I'm a small business owner and my view on hiring help is-

"Bad help is hard to get and good help is imposible to find"

Helped my son build a garage up by Park Rapids MN and the guy who did the concrete for the slab said he almost had to go to nursing homes to find people willing to work.

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Well done > well said

I work for a national company, in their distribution center. We can't get new employees because of drug testing, and 50% of the ones who do pass the drug test end up getting fired in the first year for missing too much time. We use a point system for attendance. I've worked for this company 2 years, in that two years they have wiped everyones slate clean twice in an attempt to not have to fire a bunch of people.
On another note, it really doesn't matter how good of a worker you are, your job is not secure. I show up for work every day, I do my job and I'm good at my job, I don't cause anyone any grief and I don't get hurt or damage anything, and they are contracting my job out in a few months. I'll have to decide if I want to stay with this company and take a serious pay cut or move on to another company. Sometimes it doesn't matter how hard you work or how good you are.

You deserve better. Find something else.

""They [Young People] have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things -- and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning -- all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything -- they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else."
(Aristotle)


"The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress."
(From a sermon preached by Peter the Hermit in A.D. 1274)


Hesiod
"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint".
(Hesiod, 8th century BC)


Socrates
'The children now love luxury; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are tyrants, not servants of the households. They no longer rise when their elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize over their teachers.'

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

Remembering my generation, if drug testing was as prevalent or available in the 70's and 80's, the failure rate would have been about the same as today.

I came to this company hoping to retire from here.
In fairness, they have offered other positions to me (that pay a lot less), they did give us plenty of notice. They could've waited until a week or month before and told us but they gave us nearly a year notice, which is something most companies would not have done. I understand business and this industry, I know contracting the position out looks like a good move. I don't think it's going to work as well as they think it is but I understand why they are doing it. There are about 20 of us locally that are losing our jobs, most are upset at the company for "treating us so poorly", I'm not upset at the company, under the circumstances they could've really screwed us and they chose not to.

American management seems to have particular difficulty with admitting that there are staff who are especially loyal and have made themselves largely indispensable. The same management goes into rabid wolverine mode if an employee really IS indispensable. That circumstance seems to fall under the "nobody beats city hall" rules.

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Release the Kraken

I feel bad for my old office losing my successor and not being able to replace him. But I made the decision that I was not going to spend the rest of my life being grossly underpaid. I would have stayed if I was compensated anywhere close to what I thought I was worth. With not having the stress and danger of commuting that I had in later jobs, my chances of being alive now would have been better than what they were and the chances of both of us being dead at the same time probably would have been rather small. But because I felt compelled to leave, they had all their eggs in one basket.

For most of my adult working life, I haven’t been paid anywhere near what I was worth. If I had been, me and my family would probably have starved.

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Georgia On My Mind

My wife always grumbles, "Robert, they don't pay you enough, you're worth more that they pay." to which I reply, "Honey, no one has ever offered me more, or I'd be there instead of here."

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Robert
SWCA #2906, SWHF #760

