Employees

[Jumper]

Question for all.....are employees in this business transient everywhere? Or mainly idle and/or lazy? With a grand total of five months, I am now then senior hand. My cohort, call him Ralph, was told to leave today after a spat over a lousy $2 per hour. Seems he did not want to learn to climb, or learn to prune, until he got a raise. Call me over the hill, but I always thought pay increases were granted on merit and once you had mastered required skills. Another employee (female on "stress leave" from teaching) found the work too taxing, and the boss had a phone call from the mother of the third complaining that he was working her little 17 year old darling too hard. I consider myself fortunate that I have a job, occasionally get a few side benefits, like free firewood, work for a decent boss, am outdoors, and am learning something new. I had a $75K a year headquarters desk job which I hated, WAS 40 lbs overweight and was so bored it was impacting on other aspects of my life. IMHO , most young kids these days (I am 43) want $$$$$$$$$$, and certainly do not want to get wet, cold, dirty, sweaty or physically tired at their work place-leave that to the personal trainer to take care of. We had this very problem attracting and retaining soldiers in the Army. Or they are know it alls like Ralph who quit school too early with no real skills, and now are in a rut, with two bastards to support(and behind on the payments to the point the province suspended his drivers license-so I got to do ALL the driving while he sat and smoked cigarettes)and a pusher to pay. Someone tell this is not the way it is everywhere!

 

[treeclimber165]

If you find any qualified groundmen, my boss will hire them. Today, I was given a dirty look by the TWO groundmen when I tried to show one of them how to rake efficiently. Left to his own devices, he would have been there 2 hours raking (and missed a bunch). This was AFTER I came out of the tree and helped drag and chip brush. After raking myself, I blew off the street and drive. I have NO idea what they did the whole time, bbut they are very good at ACTING like they are working. I just wish that they actually accomplished something!

 

[DDM]

I'll have to say that i can not complain about my ground help she is very proficient can almost keep up with me on a pruning job Has a drivers license is fairly delicate with the equipment as far as im concerned rakes and cleans up a little too much She'd rake the customers whole yard if i would let her. She can fuel/oil her own saw and even change the chain. Run the loader, Back the chipper,I have to make her take a break!
But then again She is My wife.

 

[rahtreelimbs]

This is a pet peeve I've had for a long time. I only do tree work on the weekends. But even in my day job this is a problem. Blame it on whatever, good work ethics are on the decline. Tree climbing means more to me than you can imagine. Seems that no matter how hard the work is I still have a smile on my face and want to stay in the business.

 

[Jumper]

But then again She is My wife.

A KEEPER!

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

I have found if you pay them a decent wage, they will preform. If they still don't, fire them. Now if you only pay them $10 or $12 an hour, you won't get much, and if you fire them, you'll have trouble replacing them.

So, near as I can tell, you have to pay them a salary that they can support themselves and their family on, marry them, or put up with incompetence.

 

[Jumper]

]I have found if you pay them a decent wage, they will preform. If they still don't, fire them. Now if you only pay them $10 or $12 an hour, you won't get much, and if you fire them, you'll have trouble replacing them.

Agree totally with the above. Money for me is not everything, as I have a small pension. I just see myself doing it all less climbing tall trees for removal as a recent ad for workers got one response, someone who worked on scaffolding who thought he was a climber.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

I don't think it is anything recent. This is hard work and most people just arn't used to it.

One of the problems is that the people with tenure in the industry forget what it is like and gripe about the new meat not keeping up. If you grind them down the first day they wont be able to get up the next and it becomes a viciouse cycle.

We tend to expect the help to be like us, but when we remenice we talk about that good boss who developed us and got us interested in the work. If you treat them like day labor that is how they will respond.

I've trained many people to do ground work, I would always get the leftovers for help when I was running the only pruning crew for a Trugreen branch. Some will be hard cases, but for the most part they want to do a good job and be appreiciated.

So jumper, guess your job now is to start raking the new hires under your wing and teaching them how to enjoy what they see as meanial work :angel:

 

[Jumper]

If I am around.......I have applied for a job as a civilian contractor in Bosnia, which will take me out of country for a year.

Also in order to motivate you have to have an employee.....and I have not seen a whole pile of them beating a path to my boss' door looking for work.

So in the interim I am it.

