by Tom Baugh
Instead, however, his background constantly became a shield for criticism. Any reprimand or correction was met with "no worries, I'm a childhood survivor." The last such reprimand came when I met Archie at the door as he was coming in the door with my postage meter in hand one morning. Questions about his rationale for taking the postage meter home led only to similar survival assurances. At lunch that day he hauled off his stuff and never came back. Two weeks later I dropped him from the rolls, seeing him only once subsequently as I was shopping for a widescreen TV at the same big box retailer. He referred my inquiry to another sales person.
Taking over his work I found numerous opportunities to implement our internal systems the way I had initially taught him. Yet, these opportunities to excel had somehow been ignored in the quest for free postage. As part of his tutelage years before I had written a list of key style issues which I demand all of our software developers use. After ensuring that he understood each of these issues, and the productivity risks which accompany their violation, I began to inspect his work less as I turned to other dramas. Later, I found that pretty much each page of code he had written in the bulk of his time had violations of these rules. Sweeping away the dust of these errors, I managed to fix numerous issues which had plagued our internal systems for years. Again, I was rewarded by a smaller payroll and more efficient operation. And more available postage. And fewer excuses about childhood trauma.
About this time a target of opportunity arose. At my company, we ship a number of products in a variety of little white boxes. Those boxes arrive at our dock in flat, unfolded bundles. Those bundles have to be folded into boxes by somebody, and then packed with our little goodies prior to landing on the shelves as shippable inventory. For a time, we often only packed items in their little white boxes just prior to shipping. This meant that we kept our shippable inventory in bulk in their silvery cocoons in various cartons on the shelf. But, as business grew in those early days it became obvious that we needed to just go ahead and pack them in their little boxes. Sadly, a clever employee could milk this task for days.
One day, however, the fates smiled upon us in the person of Miss Meadow, who we had hired to help with odd jobs around the office. Goth girl by night, and unassuming office help by day, Meadow for a time seemed perfectly normal, all things considered, given her age and suburban cliques. Pleasant on the phone, charming in person, capable of learning just about anything non-technical, and some things that were, her career seemed on a skyrocket pointed straight up. This girl had the genuine potential to run the entire administrative side of our business.
But, as it turned out, Meadow had a tendency to cause ever increasing amounts of drama, which started out slowly enough. At first, I thought her odd behavioral quirks, which became more and more pronounced over time, were simply the result of lady things. But, the bit rate of these personality changes was far too high to admit any such simple explanation.
One evening, First Wife and I were watching an episode of CSI. That particular episode featured the typically cranky Sara Sidel, and I noticed that from time to time Meadow would act exactly like that character. I thought nothing of this until the next day. That afternoon, during a discussion with Archie, her hapless ex-beau who brought her into our fold in the first place, she unleashed a barrage of subtle venom at him. This barrage seemed almost straight out of the script of what I had seen the night before, down to the surly looks and bangs hanging down in front of her eyes. The light bulb went on in my head.
Once I became attuned to the concept, and Meadow noticed that I was noticing, more personalities became apparent as she created them to suit her own needs for attention. One personality which she manufactured was that of an eight-year-old autistic girl who was really into origami. Yet another was a thirty-two-year-old man-hating feminist. She then confided in me how all the different sides of her could be summoned on command. I suppose she imagined that this detail would make her the permanent center of attention at the office.
I immediately set to finding ways in which we could make use of her affected disorders. So, to my delight, Meadow's autistic origamist turned out to be a whiz at folding the little white boxes. Conversely, the man-eater was well suited to calling deadbeats. Fortunately, we had managed to convert her little dramas into useful productivity.
This all changed with Archie's departure, which left her deprived of her normal emotional punching bag. Archie had seemed, from all outward appearances, to enjoy the abuse commensurate with his affinity for playing the victim. Lacking her normal outlet, she turned her dramatic sights on me. But that didn't last for very long, she not finding a delighted victim, and so she decided to leave to plow other fields.
Drama aside, Meadow's departure left a genuine gap in functionality. So, First Wife volunteered to take over her collection and Archie's orderprocessing tasks, having previously served both roles working for others. Family necessities required that we modify our systems to keep First Wife at home tending to the children between calls and processing orders. This arrangement also helps to keep her barefoot, or at least hygienically slippered, as much as possible. So, we poked a hole in our LAN to allow remote access for her. Her remote access also allowed me to work at home, too, which I had done for years and had forgotten how much I enjoyed it.
The survivors at the office imagined that by conscripting First Wife I had already committed my reserve. They then began to incrementally imagine themselves more irreplaceable. Their calculation was made without knowing of the joy which my bloodlust was bringing as our organization grew more lean and efficient. And I had plenty of plans left, each such plan effectively reconstituted the reserve as I continued automating their jobs away. But, they tried their gambits anyway.
