NFIB

Hiring Help
01/ 20/ 2003

by Kathi Purnell

Hiring people has never been my strong suit. But when I decided to have a mother-daughter team on board to mind the store in my self-storage business, I learned my true limitations.

Self-storage is a highly competitive retail operation, and excellent customer service is paramount to success. Jeannie, my star employee, was totally reliable, took her job seriously and was great with the customers.

In conversation one day, she told me her mother was looking for part-time work to supplement her Social Security. So, when I needed to add a third person to my staff, "Mom" was the first person I considered. I was certain she would be just like Jeannie.

Mom presented herself as a rather stately, mature woman with a kind smile who greeted people well, and who had prior retail experience. I signed her up!

All went well until the first Friday morning. Mom showed up for work dragging three dogs into the store and carrying a boombox! She hadn't yet found anyone to take over her Friday pet-sitting business, so it would be okay for these large, disorderly beasts to sit behind the counter and listen to their music while she worked, wouldn't it?

Well, of course, it wouldn't. Mom stormed out shouting, "Just you wait till I tell Jeannie you fired me!"

I didn't know what to do. Fortunately, Jeannie called me herself that afternoon, totally embarrassed by her mother's behavior. Did I still want her to work for me, even though her mother couldn't? Of course, I did.

I could have lost my best employee over that incident, but not because of what the mother did. The fault was my own. Had I checked out her credentials, I would have discovered that Mom was fired from her last job for doing the very same thing she had done to me.

Why hadn't I checked her out? Because a little voice in the back of my head said, "It's only a part-time job, and after all, it's Jeannie's mom. She'll be just fine."

I want my part-timers to take their jobs seriously, but I hadn't done so myself. Not only could I have lost Jeannie, I had in truth been unfair to her.

After all, it was my job to screen potential employees, not hers. I was as embarrassed as Jeannie was, and am glad she let me apologize to her when I realized what I had done.

Eventually I came to grips with the fact that I will probably never be very good at hiring people. But, hey, I don't expect any one employee to be great at every aspect of the business; why had I expected that of myself? I began using the services of an employment agency owner. She got me great employees, and I got on with the other aspects of business that I enjoyed and did well.

Purnell has sold her self-storage business and is now a full-time writer in Southern California. She can be reached at kathipurnell@att.net.

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This article originally appeared in the December/January 2003 issue of MyBusiness magazine.

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