 

[Nickrosis]

One problem with hiring and firing is the unemployment compensation rate goes up for you, at least in Wisconsin. If you can develop a core group of people who do the leading of crews and so on, they are often able to attract a high quality tier of people under them. The hard part in this is finding those first couple of people.

One strategy that I'm not impressed with is hiring a number of no-nothings for minimum wage and having 3 ground people for each climber. To me, it seems dangerous to have a group of people not familiar with climbing on the ground and the only one who does know how to back the chipper or change the saw's chain is 50 to 100 feet above you. Instead, have one highly qualified ground person making what the other three are making combined. This person will be safer and more efficient. Also, customers like looking out the window and seeing things run like a finely-tuned machine.

Nickrosis

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Nick, how often do people try to poach your dad's crew?

I've had it heppen to me a couple times a year when i was with chemlawn. OK 20 bucks an hour! They look at me like I'm crazy.

Had it happen to me last spring, I handed him my card and said I subcontract $25/hr and he laughed. Seems like most of the small companies want to pay climbers around 12-15. I could go stuff a chipper for Asplundh (gazuntheit!) for that .

 

[treeman82]

I just picked up 2 guys today that worked out really well. I had been using guys over the past couple weekends who either didn't know how to work, or who didn't care about doing a good job. I offered these 2 guys today work for the next month plus. The one better guy today of the two knew knots, he looked at my blake's hitch, took it apart and then put it back together perfectly. I used to be a ground person for a small company, that is where I learned. They had me dragging brush, and lowering stuff every now and again. Now that I am the boss, I do all the climbing and I let the ground guys drag all the brush (I vowed to myself last year that I would never drag brush for anybody but myself again).

 

[Nickrosis]

Well, the joke is that people work here until they die. It's true...Pat, Dave, Tony, and John all can tell me about when I was born! People leave and come back or don't, or become WAA president.... Go Bob! I just enjoy working with a lot of the guys, and while they have plenty of bones to pick with the company, they still stick around.

If someone can find a better job, that's great. There's no reason to be unhappy working for a company when a better opportunity is out there. Good employees are not easy to find, and we do a lot to hold onto the full-time employees.

Nickrosis

 

[Jumper]

New Employees

Well we have a new employee as of Monday. This one shows promise off the bat, as he is a younger kid who approached our boss for info about being an arborist as a career. Guess he was not scared off, because our other ground guy quit which was the initial reason for this discussion. So we do not have "Horace" and his negative attitide to spoil the situation from day one; what a dweeb, showed up at the office(at the owner's house) at 1000 pm Thursday night demanding his final pay cheque-I suspect his dealer needed payment........ I had problems with this guy smoking weed on the job (just great when around chippers, chainsaws and driving) Anyways I welcome the company, and
two make a job go a lot faster in terms of cleanup on big jobs ( I spent today chipping from three large pruning jobs yesterday, due in part to equipment problems, and in part to not being able to take the time to chip as we had appointments)

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

One of the guys I work with uses a temp service for draggers. Yesterday we got a guy woh owns his own car and works hard!!! I had to tell him to slow down a bit so he would not catch up to me.

Too bad he wants a job driving truck, has a prior felony from 12 years ago when 17 so the big companies wont hire him.

 

[Jumper]

Young Offenders

Ah the stupidity of youthful ignorance. Here in Canada, the guy would not have a record as all offenses less murder and manslaughter and the like are wiped clean once you turn 18; there is a record but the identity of the offender is protected by law. Seems kind of unfortunate that someone keeps paying the price even though they are reformed. I would suggest a new identity for career purposes might be in order....terrorists seem to have no problem reiinventing themselves here in North America.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

I've been in management positions before and we would often take felons if they disclosed the record on the application.

One probelm though is the litigious nature of this country. If a person who has a record does violence while on the job, the employer can be held liable in court because they knew of the predisposition. This makes insurance companies block hiring of this class of citizen.

 

[Nickrosis]

What is Canada's policy about <i>Cannabis sativa</i>? It seemed important to border crossing guards, and I'm not familiar with the whole story.

Nickrosis

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Especialy the cv. 'Coke Bottle Bud'

a joke from my childhood as a Marine

 

[DDM]

Hmmm maybe i need to hire a temp or two to drag brush What percent do the Temp agencies tack on to the hourly wage?