A Good Job
Last Wednesday evening Harold had a topic on "Employer/employee" relationships. He had done a good piece of homework by gathering information from church people on both sides of the equation, and it was an interesting evening.
My dad quoted the president (not sure of his exact title) of Krause Plow, a local manufacturer of farm equipment, who had said publicly that they have trouble hiring well qualified people. In a phone call that Dad initiated, Mr. Brown named two reasons for why they usually have to process 25 applications in order to end up with one good employee a year later: 1) People in the work force often arrive with a sense of entitlement 2) People with a college education expect to be paid better than if they had none, even if the job and the education have no correlation.
I don't suppose this is the intended take-away lesson, but I think it's worth noting that if you want a good job, a college education isn't necessarily the ticket to that event. Especially if you equate "good job" with "high pay," you're likely to be disappointed, at least in the short term. If you dig all the money for a college education out of your own pocket, it's very likely that you'll spend years and many dollars during the first years of employment to pay it all back. Besides that, you've lost four years of time in which you might have been acquiring work-related skills on the job, and you might even have begun climbing whatever ladders you find within your field of work.
Compare that to the disappointment of having a pricey degree in hand and no one around hiring people with pricey degrees. The reality is that people with experience AND a degree are in a better position to get a job than people who have only a degree. This makes it seem advisable to get some job experience before college. Doing this has the added benefit of helping to clarify goals, and increases the chances that the degree earned is actually the one that will be the most help in a chosen career.
The take-away lesson for me is that if you want to attend college, do it with a goal other than a big income. Resolve to be satisfied with your choice, even if the big income never materializes. If you can't do that, don't waste your money. Education can be acquired in various ways, and the state-sanctioned way is not always the best way.
Joel added to the good employer list "Provision for Growth." That's one that's not on the radar for a lot of Mennonite-owned businesses, unless I'm misinformed, but it's ever-so-welcome, from an employee standpoint.
Good interpersonal skills, a solid work ethic, and a willingness to learn are qualities every employer appreciates--unless, of course, it's an employer who is not looking for good people, but instead is looking for automatons, who are good at NOT thinking--only good at working robotically. The Henry Ford-famous assembly line invention works best with this kind of employee. I think it's OK to resist being sucked into this kind of work arrangement, if there are other options. Such an environment is inhumane, and leaves one diminished instead of enriched.
Hard physical labor is not a disgrace, but it's a disgrace to treat other people as though they had only muscles and no heart or brain. Physical damage eventually results from interminable repetitive motions, and other kinds of damage have probably occurred long before the physical damage becomes apparent.
I wonder if anyone besides me thinks about the irony of having a topic on employer/employee relationships in an Amish Mennonite group, when there is no corresponding examination of the merits and challenges of being self-employed, or being a business owner without employees. This is one area in which we Amish people are not doing very well anymore at being Amish--to the detriment of our traditional way of life, I believe.
Fifty years ago, or less, the majority of family heads in our church would have fit into the latter category--not the employer/employee one. I wonder sometimes why we're not more proactive about encouraging the small family business way of life. I suspect that too many of the shakers and movers among us are also employers who have a vision mostly for growing their own business, and it's not directly to their benefit if the employment pool shrinks because of men choosing to work at or from home.
These business owners do offer a valuable service to people who will always be more comfortable working for someone else, or people whose employment years are just beginning. But, as a matter of principle, it would seem admirable to provide support and encouragement for other men to enjoy the same family friendly benefits as business owners enjoy. For them to do this would be like being a schoolteacher advocating for and providing support for homeschooling. Been there, done that.
Economics is probably not the biggest benefit of family businesses. Freedom for parents and children to work alongside each other ranks high on my list of benefits.
Being able to participate in volunteer service opportunities is also a benefit. I don't have any illusions about home business owners having lots of extra time. It feels very different, however, for a man who has worked with his family all week to volunteer a day of work away from home on a Saturday than it does for a man who has only Saturday to work alongside his family. If we value these "helping each other" traditions, can't we see how family businesses facilitate them, as well as other aspects of church body life? We feel better about going to an evening meeting when we've been home all day than if we've landed there just long enough to get ready to go away again.
How about the apprenticeship model of learning a trade? Does this no longer hold any appeal for us? It's true, of course, that learning a trade from one's parents is not the only possible apprenticeship arrangement, but learning that first has benefits that often transfer easily to learning a new skill later in life.
I've often prayed for the growth of a vision among us for helping each other establish family friendly ways of earning a living. I think I'll keep right on praying.
**********************
During Harold's topic several people shared Fred Mast anecdotes about work:
In a conversation Fred had with someone who was talking of hiring him, the man answered a question about how much he would pay Fred. "Whatever you're worth," he said.
"I won't work that cheap," Fred replied.
Another time when Fred inquired about a job, he made it clear that what he really wanted was a position--not work.
Fred was a member of our church when he died a a number of years ago. We miss his slightly offbeat sense of humor. He never actually worked for anyone else in my memory, and was probably well off financially, although you couldn't have told by his lifestyle. He was easygoing and generous, which endeared him to many.
