I'm not sure I even know where to being with this one, so I'll just stick with my experiences of hiring new people at my place of work.
Over the past 18 months, I have hired on 10 new different people to fill a position (or two) of doing general warehouse work that includes; picking orders, shipping and receiving, cleaning and putting products away that come in. That's the jist of the workload.
Yes, you get sweaty in the summer time because the warehouse is not air conditioned and you have to do physical labor, but in all honesty, this is one of the easiest jobs I have done in my life.
Out of the 10 people I've hired, I've heard all sorts of excuses and given all sorts of reasons as to why they cannot work here:
Person #1: Worked here about 2 weeks and never showed up again....he had troubles getting simple tasks done - he told me, "The work is too demanding and he can't keep up with it."
Person #2: Worked here about a month and just never showed up again - he never gave me a reason why he was having troubles doing the work here
Person #3: He worked here about 1.5 years - I had to constantly keep telling him to do the same things over and over and over again because he wouldn't listen. After a while, I started writing him up and suspending him for failure to get his work done and he had the audacity to tell me that his failure for not being able to get his work done was my fault...
Person #4: She worked here about 3 weeks and she was doing a really good job. She came in on time, she got her work done in a timely manner and she asked questions. Then one day she called in sick, the next day she called in sick, the third day she called in sick and we never heard from her again.
Person #5: He had a really good work history and all his past employeers praised him and his abilities. After about 3 hours on his first day, he told me, "I really appreciate the opportunity here, but I can't do this work. It's just too hard." Those words coming out of the mouth of a man that has done and excelled at warehouse type work over the past 15 years....what a load of BS.
Person #6: He was always to work on time, but when I or my boss were ever gone on the same day, he just wouldn't listen to the second in command in the warehouse. I talked with him on 3 different occassions over the course of 5 weeks on how he needs to listen to who is left in charge when I'm out....and even when I was around, he'd drag his feet and would always say, "I'm just here to work, man. That's what I'm doing." Even after I told him he needs to pick up the pace and pull his own weight around here. He got arrested outside of work and never came back or called....
Person #7: This guy was a piece of work. He was an acquaintance of one of the current long time employees here and we gave him a job based on our long term employee recomeondation. This guy lived downtown, which is about a 20 minute bus ride or car ride to work....he had the nerve to call me one morning (I live 30 minutes away from him out in the suburbs) at 6am asking me to come pick him up and drive him to work.....WHAT??? I told him to hop on the bus or ride his bike in. He told me the bike he had was "reclaimed" by his friend (I'm guessing he stole the bike he had and then ditched it after using it for a while). He wouldn't clean up after himself at work and he constantly complained that I was treating him like kid because I was constantly telling him to clean up after himself. After about 3 weeks he was having too much trouble getting to work and was missing time so I told him to not bother showing up anymore.
Person #8: He worked here about 3 months, he was a back-up delivery driver, but mostly his job was to do warehouse work. He had troubles getting his work done and when he did go out to do deliveries, he took twice as long to get them done as our normal driver because all the stops he went to, he'd just sit and talk to people - even after they told him to leave, he'd just sit. I had to fire this guy because he just wouldn't work.
Person #9: This guy was a real treat. He talked himself up as being a really hard worker and all he liked doing was keeping busy and moving at fast paces was easy for him to do.....Well, he did like to work and he generally worked hard, but he was a horrible liar. This guy is a retired mechanic that still restores cars on the side. He's always got 3 or 4 drivable cars at his house that he works on repairing and fixing up. 5 different times in about a 2 month span, he had some excuse as to how his car (the one he normally drives every day) wouldn't start and he wouldn't be to work that day - or how his wife's car died on the way to work and he had to pick her up, so he wouldn't be in that day - I couldn't take anymore of his lies and because he was over on his allowed time off from work, I was told to fire him.
Person #10: This guy is in his early 20s (actually he just turned 21 about two months ago)....when he works, he does a really good job and he gets everything done correctly. He has more days then anyone else that has worked here, where he drags his feet and only works to about 50% of his potential. I've talked him before in the past 2 different times about how he needs to hold his weight around here and stop dragging his feet - I ask him if there's anything I can do to help him, but I never get an answer to that question.
So, yesterday he was really dragging his feet. Over the course of his first 5 hours at work, I finally approaced him and said "You haven't gotten a whole lot completed today and you need to pick up the pace." I pointed out some things that needed to be done and gave him a 1.5 hour deadline to do it all in. All the work I gave him, he should have had no issues getting the work done in an hour, but I wanted to give him a little cushion of time. About 2.5 hours later he had finished up most of the work I assigned to him - so I pulled him into my office before he left for the day and I laid everything out on the table for him. I told him that next time I give him a deadline, he needs to meet it. I explained to him the minimal amount of work he did over a 5 hour period and he needs to learn how to make better use of his time. He told me he thought he was working hard and was doing a good job....and that my way of wording the work he did over the course of the day made him sound lazy. I told him, "That's exactly how it looks, that you were being lazy and doing as little work as possible."
He left angry last night because he was scolded again for being slow at work (this was his third talking to) and when he came into work this morning, he was standing around and one of the other employees asked what he was doing just standing there and suggested that he got to work.....he didn't like what the other employee said and he threw a tantrum and stormed out the door. He came back about 10 minutes later and told me he wasn't happy here and he felt he was being pushed too hard at work. I told him this job is easy - just get a decent pace and all the work we do here is a calk-walk. I also told him I couldn't make him happy at this job and that no one can do that for him, he has to figure that out on his own. He said we were working him too hard and he wasn't sure if he could take all the pressure. He left for the day and took it as his last sick day and said he'd think about if he could work here anymore and tell me tomorrow.
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Now seriously, what the heck is wrong with people these days? Is this U.S. society becoming this lazy that trying to actually find good help is really this hard to do? How does something like this get nipped in the butt and we turn ourselves around and start working hard again? How do people today think this country got to where it is today....? By just sitting on our thumbs and hoping the work would be completed for us??? Heck no! People busted their butts back in the day and made this country good and strong!
The past two generations in the U.S. have pretty much killed off all that our forefathers have built up for us....such a sad, sad society we live in when it is this hard to actually find people that truely, genuinely want to work and better themselves.
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