I started my first real job (non farm I grew up on a small farm ) at 15 1/2 I got my dad to sign a work permit . Clean up boy in a local meat department ,by 16 the guys let me help unload trucks .Back then all the meat was carcass beef front quarter about 140 pounds hind quarter 175 or so ,whole hogs 75 pounds up to 150 or so boxes of chickens iced down 75 pound cases ,I'm talking tractor trailer loads and these guys ran back and forth. By the time I was 18 and left HS the manager put me ion as an apprentice butcher for 2 years then I could I could be a journeyman butcher and start making some real money ,the store was A&P .The problem with youth since about the seventies is parents don't expect their kids to grow up soon enough .My dad believed in working hard and a man standing on his own two feet and about 16 or so he felt it was time to tell mommy he ain't a kid no more it's time for him to grow up . Today about 25 years old the patents run out of money and the real starts kicking these coddled grown "kids" in the butt and they get on drugs and alcohol be ause they just atent toughened enough . I was 25 married had two kids ,my wife didn't have to work her job take care of the kids and the household my job make the money it took to make that possible yea she was a country girl also .I never got fired from a job , I never left an employer who wouldn't love to have me back . In 35 years I only took 2 ,2 sick days ..In 35 years I was late for work one time my boss said son this is ya warning ( those guys were serious men meant what they said) .I have walked to work when I was real young because my car was broke down or I didn't have gas money but I got there everyday.In America even today if you want to work you can that is why people from all over the world are trying their best to get here ..Americans are spoiled .It should be mandatory that every kid starts school at 6 and ends by 16 if they can't read and write by then they ain't gonna learn no way . Then 16 to18 farm work ,military training ,if they are real smart maybe just maybe college prep but away from mommy and daddy .The best thing my dad ever did for me was sit m down and say son you ate big as a man you can eat like a man now it's time for you to act like a man and make your own way in this world .I thought my dad is rough. My buddies were going to the beach ,drinking beer ect. I was working ,doing my chores at home ( yea dad still expected me to do my part I was under his roof) man I thought he was so rough .Now I'm retired ,my home well it's paid for my boys yea they thought I was rough but they stand on their own ,my dad well he's gone but everyday everyday I thank God in heaven for him because he didn't try to be my buddy or my friend he was dad his job he felt was to raise a boy into a man .Good job Dad ,Men look at your wife and Man up and set the example for your sons and say hon I love ya but he ain't a kid anymore and my job is to turn him into a man . That's the reason god help is hard to find coddled kids can't make it in the real world .Oh pay well I never made too much money but I worked generaly 80 hours a week yea that's right about 50 at the store and always had a side hustle working on my days off or doing in house security ( bouncer) at clubs and had a couple of restaurants that would ask me to cutt meat for them a night or two here and there .I hustled didn't gripe about the pay just worked enough hours to make up the difference ( just like business owners have to) hell I lived a good life enjoyed working enjoyed the boys and a few girls I worked with been thinking about going back to work when my wife gets well I kinda miss it ( except during hunting and good fishing times) going to the cabin on the lake next week .Yea I guess I've done ok for a HS educated red neck country boy .Thanks Dad.

Well here's a view from someone who's always been on the payee not payer side. I'm not up on business and economics, but I know some hiring 101:

- If you advertise for 10 job openings and 500 qualified people apply, you're paying too much.

- If you advertise for 10 job openings and you can't find 5 people who can dress themselves and get to work on time, you're not paying enough.

So it's easy to say all you employers quitcha b****in' and start paying what good people are worth, then the employers will say that they'd have to raise their prices and they'd lose customers until they went out of business, etc. Clients want the cheapest price, so employers have to hire the cheapest people, a classic race to the bottom.


I'll have a share. For my current job I went through a 7 month long hiring process, and at orientation was told that over 500,000 people had applied and around 2,500 had been hired. That's 0.5%. Harvard and Yale, in 2018, admitted 5 and 6% of applicants, respectively. The constant refrain was that it was hard to find top quality people.

A month after I was hired, I was laid off, and then was hired and kept in the same job by a contractor. Wanna take a guess if my pay & benefits went up or down? How about a guess as to what percentage of my new co-workers I'm pretty sure are actually mentally retarded?


Speaking of welding and the economy, once upon a time I was certified 6G pipe with a stick, and couldn't find a job at any rate. I also had a 4G FCAW cert, and TIG & MIG experience. I'd drive to a new area, steal a phone book from a booth (remember those?) and go apply in person to any business that looked like it had any relation to welding at all. Without exaggerating I must've applied to 30 or so places, and only got a test at two, one of which I could tell was just humoring me. Ended up working at a place back in my hometown, the second place tested.

Owner after the test: "Wow, you're good!"

Pay? A bit over minimum wage.

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TEAM DNF

You need to go to oil refineries if you can stick and tig. I don't know where you were applying, but in the Pacific Northwest they were begging last spring. Lots of busted welds.

I work security in a large foreign owned company, recently they hired 12 new employees who managed to pass all the required tests. right before they started the pre employment processing they did a random retest for drugs, 4 of them failed. starting salary was 44,200.

Rob

I'm just waiting for somebody from HR to give the 30 minute drug test call and tell me to report to some lab in Ohio where my company is based.

Me: "Errrm, did you notice the area code you dialed to get me?"

Much hilarity will follow, no doubt.

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Release the Kraken

A friend nailed this syndrome in a conversation we had a couple days ago: "What they have there is a failure to launch."