Well, I am in a different business - I work part time at one of local group homes on every weekend, besides my own import-export business.

Recently, I changed my shift from 2pm - 10pm to 6am-2pm, because I can help my wife's gardening if I finish my part time job early afternoon. The agency hired a very nice young girl to cover 2pm-10pm shift, and she is educated about disabled people.

I had to work double shift (6am through 10pm) over the weekend before last, and had a chance to work with this new nice young girl. I found she is similar to the person you hired and fired - she waits for instructions what to do, and does not look for things to do. So, while I was doing everything by myself and too busy to give instructions, she was sitting on a couch to watch TV.

It was not my first experience, and I know self-motivated employees are not many. I hope I am wrong, but it seems such tendency is more obvious in younger generation. Regardless of generation, employees want less work for more money, while employer want more work with the same money. Perhaps younger generation is more openly honest to such concept.

We have to educate them; it is a part of education, I guess.

I have the same thing each year with my staff too. I have made 'lists' everywhere with detailed instructions of what to do when you think you have nothing to do....but still I have to hand hold all the time...it is just this generation, and I blame my generation for raising a bunch of lazy, self indulgent, "kings and queens"...but bad help is better than no help, I think??

I've had all kinds, and trained all kinds of g'house workers in a previous job. The key word is self-starter. And I think whether a person is one, or not, depends on the expectations of those who have given them responsibilities in their past.

My (then) twelve year old g'daughter wanted to help me do some transplanting last year. So, I figures why not, it'll give me a chance to visit with her if nothing else. That kid worked some of my previous adult employees under the table. She actually noticed that different plants had different shaped leaves, and stopped to question me before she potted up a flat of the wrong stuff. I've had employees who would go from marigolds to cabbage and never even notice, and tag them all the same. LOL. I have also found employees asleep on bales of peat moss, or using their lunch hour for personal business and then expecting a second one when they came back to work.

New hires, unless they've worked the business before can really be clueless, and are afraid to ask for fear of looking ignorant. They'll also pick up on the work habits of those around them. If they see a segment of them hiding in an empty g'house and loafing, they'll do the same. So, yeah, you hold a lot of hands. What helps is to give them a specific job to start out on. Tell them how much they should be able to do in a certain timeframe, and then tell them if they get finished before you get back to them, to come looking for you so you can show them something else.

I had a couple new hires a few years ago who really tried. But they were sooooooooooo slow. They did ask, however, at the end of the first day or two how they were doing. I complimented them on the good qualities, and then told them that instead of the forty flats they had transplanted at day's end, it should have been more like 400. LOL.

Oh God, do I love to see someone come in to help who has been around for awhile and knows enough to ask when they come upon a situation where had they continued to 'find' something to do they'd have cause more work to undo it.

Hate to brag, but I have my dream team this year. Every one is better than I hoped and better than I expected. I think it's going to be a good year.

ninamarie, I hope you haven't "jinxed" yourself. If not, can you "clone" them??

I'd rather be a worker at my place rather than the boss. It's tough to multi task especially when it comes to the paperwork. The only steady is you. Sometimes you get lucky with good help. 6 out of 15 employees that I know of on my past staff have ripped me off. Now I make it clear that I can barely support myself. Fine tuning with the right staff might get me by. It's tough but the good days get me by.

I hear ya muddydogs. We had one girl fund her trip to Australia with money from the cash register, we heard about it after she had flown out. Another one was taking plants and garden decor and reselling it to friends and family. Now we have video cameras everywhere and the theft has dropped a lot, but it makes me pretty cranky when I am working my butt off and staff do things like that.

Someone who drops the ball every time they are not watched creates an impossible situation. It's like a leaking raft or mattress that remains inflated as long as you keep blowing air into it. Someone who steals the ball when they are not watched adds a new level of exasperation. In both cases it comes across as a lack of ethics, in the first instance a lack of a work ethic.

The flip side is that some have been molded by hypercritical small dictators who explode if the workers do anything on their own. This may be more involved with some of the people some of you have hired than you might realize.

Anyone with military backgrounds will of course also have been trained to not march without orders.

When I used to work for others I had the exact opposite problem. My work ethic has rankled other employees. I liked to get my work done quickly plus other peoples and it has to be done the right way. The word pacing oneself did not apply. I actually had a couple of bosses tell me to stop taking it upon myself to do other peoples jobs/duties and stop asking so many questions. I have never been a team player I guess.

BBoy has a point, there are some bosses that are control freaks - they don't care for employees who have ideas or initiative beyond what's told to them.