A former steakhouse waiter who had sought to learn HTML and marketing decided that he absolutely could not be taught further coding skills without a hefty increase. I asked that he put his demand in writing, and then restored him to his tip-laden tables. I filed his unconditional demand against any unemployment claims he might present.
His departure further encouraged a quality assurance technician, who became more sluggish with each passing day. A documented test against my pre-teen son, by a four-to-one productivity margin, restored him to the unemployment line, devoid of benefits.
Amos' counterpart on the ill-fated project should have learned the lesson better. After firing Amos, I re-assigned Sparta, a degreed engineer who also had the capacity to run the entire company, to implement firmware for quality assurance tests. This had been his assignment before the mondo project.
Despite his experience in this arena, he dawdled with various projects from day to day. He also took all his accrued leave, and one day beyond. Then, one morning Sparta handed me a letter announcing that he was taking a position with a customer of ours. I, knowing the customer and the environment into which he would be hired, laughed until tears came to my eyes. This hid my relief that he had saved me the trouble of documenting his upcoming firing. He stood there, apparently waiting for a counter-offer. None came, and after regaining my composure, I wished him well.
During this period I hired and fired a couple of other Nintendo™generation Archies, each as disappointing as the last. Archie II, a grocery bag-boy, had genuine potential, as does everyone. But, he tended to whine about anything remotely difficult, such as using a power drill to hang blinds in our new office condo. After a couple of months I thought I had finally virtua-slapped the little girl out of him. This transformation apparently pleased his live-in girlfriend's father, who was having justifiable growing concerns of his own. Promisingly, Archie II had recently snapped-in to converting pages of test instruction notes into hand-assembled test boards and writing the corresponding HTML instructions.
So, one evening I decided to give him a performance-based raise, to be awarded the next morning. This was to be accompanied by an increase in responsibilities, including managing the new guy hired to take over his previous work. I discussed the raise with Fi
rst Wife during a jaunt to the video store, and there we ran into Archie II. He proudly announced that he would be supplementing his income by working evenings at that very store a few doors down from his old grocery job. Within a week, attributable to night-shift video inventories, his performance plummeted, his excuses mounted, and he began to show up for work later and later.
One of Archie II's few hard-and-fast tasks was to arrive early enough to open the public door of the office promptly at 9AM so that incoming deliveries could be dropped off. During that time, a contractor friend of ours was having trouble with a test board in India, and told me that he was shipping the board for me to take a look at. Day after day, no board, but notices of delivery failure popped up on the express service website. On the third day I arose early, and arriving at the office before Archie II, I found an express sticker on the door. This sticker noted the third delivery failure and that the package would be returned to the sender. Fortunately, First Wife was able to call the express service and have the package held at their depot for pickup, avoiding hideous return and reshipment expenses to ourselves and the contractor.
In the meantime, I rooted around Archie II's office, and found two previous stickers from that same episode, as well as others for shipments which had been eventually received. He had tucked these notices out of (my) sight on the top of his supply cabinet. Mistakes, I understand. I make plenty of them myself. But dishonesty, or equivalently, hiding of mistakes, can kill your business dead, especially when your reputation is based on unimpeachable quality. And please, don't think that the stubby penguin hasn't already run across all the tall-guy hiding places. I have steppie-stool technology at my flipper-tips, after all. I own several steppie-stools, tucked away at strategic locations. Taller ladies needn't despair, so go ahead and wear those adorable high heels you found at Wild Pair.
When Archie II finally rolled in around 11:30 that morning, I asked if he still had the video store job. He answered in the affirmative, at which time I told him that was good as he would need it, and let him go in a swirl of Department of Labor paperwork.
In that same era we hired and fired Archie III within a week, he being too concerned with running what I perceived as homeowner insurance scams out of our shipping room. Allegedly, of course. He had helpfully offered to bring me in on his business, which offer I declined as I introduced him to the door. "No, please, after you." Click. His short tenure required far less paperwork.
Archie IV, hired from the same video chain but at a different branch, showed as much potential as Archie II, but with far less up-front slap time. One day, however, he showed up with painted fingernails. Figuring this was the side effect of a lost bet or prank common to young men his age, I ignored it. However, as the days wore on the fingernails became more gaily painted, and his attire more feminine and I thought I detected the slightest hint of makeup and eye shadow. Now, as you will discover from reading this book, I am nothing if not tolerant of others' lifestyles, but I do have a business to run. So, I asked him what was going on, and more importantly, whether this was a permanent transformation which he was undergoing. My intention was that we might make sure that his performance stayed high and our business reputation didn't suffer.
After a bit of evasiveness, Archie IV blurted out that his girlfriend was making him do these things. His revelation thus to me was apparently part of their fun. After I stopped laughing, I assured him that if he wanted to play his femdom games that was OK with me as long as it didn't interfere with his work performance. And, since his work responsibilities never intersected with visitors, I expected him to keep these style choices out of sight of customers and vendors alike.