My dad quoted the president (not sure of his exact title) of Krause Plow, a local manufacturer of farm equipment, who had said publicly that they have trouble hiring well qualified people. In a phone call that Dad initiated, Mr. Brown named two reasons for why they usually have to process 25 applications in order to end up with one good employee a year later: 1) People in the work force often arrive with a sense of entitlement 2) People with a college education expect to be paid better than if they had none, even if the job and the education have no correlation.
I don't suppose this is the intended take-away lesson, but I think it's worth noting that if you want a good job, a college education isn't necessarily the ticket to that event. Especially if you equate "good job" with "high pay," you're likely to be disappointed, at least in the short term. If you dig all the money for a college education out of your own pocket, it's very likely that you'll spend years and many dollars during the first years of employment to pay it all back. Besides that, you've lost four years of time in which you might have been acquiring work-related skills on the job, and you might even have begun climbing whatever ladders you find within your field of work.
Compare that to the disappointment of having a pricey degree in hand and no one around hiring people with pricey degrees. The reality is that people with experience AND a degree are in a better position to get a job than people who have only a degree. This makes it seem advisable to get some job experience before college. Doing this has the added benefit of helping to clarify goals, and increases the chances that the degree earned is actually the one that will be the most help in a chosen career.
The take-away lesson for me is that if you want to attend college, do it with a goal other than a big income. Resolve to be satisfied with your choice, even if the big income never materializes. If you can't do that, don't waste your money. Education can be acquired in various ways, and the state-sanctioned way is not always the best way.
Joel added to the good employer list "Provision for Growth." That's one that's not on the radar for a lot of Mennonite-owned businesses, unless I'm misinformed, but it's ever-so-welcome, from an employee standpoint.
Good interpersonal skills, a solid work ethic, and a willingness to learn are qualities every employer appreciates--unless, of course, it's an employer who is not looking for good people, but instead is looking for automatons, who are good at NOT thinking--only good at working robotically. The Henry Ford-famous assembly line invention works best with this kind of employee. I think it's OK to resist being sucked into this kind of work arrangement, if there are other options. Such an environment is inhumane, and leaves one diminished instead of enriched.
Hard physical labor is not a disgrace, but it's a disgrace to treat other people as though they had only muscles and no heart or brain. Physical damage eventually results from interminable repetitive motions, and other kinds of damage have probably occurred long before the physical damage becomes apparent.
I wonder if anyone besides me thinks about the irony of having a topic on employer/employee relationships in an Amish Mennonite group, when there is no corresponding examination of the merits and challenges of being self-employed, or being a business owner without employees. This is one area in which we Amish people are not doing very well anymore at being Amish--to the detriment of our traditional way of life, I believe.
Fifty years ago, or less, the majority of family heads in our church would have fit into the latter category--not the employer/employee one. I wonder sometimes why we're not more proactive about encouraging the small family business way of life. I suspect that too many of the shakers and movers among us are also employers who have a vision mostly for growing their own business, and it's not directly to their benefit if the employment pool shrinks because of men choosing to work at or from home.
These business owners do offer a valuable service to people who will always be more comfortable working for someone else, or people whose employment years are just beginning. But, as a matter of principle, it would seem admirable to provide support and encouragement for other men to enjoy the same family friendly benefits as business owners enjoy. For them to do this would be like being a schoolteacher advocating for and providing support for homeschooling. Been there, done that.
Economics is probably not the biggest benefit of family businesses. Freedom for parents and children to work alongside each other ranks high on my list of benefits.
Being able to participate in volunteer service opportunities is also a benefit. I don't have any illusions about home business owners having lots of extra time. It feels very different, however, for a man who has worked with his family all week to volunteer a day of work away from home on a Saturday than it does for a man who has only Saturday to work alongside his family. If we value these "helping each other" traditions, can't we see how family businesses facilitate them, as well as other aspects of church body life? We feel better about going to an evening meeting when we've been home all day than if we've landed there just long enough to get ready to go away again.
How about the apprenticeship model of learning a trade? Does this no longer hold any appeal for us? It's true, of course, that learning a trade from one's parents is not the only possible apprenticeship arrangement, but learning that first has benefits that often transfer easily to learning a new skill later in life.
I've often prayed for the growth of a vision among us for helping each other establish family friendly ways of earning a living. I think I'll keep right on praying.
**********************
During Harold's topic several people shared Fred Mast anecdotes about work:
In a conversation Fred had with someone who was talking of hiring him, the man answered a question about how much he would pay Fred. "Whatever you're worth," he said.
"I won't work that cheap," Fred replied.
Another time when Fred inquired about a job, he made it clear that what he really wanted was a position--not work.
Fred was a member of our church when he died a a number of years ago. We miss his slightly offbeat sense of humor. He never actually worked for anyone else in my memory, and was probably well off financially, although you couldn't have told by his lifestyle. He was easygoing and generous, which endeared him to many.
posted by Mrs. I at
6:52 PM
2 Comments:
A comment that Fred was to have said, that didn't come up the other evening, was that "Sometimes when I get the urge to work, if I lay down it goes away." = )
Yes, we miss him.
Susanna
By
Anonymous, at 9/26/2011
We often wish for a home based business so that we could all work together, but at this point, it isn't in the works. Our world is changing so much and becoming more complicated. Sometimes we need to change with it, but not change our values or principles. Yes, I admit, sometimes, it is easy to wish for the good old days.
By
Dorcas Byler, at 9/28/2011
Post a Comment
<< Home