Need some advice on talking to the Boss

[Bob Wulkowicz]

Re: The World According to Bob.

Originally posted by Treeman14

Gee, Bob, perhaps I should let the employees collect the money and MAYBE, after they take their choice cut, there will be a bit left over for me? After all, they do all the work, right? Is that how it should be?

The economics don't change. Unless you're a sole practicioner, you go and get the work, pay the salaries and benefits, eat the mistakes, and listen to the guy's complaints--although most times they won't speak up.

Most everything you do is pre-job to job, but the client's check comes post job, after the men are done. That's the reality.

I just have a hard time with the "boss owes you nothing" and then having to listen to the "we owe everything to the boss."

I'm a blue collar guy froma blue collar family and learned earliy on that I use my hands and mind in exchange for money. The better I am, the more valuable I am, and the more money can be made from me.

Some people don't get that. Like Alabam, they think workers are crap and the game is to pay as little as possible and push them around to maximize the bottom line. Usually, that works, as long as there's a stream of replacements or the economy is bad locally. The better job has fairness and respect up, down and sideways.

If it's not there, go moan to the school systems, the politicians, and the voters with the attention span of a toaster.

Froggy got up, talked, explained and received the rite of passage salary increase. Froggy realized the boss owes him many things, the boss knew it too, but maybe he was just waiting to be asked.

We mature in our job attitudes in various ways. Some never do; some are leeches and dangerous to boot; some become team-players, and I've not gone down that route, but in theory, we're supposed to become more competent. And that's what we sell: competence.

When I ran jobs, pay scales were fixed and everyone got the same wage. That's tough because of the lack of incentive to improve. Paying different levels introduces jealousies and all the other crap that comes with feet of clay.

The answers I've come up with are to learn beyond what's necessary, to be honest, up, down and sideways, and to keep everyone safe by paying attention and being smart.

Froggy and everybody else should push the limits. Don't take everything seriously, but be ethical and fair. That's not just in tree climbing, which I will argue is still one of the last bastions of independence today, but that ought to be in everthing between bosses and workers.

Froggy was honest here, maybe as practice, and it worked. Let's see if he can keep it up and wonder what'll he say when a kid comes up to him someday and coughs nervously...




Bob Wulkowicz

 

[kf_tree]

bob
your going off on some seious tangents here and your loosing me....

i don't know about you, but the world i've worked in is not a utopian society. my parents had the opposite approach. they got mad at me when ever i quit a job to better my self. they felt the guy was good enough to give me a job so i was wrong to quit him. i think it was just old school mentality.

i still feel a days work warrents a days pay, nothing more. yes it's nice to get a pat on the back now and then or thrown a bone. but that does not pay the bills. the best pat on the back a boss can give me is a nice fat pay check at the end of the week. most of my life i've either worked on commission or i owned my own business. last summer when i started working for some one again i was given a raise with out asking. this year when i went back up north to work i was given another raise with out asking.

when one applies for a job they usually ask, whats the pay? what are the bennefits? and what are the hours?

what do you ask for at an interview?

 

[take3wraps]

this boy needs a hug , drug , psychiatrist , or another job . My boss doesn't give me my just dues . give me a break ! next patient please !

 

[TREETX]

Momma is callin'

I didn't hear that.

I too get a little lost in Bob's posts. I love the way he can encourage us to all think a bit more but sometimes, he can't seem to just give a straight answer. Instead, it is 2 pages about how "a rose is a rose by any other name but in the field of mordern arboriculture one can look to socialists and Ghandi for inspiration when trying to find their way through a tangled canopy and a red door with toast........" Just spit it out!!

Just an observation but here companies are named "John's Tree Service" or "Hector's", etc. Real posession. I noticed many of them in Germany are "So and So's Tree TEAM" or "Dinksburg Tree Team".

Be a team player. The boss is the founder of the feast. Everyone needs respect for the machine to work as a team.