I also counseled him that his right to whatever lifestyle he chooses didn't extend to making my business guests and other employees uncomfortable. That kind of intrusiveness would limit my economic opportunity, and thus my opportunity to pay his check. He agreed to the reasonableness of these limitations, as well as the right of the other employees to express themselves about his decisions he chose to flaunt before them. I notified the rest of the staff of my tolerance of his lifestyle choices, as well as their rights to express themselves in reasonable ways also. The wardrobe escalation seemed to cease at that point and held more or less constant. No incidents or confrontations arose, and all seemed at peace with things.
Within a couple of weeks, however, Archie IV's performance began to drop measurably. Upon further investigation, I discovered that he was spending an inordinate amount of time on social networking sites. Now, it has been my policy that social networking sites are the modern equivalent of personal phone calls. Just as it is reasonable to take or make a few personal calls per day, similarly it is reasonable to check personal networking sites a few times during the day. But, he had become a networking junkie, and his cell phone was ringing off the hook. Apparently his new softer persona had become a very popular guy.
At this point, I counseled him on his measurably reduced performance, and told him that he was to limit his personal contact time at work to a reasonable level. Within a week he quit, these terms apparently eating into the dominatrix's plans for him.
In retrospect, I have come to wonder whether, given my status as a former Marine from Mississippi, that entire episode was laid specifically in preparation for a workplace discrimination lawsuit. I wonder if I was supposed to say something like "git outta my office you queer"? While imagining this phrase, supply the appropriate stereotypical accent as you find suitable. Be sure to inflect a nasal tonality. Roy Hollis' or Jackie Gleason's are good choices.
Fortunately, if this experience had been a setup, my laissez-faire approach sidestepped that one neatly. On the other hand, why doesn't a business owner have a right to express himself, too? We shall see why in later chapters.
Even temp help was problematic. One individual I hired on a temporary basis to help setup our network kept leaving windows open, in the wintertime, as he worked on the weekends. I found out later that he was considered by some as a habitual marijuana user. I shudder now at what might have happened to our business assets if he had been smoking pot in the office and had been caught. I spent a weekend after that pronouncement tearing the office apart looking for hidden stashes. I found none, which then made me begin to doubt the source of that rumor.
I wasn't alone in dealing with employee excess, of course. An express service driver couldn't understand our technology, and about two years after 9-11 he spread a rumor that we were "making bombs" throughout the business complex. I invited the sheriff to come check things out for himself.
I also demanded that the express service fire the driver. They refused, vaguely citing union contracts and muttering something about brown shirts. Between that episode and their propensity to lose many of my shipments, I steered thousands of packages away from that service for years afterward.
All of these little anecdotes contrast with the reason I started my business in the first place. I originally started my business so that I might better provide for myself and family, and do so in a way which maximized my personal freedom.
If I wanted to catch up on missed episodes of CSI, I would record them or rent the series. I certainly wouldn't have hired and trained a Meat TiVo™ to re-enact the dramatic portions the next day.
If I wanted to manage the day to day activities of others, I would have stayed an officer in the Marine Corps. Alternatively, I would earn an MBA, take a desk job somewhere, and get paid for it.
If I wanted to provide a space for people to potentially hang out and smoke pot I would move to Amsterdam, and get paid for it. If I wanted to listen to accusations about pot and spend my day looking for contraband, I would have joined the DEA.
If I wanted to train people for new jobs I would take a job as a professor and get paid for it. Of course, I write books which do exactly that, but I'm not paying my students.
If I wanted to spend hours each day examining the unemployment tax consequences of each hiring and firing decision, I would take a job
in an HR department somewhere. And get paid for it. If I wanted to spend hours each day examining the legal consequences of each word out of my mouth, I would be a lawyer. And get paid for it.
I don't need to be rich, either. Why do most people want to be rich? Well, for many, riches are a way to demand the respect of other people. I don't care about that, because what they are getting isn't respect, at least not from people whose respect has any context for me.
The one, and only, reason I want money is to buy freedom. But, aren’t we all guaranteed freedom by the Constitution and Declaration of Independence? Yeah, sure they are. Test this theory by flipping off a cop sometime, or even a government clerk, and then claim freedom of expression. Here in the land of freedom. The freedom I’m talking about here is real and far more important than some classroom theory.
There was a time when it was a truism that "people are a firm's most valuable resource." In those times, managing the drama which accompanies managing people was a necessary cost of doing business. Of course, in those days that statement rang true. Back then, employees didn't look behind them and see gigantic safety cushions to soften the blow if they were fired or the company went under.
Now, as did poor misguided Amos, many employees look forward with glee to practically unlimited unemployment benefits. This problem grows worse each year as many clever minds propose extending benefits even if fired for cause or if the employee quits. When that day arrives, my carefully documented processes will then have no value. Whatever shall I, and other employers like me, do? Bear the burden? Or figure out ways to do without employees? Hmmmm. Someone should write a book about that dilemma.
