Employees... ugh.

[CharleyH]

I was a Democrat once... and then people started paying me to make money and be liable for the efforts of others to do it. I snapped out of it really quick.

Kennedy is still my hero, though

ROFLOL - lol -

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

so do you consider it assimilation... or selling out?

That's the question, isn't it? I think about it often.

I have no love for money (I really don't). I have, in my short time, made a lot of it. And making it is the most fun I've ever had doing anything (except My Girl)... but, having it? Having things? New things, shiny things, etc.? I couldn't care.

And I look myself in the mirror all the time and think "Is this what you wanted?" and I know it isn't. Did I sell out? I just don't know what that means.

I didn't sell my principles--my principles more or less dictate that clarity and rationality reign as supreme as possible and its hard to argue that what I do has utility and does nothing to violate free will or represents a contradiction.

I don't think any of it is wrong. Or evil. So I didn't sell my morality out.

But, I find what I do to be, in the end, an unfortunate truth. It's like being a force of nature--it acts independantly of moral evil, but is it a natural evil? Yes, most assuredly. I wish I was doing something else, very often--but can't afford to act in that manner professionally.

hey, Joe, I thought you were considering giving up the whole deal and going back to school?

Between you and me... that's all I ever wanted. I dream, often, of going back and getting the PhD done and teaching Logic and Philosophy until I'm old and grey.

 

[CharleyH]

That's the question, isn't it? I think about it often.

I have no love for money (I really don't). I have, in my short time, made a lot of it. And making it is the most fun I've ever had doing anything (except My Girl)... but, having it? Having things? New things, shiny things, etc.? I couldn't care.

And I look myself in the mirror all the time and think "Is this what you wanted?" and I know it isn't. Did I sell out? I just don't know what that means.

I didn't sell my principles--my principles more or less dictate that clarity and rationality reign as supreme as possible and its hard to argue that what I do has utility and does nothing to violate free will or represents a contradiction.

I don't think any of it is wrong. Or evil. So I didn't sell my morality out.

But, I find what I do to be, in the end, an unfortunate truth. It's like being a force of nature--it acts independantly of moral evil, but is it a natural evil? Yes, most assuredly. I wish I was doing something else, very often--but can't afford to act in that manner professionally.


Between you and me... that's all I ever wanted. I dream, often, of going back and getting the PhD done and teaching Logic and Philosophy until I'm old and grey.

You sell you Joe, or you do not. It's not evil - there is no evil - it is simply what one must do because it is human and because there is not an understanding of what it is to ... well - be better, I guess. Dream not of what was - I will shut up now.

 

[gauchecritic]

I pay well,

If you believe that, I can see where you believe all the rest of it.

 

[CharleyH]

If you believe that, I can see where you believe all the rest of it.

An aside: good to see you again, Gauche.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

If you believe that, I can see where you believe all the rest of it.

Is $8.00/hr not paying well for my area? Or am I missing something?

 

[CharleyH]

Is $8.00/hr not paying well for my area? Or am I missing something?

Well, the ones who work hard get $8, the ones who have sex in their office get $40.

Edit to add: what does 8 bucks an hour get - how would you live on it,t Joe? I think you need to reasses your situation philosophically and go from there.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Well, the ones who work hard get $8, the ones who have sex in their office get $40.

Heh. : )

I think I make about $10.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

so do you consider it assimilation... or selling out?

hey, Joe, I thought you were considering giving up the whole deal and going back to school?

"Mugged by reality" is the usual formulation.

 

[CharleyH]

Heh. : )

I think I make about $10.

well $40 is the cook - but, waitresses make more than that and REALLY DESERVE IT without having to pay out. I want to know what you are really after intellectually here and from your original post.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

"Mugged by reality" is the usual formulation.

I don't think following your bliss is or should be mutually exclusive of "reality"...

what's the one thing you would do if this was your day to die?

Find it and do it, man.

Life is so short to waste managing hotels and dealing with employees if it's not your calling.

Seriously, Joe.

There's nothing more important.

Even your girl.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

If you believe that ($8/hour is a "good" wage), I can see where you believe all the rest of it.

How much do you think is appropriate for an entry level position that requires no skills beyond those needed to play Pong on the computer, and basic politeness? On what grounds would you set wages? Are you at all concerned that if you imposed a $20/hour minimum wage then the general price level of everything would simply rise to a level that cancelled out any gains for the lower-income workers you are seeking to help? Are you at all nervous that if to counter this you imposed a profit cap or price controls on the owners of businesses many of them would disagree with you regarding what is a "fair" return given the risks they take and the lean years they must endure, and just close up shop; that many investors would just put their money into (relatively) risk-free government bonds, thus starving productive enterprises of capital; and that you, Gauchecritic, would have triggered a worldwide depression that would make the 1930s look like the golden years? (Sticking tongue a bit in cheek with that last, but serious about the rest.)

