See, I’m not reading his posts like that. I’m reading them as a manager who is extremely frustrated in not being able to retain people for the position he’s described.
YOU don’t think it’s an emergency 99.9% of the time… but if my disabled spouse falls down a flight of stairs or is being taken to the ER for some exacerbation of his medical conditions I might not be the one who is ill but I’ll be damned if I don’t go take care of him. That’s the sort of thing you’re asking people with youf “only if YOU’RE sick” caveat, to abandon everyone else for the sake of the job. To hell with the person’s family, that’s someone else’s responsibility. Frankly, you remind me of an overbearing manager I once had who was infamous for delivering her children not once but TWICE in a cab on the way to the hospital because she thought finishing her work day was more important than paying attention to her broken water and active labor.
Although I agree, probably a lot of the “emergencies” and “sick days” are your employees actually going to job interviews so they can get the hell out of Dodge.
As a matter of fact I regularly work TEN hour days, not 7, and my normal shift is the weekend with my days off during the week. I still wouldn’t want to work in your office with all its amenities if I didn’t have the flexibility to sometimes re-arrange my schedule when needed. I’m currently working TWO jobs, in fact, but again, if a family member falls ill I’ll be damned if I put my job ahead of another human being. I realize that makes you regard me as a failure and a bad employee but I assure you I’m a damn fine human being. And, oddly enough, my employers manage to continue onward despite an occasional absence due to illness or emergency without needing to ask someone else to “give up their weekend”. If one person’s absence for half a day throws a place of business into the sort of turmoil you describe they are not adequately staffed.
And yet… you can not seem to keep that position filled. Why is that? Are you SURE all those “pleasant people” are actually pleasant to the [del]peon scapegoat[/del] receptionist? Is the expected work load really reasonable? And no, saying “10 years ago I did that job” isn’t sufficient proof, really look at what the job is demanding TODAY, not when you did it, because jobs and expectations change over time.
If one of those people missing three hours out of just one work day results in you having to give up your weekend then two people is not enough. You can NOT run your staff at 100% 100% of the time because stuff breaks, people have problems, and stuff happens that truly is not within anyone’s control.
Again - if you can’t keep someone permanently then why don’t you try a staffing agency that is obligated to supply you with someone every day, including finding a replacement if needed?
But they are not allowed to get sick, they’re not allowed to take care of an ill or injured family member, there is zero flexibility - seriously, they have schedule all doctor and dentist appointments for after hours and weekends? NEVER an exception for any reason whatsoever? That’s harsh lady, it’s out of the 19th Century sweathouses. Maybe you’re so used to this you don’t see that even in this day it’s extremely unusual to never get any sort of sick time whatsoever.
So… they’ll spend money on sufficient equipment and supplies, but won’t for over for sufficient staff? How typical of corporate America these days…
STAFFING AGENCY. Damn, woman it would solve so much of this problem it’s not funny.
:eek:
bwa-ha-ha-ha-HA!
Seriously, you can’t staff that position and you think DROPPING that salary will help? My god, woman, what are you smoking?
Honey, even my minimum wage jobs have allowed sick time and some flexibility in scheduling. More and more I’m convinced the problem isn’t the employees’ attitude, it’s the employer’s.
Seriously, I’ll stick with my $9/hour jobs in much less pleasant surroundings (which I imagine to arrive to consistently early, thank you very much, and often stay late) with bosses who understand their workers are human beings with families than work for a Scrooge outfit such as yours. Sure, I’m poor in material and financial terms but I’m a hell of a lot happier than I would be working for the likes of your company.
As Banquet Bear points out then maybe he should figure out why he’s having such problems retaining people.
Ten years ago I had a job like that. It was right after 9-11 and I was unemployed, three months pregnant and desperate so I took a similar job with a similar salary that wasn’t remotely in my field of interest. My manager hovered over me at every turn and then yelped I wasn’t working hard enough or fast enough. She was a nightmare and I was her third employee in a year. I stayed until I gave birth and then gratefully found other work. And I’m not incompetent or afraid of hard work. Hell I worked so many hours last month that a mere ten hour day seemed like a vacation.
You seem awfully bitter about the employed status of people who groom themselves differently. Why does it matter?
As others have said to Johnny L.A. and LurkerInNJ, there’s something about the work environment or the pay scale that’s off. I temped for a while in between undergrad and grad school, and I had a few jobs that were pretty awkward when it came to the work environment. Lurker’s POV on the job reminds me a bit of the longest temp job I had-- when I started, nobody who temped as a receptionist had lasted longer than two weeks, and most left after a day or half a day, complaining about the work environment. Why? The owner of one of the companies (there were three in the same building, all of whom paid for my services) was batshit insane. While my contact with the guy may have also been “limited”, when he did decide he needed me to do something, it was usually unreasonable* or unethical. Finding the number for the correct Sears department and calling it for him so that he could ship an enormous broken rubber part from his home clothes washer, calling up a hotel he forgot to cancel the reservation for and ask for credit or a refund on a personal trip, attempting to get me to pick up dry cleaning, light bulbs, etc. on time where I’m supposed to be answering phones and keeping access to the front door limited to customers; all these things came to mind when Lurker mentioned that her boss was insane. I was on a temp-to-hire status, which quickly fell through after three months. I filled out the paperwork to get hired and get insurance, and two weeks later, the guy has his office manager fire me three days before Christmas after I set up all the holiday decorations; I was to finish the week and not come back after the holidays. The next day, I come in and find out that his “firing” of me got vetoed and I’m just going to continue to temp until whenever. For nine months, I put up with this job because it paid decently, I didn’t have to do a ton, and I was going to be gone within a year.
