did trying to get out of work, they wouldn't have a problem.

I had a guy that used to work for me, he was/is a good guy, just a little rattled sometimes... He called
in one morning...

"I need to take the day off, I've been missing a lot of work lately (no shit?) and I'm getting a little
short on money, so I need to take the day off to figure out what to do"...

I'm not sure if I wanted to smash my head against the wall, or his...

DMF_TomB · Feb 11, 2017

sean9c said:
I was making more than $18/hr as a machinist in the 1980's. I think a more important question is why wages haven't gone up. Who the hell can live on $20/hr these days?

.
i started a job in 2012 at $20/hr and made
1st year $54,000
2nd year $59,000
3rd year $64,000
4th year $74,000 ($22/hr)
overtime at 1.5 pay adds up, also 6% 401K match adds up. 4 years later over $100,000 saved in 401K

Alloy Mcgraw · Feb 11, 2017

sean9c said:
I was making more than $18/hr as a machinist in the 1980's. I think a more important question is why wages haven't gone up. Who the hell can live on $20/hr these days?

The manufacturing sector in the US/Worldwide isn't the same as it was then, much has changed.

Business owners don't hire based on what you or anyone else considers "a livable wage". Wage is based on services rendered, value, and how easy you are to replace. If you provide a service to the company that is profitable, and not easy to replace, your wage will reflect that.

DMF_TomB · Feb 11, 2017

Bobw said:
I don't undestand it..

Had a kid last year, local, doing some odd jobs here and there for me, I was paying him well,
treating him well... He was reliable for about a week, and then he would only come around
when he was desperate for money...

"They are going to shut my electricity off today, can I work for a few hours? and borrow a few
dollars and I'll make up the rest tomorrow?"

Stuff like that all the time... Never dawned on him that if he was here last week when I needed him,
he would have HAD THE MONEY to pay his electric bill...

Messed up part, the kid was 19, with a 2 year old and another on the way... Those kids are going to be
Fucked Up.. And then some teacher is going to have to deal with them.

Some people are simply allergic to work.. And there is ALWAYS an excuse.. If they put half the effort
into going to work as they did trying to get out of work, they wouldn't have a problem.

I had a guy that used to work for me, he was/is a good guy, just a little rattled sometimes... He called
in one morning...

"I need to take the day off, I've been missing a lot of work lately (no shit?) and I'm getting a little
short on money, so I need to take the day off to figure out what to do"...

I'm not sure if I wanted to smash my head against the wall, or his...

.
.
.
you got to realize some people only work to get drunk or high
.
you will never have a reliable worker whose number one goal in life is to get drunk or high as soon as they got a few dollars in their pocket.
.
drug test before employment weeds out a lot of those type of people. hair test tests for drugs going back months. people who drink alcohol also often smoke weed. catch the weed use you find out who has a problem

Employee gets goverment check and quits.

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