But likewise, as a now self-employed person the occasional help I've hired have been some of the most lackluster kids. My own younger children work harder and with more enthusiam and good attitude and they're almost half their age. Unfortunately, I can't bill out for them because they are minors and so for them it is just for the thrill of hanging out with Mom.

You also make a good point. When I worked for others, I also got told to 'slow it down' by more senior employees. That's why we own our own businesses now, and they prolly don't. LOL.

I have a big issue with bosses who don't empower their help as much as feasible. Like one boss who seemed afraid to share information about things like when a shipment was due to arrive, almost if he did, it would be like Samson getting a hair cut. He also had a very difficult time delegating authority. That might have worked when he was a small entity, but surely made life hell for him when he grew.

I've worked for one or two that were so into power trips that when you did something as they asked they would criticize that also, thereby contradicting themselves. I'm talking about simple tasks where there was not much room for varying interpretations.

Once hired a student out the Jr. college that had a course in horticulture and they gave one credit if a student worked inside the industry during the summer break. I thought it might be a win-win situation where I would get a worker who was actually interested in plants and the business and they would get better pay than one of the big box stores were paying and some college credit also.

Went to career day at the college and found a 22 year old man who seem qualified. First day he comes in thirty five minuets late. One of my pet peeves. At the time all of our plants were in pots grown in fir bark. The main task that day was repotting. All you had to do was take a plant in a 4" pot and dump the old bark out, wash off the plant and repot it into a 6" pot. Seems simple enough and all the material was light weight that a child could do it. So I could get to know him a little bit I decided to do the same job next to him figuring that the learning curve here for a college kid was in the first five minuets and then just repeated for the rest of the day.

It was obvious that I --- the very elderly man --- was producing much more results than he was. I encouraged him to keep up. After lunch he wanted to learn something new. He had had enough potting up. But while I said we would do many different tasks within the plant industry... today all these young plants needed to be repotted so we could get them ready to be sold.

Next morning he didn't show up for work but came around in the afternoon to pick up his paycheck for one day's work. Quote "This is too much like work!"

Obviously he thought that a job was getting a paycheck but without any effort.

Most of my employees are pretty good overall. But sometimes you come across a situation that you just cannot guard against because you didn't think anyone could survive without one iota of commonsense. Like the time a thirty year old was water the pots and the water was coming out with such force that it was forcing the fir bark along with the plant out of the pot. Had over 100' x 6' of empty pots and suddenly bare root plants. I feel there is not much you can do with someone this to the bone stupid and it will only get worse in time. This guy has the record for the shortest employment, I doubt I could of been able to help him become better in time.

Of course when these two first showed up looking for a job they said all of the right stuff... They are pretty good at interviewing for a job. ... but not keeping one. One reason why they are good at interviewing is that they have had so much practice at it !

I have been in the industry for over twenty years. The Americans that apply to work in horticulture are the worst!

There is a reason imegrants get the jobs. They are the only ones that will work and\or last!

Well, I had not really intended this post to be a recurring litany of "problem help" stories and maniacal managers - but, it's a good topic and certainly endless. We all got stories to tell. Here's another:

I hired a fellow this spring who presented himself pretty well ( he "had a lot of practice at interviewing" - I loved that line, pinewoodsbear!) He was mostly capable and did some things well, other things not so well. But he never did "get with the program", and as the days went by he really started to be a constant aggravation. Just little stuff, but I kept walking into work wondering what he was gonna do to screw up my day. That became intolerable, of course, can't get anything productive done with that clouding up the day.

So, after 30 days, he asks for a raise. I tell him I'll talk to him tomorrow about it. That pissed him off pretty good, he assumed a raise was automatic. So what I did was, I called up a contractor I know, told him I had a man that might be pretty good help for him, but that this guy wasn't working out for me and my work situation. I didn't knock him at all, didn't dwell on my problems, just said that the guy has potential and maybe he'd be a good fit for the contractor, and do me the favor of talking to the guy if he comes in looking for work.

So the next morning when the guy comes into work, I give him the name and phone number of the contractor, and tell him, I'm not happy, and I don't think you are either, so give this contractor a call and maybe he'll have a job for you. And the guy thanked me and left.

Well, I don't know what transpired after that, whether the guy got a job, or even went to see that contractor. I just considered it a rather elegant solution to my problem.

Some of 'em, you just can 'em and get another. Some, it might be worth pointing them in another direction. Just my opinion...

brian

There's a lot to be said for helping others.