*I was hired to answer phones, use the fax machine when needed, and do data entry. He’d frequently use me as his own personal assistant, which was not what any of the companies were billing for.
LurkerInNJ, you get what you pay for. If you drop the pay and continue with the hellish work environment, you’ll end up with the desperate dregs of society who don’t know how to answer a phone, smile and greet clients, or speak intelligently. And oh yes, who’ll steal you blind when everyone goes home at the end of the day because she’s got bills and you aren’t paying her shit. You want quality, you pay for it. This is Capitalism 101.
You’ll be lucky if you can get a crack whore for $10/hour.
Great idea. I mean, hell, it worked for Wal-Mart…oh, wait…no.
Reducing the pay of a job only reduces the quality of the people who will apply. That is a fact.
Lurker, you are looking for a person who is excited about working very hard doing a menial job for not a lot of money. That does not exist. I know, I know, $15.00/hour is better than minimum wage. That doesn’t make it worthwhile. People are going to take your $15.00/hour for exactly as long as it takes them to find a better paying job, and they are going to treat the job as exactly what it is to them; a position that will do for the time being. If you want someone who will work hard and treat this position with the respect you feel it deserves, you have to do better with the salary, not worse.
Only thing is – we have no idea what those expectations are in terms of “normally expected”. If the employee has a quota, the expectations make sense. The expectations Lurker describes dovetails with a production-driven environment, and evidently the metrics must also point to such. It may sound Dickensian to some, but it sounds cushy compared to most jobs in a production-driven industry.
The people who thinks such a job is cushy are going to be individuals who can’t find anything else and have such low self-esteem they don’t think they deserve anything better. And the moment they do develop some self-esteem, they will be out of there.
The people who have bailed out of this position have communicated clearly to LurkerInNJ that $15/hr is not worth it. Maybe it would be worth it for a normal workplace, but it doesn’t sound like that place is. A smart manager would try to figure out how she can adjust things to stem the turnover. You know what a dumb person would do? Drop the wages and expect anything to change for the better.
Paying people less out of spite is just evil. Ebenezer Scrooge wouldn’t stoop that low. Shit like that is why people hate management.
Depends on the person and depends on the industry. In some fields what Lurker describes is par for the course if you want to make anything of yourself in said field – “trial by fire”, as it were.
The type of employee Lurker is looking for, IMO, is young, hungry, and driven, akin to the intern s/he mentioned upthread. Or somebody older who wants to learn the business and realizes that s/he has to first pay his/her dues, just like Lurker did.
If Lurker wants that kind of individual, she’s going to have to pay for it.
There may be someone that hungry and motivated who’d take that position in a heartbeat. But if they aren’t knocking on Lurker’s door, then they don’t exist in the equation.
An employee who expects to find an entry-level receptionist job that pays $50K with benefits is delusional and needs to change their expectations. The same natural law applies to the employer. If no one is taking you up on your offer, then you’re full of shit and you need to adjust your expectations. The market has spoken.
You know, this thread is making me like my current job better and better :).
One of my friends from high school recently posted on Facebook about a great job opening at his company. They wanted a customer service representative (what I currently am) who also could do graphic design (well, I’ve fooled around in Photoshop a little…). For $10/hr.
I remember, after laughing, thinking to myself, “Well, I’m apparently too good at the customer service portion…but, I’ve probably got just enough skill to be a $10/hr graphic designer!” That is to say, not so great.
Perhaps my friend’s company found some young graphic designer just out of school who was talented but lacked job experience (and who could still live with Mom and Dad) who needed that job as a leg up. On the other hand, unless you’re in some lucrative industry, I doubt too many people would see your standard receptionist job as a leg up to much. If you pay $10/hr, you’ll get the $10/hr receptionist. Probably not so great. Or you could pay $15/hr and get the $15/hr receptionist who is smart enough to see that they could make the same (or perhaps more money) across the street, actually be allowed to make a dental appointment or take a day off once in a while, and never have to deal with Insane Boss ever again. Or the $15/hr receptionist who is not smart enough to realize that…and who probably is not so great.
To be fair, it could be the case that $15 an hour is so crappy a wage for this position that you couldn’t get much worse by offering only $10.
