Employees Can Be A Pain In The (Bleep!)

I think one of the things most up and coming entrepreneurs fail to analyze is whether they really want to deal with employees or not. And if they are willing to deal with them then how many are they willing to handle? There are so many possibilities out there for a person to start a business. And the beauty of all these opportunities is that many of them nowadays don’t involve hiring employees. Instead you can have a nice cozy home office. You might have a virtual assistant. But what you don’t have to have is a flesh and blood person coming in to work each day. A person who’s sole intent it would seem is to drive you nuts.

Now don’t get me wrong not all employees are that difficult to deal with. I’ve certainly had many more good employees over the years than bad. But for every 5 good employees I’ve had there was always one that I quickly learned was bound and determined to drive me over the edge. I’ll give you a couple of examples of the things that some of my past employees have done.

Let’s see now. I remember a team leader I used to have. He often ran on site installation crews for our products. The guy was actually pretty good at it too. He was young but fairly sharp. He picked up on things fast and we could rely on him to get the job done. Of course that was before he was caught smoking pot behind the warehouse one day. Unfortunately I wasn’t the one that caught him instead it was another employee. So what did this guy do? He used his position with me and my General Manager to bully the employee into keeping quiet. It was a my word versus your word sort of thing. Eventually though the story did come out and he did get fired.

Here’s a situation I really love telling about. You see as our company continued to grow so too did our efforts to diversify our workforce. This led to us hiring a number of Hispanic workers over a very short period of time. Well one employee in particular had trouble with this fact. And he would take the opportunity to show his displeasure whenever he could. Of course only when I or my GM weren’t around. He’d berate them and call them racist names that I won’t repeat. Well of course it all got back to me.

As soon as I found out I tried to let him explain himself. The first time he told me some lies and I gave him a second chance. I’d hoped that he would’ve learned to keep his mouth shut. But sure enough he had to do it again. The next time he got the old heave ho. But this guy just couldn’t let it rest. He actually filed a workers compensation claim within a couple of days. He claimed he’d been laid off. When I denied the claim he took it to arbitration. I really don’t know who he thought he was by trying to pull such a stunt. But the ending really was funny.

My sister actually represented my company at the hearing. And oh boy what a hearing it was. The judge just happened to be black and a woman. Well my sister was one of the employees he had been insulting only with her he’d do it when she wasn’t around. The judge asked him if he’d been doing these things. He actually said yes but only behind her back. And after my sister had told our side of the story he went and called her a (Bleep!). Well you get the idea. Anyway he thought he was doing it in a low enough voice that the judge wouldn’t hear. Wrong! Needless to say he failed to win his claim.

The reason I’m telling you these stories is because until you have employees of your own you just can’t begin to fathom how much trouble they can be. Not all of them are going to be this bad. Some will be outstanding. But you just can’t be sure what you’re going to get. So keep these stories in mind when you are deciding on what type of business venture is right for you.

Cash Miller is the Editor of SmallBusinessDelivered.com and hosts his own blog at www.SmallBusinessDelivered.com/cash-millers-blog.