I am a realist and know money is the #1 way to say you appreciate someone. But, if you get the boss out of a pinch on a job that wasn't properly sold or wasn't going as planned and because of you, a profit was made instead of a loss, he can't always give you $$$. In those cases, a simple "Thanks, good job" will do.

I have had some good bosses. The best have always worked for me just as I work for them. I worked to get the job done, and they worked to sell work in order to keep me busy and worked to insure that I had the tools I needed to finish a job timely AND safely.

Just as unequal pay ruffles feathers, so does equal pay.

Bob, keep writing. I just thought I was owed my .02!!

 

[Bob Wulkowicz]

Originally posted by kf_tree

bob
your going off on some serious tangents here and your loosing me....

i don't know about you, but the world i've worked in is not a utopian society. my parents had the opposite approach. they got mad at me when ever i quit a job to better my self. they felt the guy was good enough to give me a job so i was wrong to quit him. i think it was just old school mentality.


I agree. That's the residue of the old, don't rock the boat, don't make waves, be thankful for anything you've been given, training they'd received in their generation. My parents are the same way.

I don't live in an utopian society, but I'm white and grew up in a big city where there were a lot of doors that I had a key to over the years. It was almost utopian, in contrast to what a lot of others faced who carried a different color or language. I had access to places where I could be aggressive and move up. That's a lot different than being treated as uppity.

The tree business is a tiny world comparatively, and the forces of competition and rough rides are closer to the troops than most work environments. Most businesses isolate the workers from a lot of facts beyond the daily interactions and routines, so a paycheck just seems to come from somewhere. After a while, the company is disembodied and only the few people that the individual works with seem important. A 3-man crew becomes its own world and checks arrive somehow separate from that world.






i still feel a days work warrents a days pay, nothing more. yes it's nice to get a pat on the back now and then or thrown a bone. but that does not pay the bills. the best pat on the back a boss can give me is a nice fat pay check at the end of the week. most of my life i've either worked on commission or i owned my own business. last summer when i started working for some one again i was given a raise with out asking. this year when i went back up north to work i was given another raise with out asking.


If you get a raise without asking, something is still communicated that gets you more money. I assume you can work independently and competently--and it shows. Usually, that doesn't happen because the business attitudes are in line with your parents. Business has to be pushed into parting with its money. That's one of the major tussles.

I make money for the people who employ me--that' reality; otherwise there's no reason to keep me around. From that, I expect recognition and respect proportional to who I am and what I do. That's a simple truth as well.

Getting a pat on the back isn't just nice; it's an important part of human encounters. It a job has none of that, those are the complaints of not being appreciated, and being pushed around, and often people leave when they're finally fed up.

If a boss, or a company, doesn't realize that common human need, the core of the job stays sour and the price is eventually paid. I'm not an evangelist, going around preaching to bosses, I've been on both sides of the labels and I know how I want to be treated, so it's not a big step to understanding how I should treat people.

A day's work for a day's pay is a cliché from your parent's world as well. I do respect it when it's equally applied, but usually it's a statement about the worker's obligations only.

In an interview a long time ago, I was told if I came in late, I had to wait till the next hour to punch in. I asked if I worked late would I be paid beyond the expected hours. No, was the surprised reply, that didn't happen, so I said I didn’t want to work there and left.

I still needed a job, but here was a place that would punish me for being late besides not paying me, and then not recognize any time I put in, for example, to finish a job. Obviously, they ran the show, and I needed discipline and correction before they even saw me work. Our parents would have said I was being arrogant and didn't know my place. The truth was, I was just beginning to know my place, and it just didn't fit that company's ideas.


Tree crews don't generally have time clocks, and the flow of an individual job can’t be contained by an office or factory rules, but a lot of the creepiness and suspicion of "boss" attitudes are found there as well.



when one applies for a job they usually ask, whats the pay? what are the bennefits? and what are the hours?

what do you ask for at an interview?

I got married at 20 and one of us had to go out and work--and I lost. I went to a company that I had heard paid well and interviewed for an apprentice job. I was asked if I would shave off my moustache and I replied that that seemed silly. If I weren’t going to be hired because of that, then they would be loosing a good worker for a dumb reason.