I think some managers, as well as business owners, can be very shortsighted when it comes to measuring their ideal vs. reality. Not everybody is going to have that same hungry drive, especially people who have been out of the workforce for awhile and are desperate. Lurker’s ideal employee is a young, driven kid, but seriously, there aren’t many of them around AFAIK.
I’ve faced this scenario a few times. Back when I was in management I was very much like Lurker in the “I need somebody who has my worth ethic” sense because I was not just already shorthanded, but if I had more employees, I could produce more, which meant selling more, and therefore make more money. Getting people to care about that was my biggest hurdle. The kids had the energy, but they didn’t give a crap because the employer was hiring them slightly above minimum wage and/or they’d be damned if someone made them move. The veterans gave more of a crap but they just didn’t have the energy to complete tasks in what I considered a timely manner (“timely” meaning “I’m very fast, and I understand you may not be as fast, but it shouldn’t take you X amount of time to do Y”).
What happened? I ended up like Lurker, having to do everything. After too-many-to-count months of 60-70 hour weeks at breakneck speed, I stepped down. I was soon transferred to another position in a different division. I later learned that every single person who came after me stepped down for the very same reason.
I would think it’s obvious that it would be difficult to get an hourly employee to always have a constant hustle work ethic. What is their motivation to do so? In many jobs I’ve been told that I’m a hard worker and have a good work ethic, and I may be biased but comparing myself to other employees I think that I generally work harder than average and do a better job than average (sometimes much better, back when I had crappier jobs). But still, I’ll do my job all day, but I’m not going to be constantly busting my ass and stressing myself out just so the employer can produce more and so they can make more profit, considering that I’ll see none of that money myself. I’m still making my hourly wage. Yes, some employers will recognize those employees and give them bonuses or promotions, but many won’t. And a lot of jobs really don’t have upward mobility or a better position available to be promoted into, or the employee doesn’t have other credentials/education for a better position.
Bottom line, it’s not unreasonable to expect employees to work. But it is unrealistic to expect an employee to be constantly hustling all day, every day, with a maximum of 14 days off per year and minimal accommodations for personal issues.
I have no idea why the OP imagines he’ll get decent workers if he drops wages even further. Fifteen dollars an hour just about covers most expenses in NJ. Ten an hour won’t even do that.
We’re a non-profit association, so there’s not a great deal of money to spread around. I’ve been with the company six years, and no one has received a raise in that time. I’m not in charge of hiring (or anything, really), but I think that the wages for the proposed position are probably fair. It doesn’t matter that we paid $25/hour for temp workers in the past, because the workers didn’t get $25/hour. They gave whatever the temp agency gave them. Minimum wage in this state is $9.19/hour. I’m pretty sure we’re offering (or will offer) more than that. I think it’s fair that an entry-level position pays an entry-level wage. Is it a living wage? No. I’d like to see a living wage law in this country (and UHC instead of for-profit insurance companies and hospitals, and affordable access to higher education for anyone who wants it). But until that happens, a more-than-minimum wage for an entry-level position seems reasonable to me. (Full disclosure: I myself am making around the median household income.)
It used to be that entry-level meant starting off in the mail room. It was just the mail room, making minimum wage, but you had some kind expectation of moving up in the organization.
Nowadays, the guys in the mail room pretty much stay in the mail room. Why? Because they only have high school diplomas. To be considered for any other position, you have to have a college degree.
The same with other low-pay office work. Why would you promote a good receptionist to sales when you can hire an MBA? And why should the receptionist work extra hard in anticipation of being rewarded with a promotion, if this was never presented to her as an option in the first place? Nowadays, even finishing a non-paid internship doesn’t translate into future job placement within an organization.
Even in my workplace, I’ve seen many a soul become bitter when they realize there are simply not enough management positions opening up to accommodate all the “ambition” on the floor. If you’ve got a dozen people who’ve been working 60 hour weeks for twenty-five years all vying for the same management position, you end up with one person in a corner office and eleven people regretting all those lost hours of uncompensated work. Ambition is costly.
The threat of being fired or having your hours cut, at least in my industry. If you’re desperate, you’ll do everything you can to hold onto your job, especially if there are few to no other choices for you out there.
A valid point, and perhaps it depends on the company. Some companies make it a point to reward their employees. Others don’t. Given the recession and the industry, some companies may not be able to give as much of a reward as they have in the past, but it’s still a reward. When the disgruntled moan about the cutback, it’s enough to make management want to scream, “Be thankful you STILL have a job!” They won’t actually scream it, however.
Some people like to hustle – it’s in their blood. Those who don’t obviously need to find a line of work where hustling isn’t the #1 be-all-end-all.
OK, but to reach that $64 grand in your cite, you need two parents working at $16 an hour. You might be able to attract a good worker at that wage, but they’ll expect to either get a raise or a promotion fairly quickly if they really are good and if they can’t find one in-house, they’ll get it elsewhere.
EDIT: Wait, scratch that. The OP’s talking about a part-time job. Yeah, that’s unlikely.
From what the woman who needs the help was saying, it sounded like a part-time position. From what my boss says, it sounded like a full-time position.