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Edit to add: what does 8 bucks an hour get - how would you live on it,t Joe? I think you need to reasses your situation philosophically and go from there.

I lived on $8.00/hr in college as a caterer. Is it hard? Oh, man oh man, was budgeting my life, rent, food, and whatnot around $1000.00 a month ever hard. It was. My rent was a quarter of that easily, my other bills (phone and lights) saw another half gone. Groceries on fifty a week left me a couple hundred bucks a month to get by on for emergencies.

That was a shitty, shitty, shitty five years.

But, and this is a good point, welcome to the jungle, no? I had it lucky for 8. The other guy in catering who only mopped floors at 45? maybe he was making 6. Held two jobs, probably. I don't know.

Life isn't fair, the unemployment rate isn't fair, rural/low-industry areas having less income than urban/high-industry areas isn't fair... but, as long as there've been people to employ and work to be traded payment for... this has been history, no?

Philosophically? How do I tolerate making more than my employees? I do so because an hour of my time can do more for revenue than an hour of theirs. That's the basics. Because I'm educated or have a long history of quality work or charming or reliable or experienced or just wholly promising... because its a regrettable truth, I think, that not everyone on the planet is equal in ability and demand and supply is applicable to people an dtheir abilities as with anything.

It's a sound worldview. Possess no solid contradiction, no experential discrepancy.

My father asks me all the time "How do people live on $6/hr?" (which is what some of my employees make)... my father is poor, has been his whole life--but he spent half of it in the ARMY and none of it in the private sector.

He sees post office jobs at $18/hr and wonders why people aren't getting better paying jobs (post office work is evidence that high dollar doesn't necessarily require high qualification to get in).

I tell him that the world is populated with people who don't have any job. Those people would break their humps for minimum wage, and I offer slightly more than that--and those people who take the jobs at $6/hr with kids to feed get on public assistance and cost me tax dollars and there isn't a whole lot I can do for it except watch the politics and wait for a candidate with some greater vision (from either party or neither).

Because me giving them $10 an hour isn't going to solve anything. It's a short-cut, its the sort of solution total fucking idiots suggest. $10 an hour would give them a living wage, I know it. But I'm not a charity, and I'm not paid to be one. I'm paid (my bills, my groceries, my one-day-family, my-never-need-credit-ever-savings, my retirement, my healthcare, college funds for kids, emergiencies, etc.) to make sure that the business makes money. And it WILL lose money by doubling everyone's pay rate.

And then, it will be sold or close or bankrupt.

And then I and everyone else will be out of a job.

That's just the harsh truth. Doubling wages? Going up 50%? Going up a dollar... its not going to improve my revenue a bit. I won't have a magically greater share of the market because my housekeepers make seven dollars an hour--the traveller doesn't rightly give a shit.

No greater incoming? Greater outgoing? The owners will shit squirrels and fire me. And precious few owners out there would ever pick me up for my high ideals and low results.

No...

Philosophically, I can provide a piece of the pie for an honest days work... the rest of the pie is up to them.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I don't think following your bliss is or should be mutually exclusive of "reality"...

what's the one thing you would do if this was your day to die?

Find it and do it, man.

Life is so short to waste managing hotels and dealing with employees if it's not your calling.

Seriously, Joe.

There's nothing more important.

Even your girl.

Oops - Sorry Selena, I meant to apply that "mugged by reality" crack to your "so do you consider it assimilation... or selling out?" line. That said, I don't regret triggering a profound piece of wisdom from you.

 

[R. Richard]

I've been hiring and firing since the late '80s.

I've been fooled by an interview and will freely admit it.

I'm sorry R. Richard, but if you have been lucky enough that you have never been sorry you hired a person then you must be hiring for a much more specialized position (making it far easier to evaluate) and been both on your game about the interviewing and LUCKY.

That's my opinion.

This makes it sound like you are not hiring $8.00 an hour people:


Hiring for entry level positions is far more of a crap shoot then hiring for very specific skills.

I've hired people that had great aptitude. But they were very motivated for the interview. They were motivated the first month. Six months later? Not so much.

Edit: D'oh! He says in the first line...."I hire specialized employees"

Sorry...

Belgeon:
As you see, the people I hire are NOT $8 per hour guys. I have the advantage that I hire only very highly qualified people for work that I can pay the kind of wages that will attract the level of person I need.

I agree, hiring $8 per hour people is very much a crap shoot. The worst part is that even if you win the crap shoot, you tend to lose the very good employee the day that a $10 per hour job opens up.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

I don't think following your bliss is or should be mutually exclusive of "reality"...

what's the one thing you would do if this was your day to die?

Find it and do it, man.

Life is so short to waste managing hotels and dealing with employees if it's not your calling.