I had no work experience, nothing generally to make me more prized than someone else, and so how I handled myself might have been important. I spoke up. Froggy spoke up. Maybe, that's the common tie for getting ahead.

Honesty, up, down and sideways...


Later on, I beagn to understand that I controlled the interviews. I wasn't some doofus coming in, hat in hand, to peck at offered crumbs; I had skills and talent that were worth money, and this was a negotiation. Salary was only one part of it.

Now, if the economy is tough, or one's range of skills is narrow, that's a different story. But there are still answers for that like continuing to learn the things that are attractive to an employer. That's not a sop and I'm not a kissass; it's a simple business decision for facing the give and take of employment.



Where was I losing you, we seem to be in agreement?


Bob Wulkowicz

 

[NeTree]

Ultimately, I find that in the tree business EVERYONE's job is important:

As the owner, I have to be a top-notch (pun intended) salesman, a mediator, a logistics expert, a tax pro, payroll clerk, supply officer, financial analyst, mechanic, AND a climber/groundman. I'm also the person ultimately responsible if anything goes wrong.

The climbers are also important, I depend on them to get the work done fast, safe, and without error.

Groundmen are underappreciated; they act as the kingpins that let the climbers get their jobs done safe/fast/properly.

I'll say it again, EVERYONE is important, and when we all do our jobs well, everyone has a good day at good pay.


Glad to hear you made out well, Froggy.

 

[kf_tree]

bob.


you seem to have cleared a few thing up.

well said.

 

[jblimbwalker]

Bob's last post

Well spoken (and decipherable) Bob.

 

[mquinn]

looking for something else - came across this thread. nice one.

congratulations to froggy.

looks like you guys have covered about every aspect of the job/pay/team issue, and you've thrown in some things that i hadn't really thought about so much. one of which is the statement that the boss takes the greatest risk and so should receive the lions' share of the reward.

that sounds reasonable. but now that i think about it some more, it comes down to one of the problems of determining any payscale, lawsuit award, or cost/risk assessment - and that is, how to put a dollar value (or even whether to) on intangibles. after all, the guy climbing and cutting is risking his life.

it's also interesting to me that we talk about teamwork and the value of it, but that we give preference to certain members of the team by paying them more. supposedly they have more value. i certainly believe that some jobs on the team have more risks or more education or more skill requirements than others, but i don't think that makes them more valuable. the owner can contract the job, but if he doesn't have someone to do it, then what has he got? if a team member is needed at all, then he has as much value as any other team member.

that's a situation that has to be dealt with somehow. perhaps if the pay is unequal, there can be some other method of acknowledging that the team member who gets paid the least is still as important/valuable to the team as the top-paid member.

just running this stuff around in my head. there are numerous ways to figure value/pay and no one way is the right way. fair and equitable seem like great goals (not shared by everyone as we are all well aware), but how do you get there when people have different ideas of what those words mean in any given situation?

i don't think these are unimportant or merely academic questions. they're questions that speak to the whole basis of our economy/society.

nice thread. lots of good points brought up by everyone posting. thanks.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Value is in the mind of the user.

If only one guy on the team can get through the tree in a maner that adds proffit to the job, then he has more value to the operation, the entry level person who drags brush and is not qualified to operate a chainsaw is worth the least.

The job position itself has a value to the worker, the employer needs to set total compensation at a level that will keep all good people on the job and on time. A guy drags brush and rakes real good, pay him more to keep him happy. If you just hire an ad hoc day labor crew, you get what you pay for.

What does the owner have besides payroll issues.

1. 
   * W/C insurance- Here it is 22.14% of gross payroll. In CA it is up to 50%.
   * General liablity
   * vehicular
   * equipment maintenance
   * Payroll tax
   * Unemployment tax
   * advertising
   * equipment replacement
   * perks for the employees
   [/list=1]
   
   Risk of injury for the idividual is minimal, I've read that, for the coporation, it goes up exponentialy as the crew size grows