The Shelf From Hell: Why Employing People Sucks Part 2

This is the shelf after he had spent.....days notching the wood so he could start to assemble it, as you see here.

Ah, the shelf from hell.  John finished it yesterday, although I won't give much of the details of that bit yet.  For whatever reason, maybe because we were friends prior to this, our compadre thought we were the safe bet.  I'm not sure he expected to be fired.  He seemed to have the impression that we were rich with money to burn, and this was partially due to the fact that he could plainly see some of our recent life upgrades, like the cameras and the motorcycle.

Just one example of the many notches he made, some of them literally utterly unnecessary but all taking an hour at least each.

What didn't click was the fact that it took a lot of work to get those things and that they're tools, not toys.  He would literally laugh at me when I would get up to take pictures of a frog, but when that from made me over a hundred dollars here on Steemit, who should really be laughing? 

Notches for days.  This would be wonderful for books or something...but this shelf is intended for plants. It's going to be eaten by bugs most likely within a few years, it didn't need notches.

I find this fascinating because I grew up in his mindset.  I'm recently (not even completely where I want to be yet in like any regard) coming away from that mindset so I get it.  And he totally doesn't.  It's pretty saddening to me and I tried to think of ways to explain it, but the language barrier put me off. 

When we hired him we saw the opportunity of a win-win situation.  He'd get a reliable job with decent conditions, free food occasionally among other things. He had a wife and child and was living with his mother, so we saw an opportunity to help them all out.  We're also looking for potential people to start this glassblowing factory here and we honestly had him in mind for long term management positions making way more than we could offer him now.

We had spent time with him when he was our neighbor doing everything from getting wood to picking his daughter up from school.  Upon learning he was only 20-21 years in age, with a 7 year old daughter that he was there for on a daily basis, we had respect for him going into this.  Prior to him working for us, he was a self employed carpenter with a side gig as a waiter on the beach. It wasn't long before we learned just how young he really is, as he put himself into the employee/slave mindset working for us.

There are two of the posts notched in the same way....unused in my house still.  This was supposed to be two shelves and ended up being one massive shelf.

We were not slave drivers, smoke breaks were common and not restricted, although we did say something when he started using the bathroom as an ashtray. I fed him on many occasions unprompted, there were free cokes.  He had our awesome place to work with a nice view.  Long breaks and he could leave when he needed and take days off when needed too, with some notice so we can plan around it. Lots of perks and good price for pay for what he was doing, which was essentially being a handyman carpenter. 

With almost every task we gave him, he worked slowly and often made fun of the way we do things here. He asked for more money every day, while sometimes providing less work. Lots of tools were broken and wood was wasted in the process of building this shelf, just due to overcomplicated processes and lack of skill. We didn't need it fancy, but he made it fancy to take longer and worked very slowly, figuring we had loads of money to spare.

Two of these, leaning up against the bars of the house still. 

We're just now getting to a point where we can start expanding and growing thing again, so while we are experiencing success we are no where near what he was expecting. He would break a power tool, then tell us to go to Home Depot and buy a new one.  We just didn't have that sort of money lying around.  Eventually, as time wore on it seemed it wasn't even worth the cost of employing him, so we fired him for the first time. 

But more on that next time.

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