Seriously, Joe.

There's nothing more important.

Even your girl.

I'll tell you the most poignent (sp) moment...

So, I walk in on my superior talking to some directors of other divisions--everyone's a good ole boy and have been around for years. I'm the youngest senior manager my company has ever had in 34 years... everyone knows it, and at 25--I'm still referred to as "The Kid" (irks the shit out of me).

So, Vick is talking and he tells this story about how he was running a Rent-A-Center of some kind once and that the corporation had a policy whereby if the person didn't pay... the manager had to go get the stuff back.

Simple, straight forward, right?

So, its some rainy night and he has to go get some furniture from some lady--brings an employee and calls her and she can't pay and so they go off to get her stuff. They get there and she's got a couple kids sitting around and a lazy ass shit of a boyfriend and Vick walks in and tells her that if she has the payment, everything is fine.

She says she doesn't have the money and the boyfriends looks at Vick like "what you want me to do about it, fucko? I'm watchin' the game, ain't my problem".

So they grab her dresser and bed and vanity and all that stuff. They go into the other room and there's the kids and one of them looks at him and says "Hey, Mister.. you gonna take my bed?"

And Vick says "Yeah, son, I have to."

So the kid says "Where am I gonna sleep?"

Vick just puts his hands up and walks out.

The next morning, the regional guy calls and asks if he got everything. Vick says no. He left the kids bed. Regional guy says "Vick, this isn't optional". Vick tells him that she only owed a hundred bucks or so on it and they got everything else back, that they made profit off the whole ordeal from her months of actual payment. Says its not right. He can't do it.

They say "We're coming down, this is going to be an issue".

Vick says "I'm outta here, then. I'll lock up. I can't do this, it ain't Christian." Locks the store, leaves the keys and goes home for a few months and looks for another job.

So, he gets through telling the story and they're all nodding and giving "you do what you gotta do" comments. He sees me standing there listening and says (warmly and just honestly) "See you'd have been perfect for them, you'd have gone a long way." Everyone else knows me, and they all nod and agree.

And, honestly? I was thinking "I wouldn't have left the bed". Honestly. I didn't say that, I kinda chuckled it off and said "naw, that's a tough one"--but internally, I didn't even blink about it during the storytelling.

So, Vick and I talk later that day and he says "Hey, sorry about that, I didn't mean any disrespect". I tell him I'm not sensitive and it's all good. He says, and I liked this a lot, he says "But, that's you... you're the kind of person they want up at the top and you're going to be further at thirty than I'll ever be (he's fifty five). You're the kind of person that gets to the top, I've seen a hundred of them--I'm not, I know that and knew it a long time ago."

I started arguing with him about it, because its not necessarily true and who knows what might happen. Mostly, I didn't like the idea that a lack of moral or emotional involvement was so emphasized in my future and character professionally.

And he said... "No, no... that's not a bad thing. Its people like you, up there, that make it so that people like me even have a job."

I don't want to be one of the guys "up there". I'd rather not have to worry about profit margins ever again--it makes me awfully cruel. But, if Vick's to be believed... I can't deny that it has purpose. That its useful. That its how it all works.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Oops - Sorry Selena, I meant to apply that "mugged by reality" crack to your "so do you consider it assimilation... or selling out?" line. That said, I don't regret triggering a profound piece of wisdom from you.

oh...

that's what I get for skimming!

as for wisdom... *shrug* perhaps... I don't know any other way to live...

 

[R. Richard]

I am looking for (and repeatedly so, the comment earlier about hiring for labor is really apt) someone who'll do the job, exactly the job, fully the job, perfectly the job, consistently the job... and do so for what they agreed to get in payment for it. In return, they get exactly what was promised--a business relationship that pays them money for working.

OK Joe, I am one of your $8 per hour employees. I happen to speak German or French or Spanish, but I was not hired for that. You are telling me that you want me to stand there and pretend that I can't talk to a potential customer who speaks German or French or Spanish well and English almost not at all? If that is what you are telling me, you need to review your outlook on life, IMNTHO.

I can share a bit of your frustration at employees who think they can run the general hotel business better than a professional manager. However, even an $8 per hour employee may have demonstratable special skills that enable him/her to run very specialized parts of the hotel business better than a professional manager who lacks the special skills. In my world, I will push forward Inga or Pierre or Maria if I think they can do a specific job better than I can. The job I am referring to is not "exactly the job," but is a job that will keep my customers happy and make my business more money in the long run.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

OK Joe, I am one of your $8 per hour employees. I happen to speak German or French or Spanish, but I was not hired for that. You are telling me that you want me to stand there and pretend that I can't talk to a potential customer who speaks German or French or Spanish well and English almost not at all? If that is what you are telling me, you need to review your outlook on life, IMNTHO.

