This is idiocy.
Look, it's been a while... But when I hired, I paid one dollar over minimum for the first month. If they made the month, I paid 12 bucks an hour for the next 3-6 months, depending on how they worked and how they plugged into my crews.
During that time, invariably, they would do some sort of damage that would send them packing... Load a truck wrong, Apply a coat wrong, bad stacking of wet product... There were a thousand ways to mess me up very badly... Walk in to find an entire unit of lumber hs turned into a brick because some dumbass took it off the racks to soon... That sort of thing...
Who PAYS for all that? Have you ever had to buy a unit of knotty pine tongue and groove? And then pay your guys to paint it again, because your guys messed it up the first time?
That's not just the cost of the damage... I have to buy that brick and all of the product and labor that went into it...
It's the cost of replacing the damaged product...
The cost of the new coating going on that replaced product...
The cost of the labor going into the replaced product...
And the lost production because your guys are replacing the product instead of doing what they were supposed to be doing.
That's thousands of dollars because of one dumbass...
Or the lack of oversight over the dumbass.
But either way, it's me that has to haul out my wallet and pay that guy to f*ck me up.
I am not going to pay him good money for that.
I am going to pay him as little as I can. He could very easily cost me thousands of dollars with one stupid move.
When he makes his bones and proves his worth - That he ain't gonna f*ck me up... That he takes order well and works well with others... That I can plug him in wherever I need him and he will function well in any assignment - OOOOR he will stop if unsure and seek direction....
THAT's the guy that sticks.
That's the guy I will keep around and pay his way through the winter (when I am making damn little).
I paid well. I had a line of folks wanting to come to work for me. They wanted the good pay, and mostly they wanted the learning. But even with my pick of em, there was a winnowing process. Half were inept.
another quarter couldn't cut it. Out of what's left only one or two would have the knack.
The one or two are the ones that deserve that good pay. Not the rest.