If I have no traffic for German, French, or Spanish... and I'm not making a dime more for having a staff that can do it... then I'm not paying for it. If I have a traffic for it... and can make a dime for having a staff that can do it... then I will pay accordingly for it. Similarly, a staff that can juggle, dance, sing, paint pretty pictures, fart the alphabet, tell good off-colour jokes, tie a bowline knot, tell the difference between poisonous and non-poisonous mushrooms... that'd be interesting. But if I am not making money off of it (and enough money off of it), its not fiscally responsible to pay for those abilities. As a business owner and brilliant human resourcer... you already know that.

I have, as an example, maybe one foreign visitor a month. This is rural Mississippi, fella. Speaking Ancient Greek is about as useful as German to my profit margin. However, categorically, if an employee at hiring tells me "I'll take the job" for $8/hr--and he meets what I need. There's the deal.

I find out, four months later, that he speaks German? I'm not going to give him a dollar for talent.

Real life situation, though... I had a kid behind the desk, once, who knew how to tie a double-windsor knot. I found out because a guest who was at my hotel for a wedding couldn't tie his tie and the clerk did it for him (and a double not single knot, slightly more specialized). The Mom of the guy in the wedding was so impressed that she wrote a letter to our owners and me telling us how this clerk was amazing and helpful.

I told him "every time we have weddings, funerals, reunions, or just busines travellers that don't look totally sharp, I want you to mention that if they need a tie tied, to just call you at the desk.. .and be humorous with it... say 'I can do a double windsor, very chic".". I also gave him a .25 raise.

Why? Because its making me more money that he can do something like that (those kinds of guests are frequent enough in the summer that his ability to do it--even if they don't need it--is charming, thoughtful, helpful, and makes them like my establishment far more than they did), the owners have the proof from a previous incident on record, they're more lax with that raise then me telling them "oh, I gave someone a raise but not for any reason other than doing their job".

I can share a bit of your frustration at employees who think they can run the general hotel business better than a professional manager. However, even an $8 per hour employee may have demonstratable special skills that enable him/her to run very specialized parts of the hotel business better than a professional manager who lacks the special skills. In my world, I will push forward Inga or Pierre or Maria if I think they can do a specific job better than I can. The job I am referring to is not "exactly the job," but is a job that will keep my customers happy and make my business more money in the long run.

Well, hell, we can suppose anything if we say "may".

There may be an employee on my staff who can do the work of any other two... and firing an extra would save my labor costs tremendously. Or there may be an employee that can do the hotels accounting so I don't have to use the corporations (we're charged on the budget for that, too). There may be a lot of things going on.

We work with what we have and keep our eye on the budget and do the best we can. Such is as it is.

 

[R. Richard]

So, what's a specific example? One that's happened?

OK, Joe, let's try you out. I'll give you 10 minutes from this post. "Who was Ponzini [NOT Ponzi] and why do I want to know?"

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I have, as an example, maybe one foreign visitor a month. This is rural Mississippi, fella. Speaking Ancient Greek is about as useful as German to my profit margin.

I can speak Yankee . . . ?

 

[minsue]

I can speak Yankee . . . ?

. .

 

[R. Richard]

Cat got your tongue Joe? Trying to get a top level position in my business without knowing who Ponzini was is like trying to get a job at the Metropolitan Opera without knowing who Caruso was.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Wordsworth
I have, as an example, maybe one foreign visitor a month. This is rural Mississippi, fella. Speaking Ancient Greek is about as useful as German to my profit margin.

I know what you mean! The guy who carries the lantern around. BIG tipper!

I didn't even hint that I would pay more for someone who speaks a foreign language. However, if I have someone with a demonstratable talent that I can use, I will use that talent sparingly or heavily as I can make money from the talent. If I use the talent heavily, I will pay a little extra for the talent. That extra talent is not confining the employee to a specific, narrow role. That extra talent also does not mean that the employee is special in any other way.

 

[minsue]

OK, Joe, let's try you out. I'll give you 10 minutes from this post. "Who was Ponzini [NOT Ponzi] and why do I want to know?"

Gee, ya want to at least say what job is being applied for? Presumably the applicant would at least have that info...

 

[matriarch]

OK, Joe, let's try you out. I'll give you 10 minutes from this post. "Who was Ponzini [NOT Ponzi] and why do I want to know?"

Andrea Ponzini - Ceramics?
George Ponzini - Glass sculptures?
G.Ponzini who wrote the following articles:
Comparison between ground water finite difference models for regular and irregular grids, with emphasis on the space distribution of source terms
(Geophysical Research Abstracts)

A quasi three dimensional model of water flow in the subsurface of Milano (Italy): the stationary flow
(Hydrology and Earth System Sciences)

All three seem pretty specialist to me.
And I wouldn't have a clue what to ask about them.