Discipline

Ahh yes. Now Im remember who was Master of Ceremonies that evening, working the camera and a bottle of Old Grandad's. Things really escalated quickly that night.
You owe me a golf cart and a jug of Greek olive oil Jeff.

Jack, we done hijacked your thread. Dust yerself off and hope things dont get any weirder.
 
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Employees must understand that getting new customers keeps everyone working.

The customer coming over from next door about chipping a $25 pile of brush could be the next $300 or 3000 job.

The owner/ sales person has the opportunity to make that chipping contact into a long term customer. Stealing an opportunity to make a long-term customer is a huge problem.

I have $1000-2000 a year of work with some customers. That's $10-20k of revenue loss over a decade.
10-20% profit margin means stealing $1-4k from my wallet, potentially.

Losing those trips from the lost contact over the years means losing opportunities to make contact with those other neighbors, and the new customers friends and associates.



If you are not getting paid what you are worth, go find the wage at another job.





Maybe if employees pay for all their screw ups, it would even out, but they don't. Part of the agreement. Hourly wage plus bonuses means hourly plus bonuses.



The other day I said to wash out a piece of fuel hose sitting around that we needed, as simple as that sounds, my employee skipped that specified step, after telling me "OK". The hose was plugged. Cost me lost wages, lost productivity, another day at that customer's house. All that comes out of my wallet, too.
 
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southsoundtree said:
Employees must understand that getting new customers keeps everyone working.

The customer coming over from next door about chipping a $25 pile of brush could be the next $300 or 3000 job.

The owner/ sales person has the opportunity to make that chipping contact into a long term customer. Stealing an opportunity to make a long-term customer is a huge problem.

I have $1000-2000 a year of work with some customers. That's $10-20k of revenue loss over a decade.
10-20% profit margin means stealing $1-4k from my wallet, potentially.

Losing those trips from the lost contact over the years means losing opportunities to make contact with those other neighbors, and the new customers friends and associates.



If you are not getting paid what you are worth, go find the wage at another job.





Maybe if employees pay for all their screw ups, it would even out, but they don't. Part of the agreement. Hourly wage plus bonuses means hourly plus bonuses.



The other day I said to wash out a piece of fuel hose sitting around that we needed, as simple as that sounds, my employee skipped that specified step, after telling me "OK". The hose was plugged. Cost me lost wages, lost productivity, another day at that customer's house. All that comes out of my wallet, too.
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Like I said it was the only tree on the 70 year old woman's tiny property. It wasn't a rich neighborhood you could almost call it a poor one.
 
Jem4417 said:
Like I said it was the only tree on the 70 year old woman's tiny property. It wasn't a rich neighborhood you could almost call it a poor one.
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Her friends and family, church members, etc…

You were there because of all the effort that your employer put in prior to you showing up. If you had walked into that neighborhood and solicited that business under your own name, great. Otherwise, your employer is the one who gets the money.
 
Jem4417 said:
Like I said it was the only tree on the 70 year old woman's tiny property. It wasn't a rich neighborhood you could almost call it a poor one.
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Still the company's job.


Old ladies know lots of people, and was willing to pay for tree work.

This case is no different.

Jem4417 said:
Should they supply the hass,foot ascender, rope wrench, micro pulleys, multiple ropes for double and single, rope bags, gear bags, tree motion saddles, kask hard hats, Sean head sets, carbon fiber hooks? They pay for some but It's not much. I just figured most places are like that. They pay for the cheapest and we cough up for the nice stuff
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Yes and no.

Last time I checked, carbon fiber is a luxury. People kicked butt and took names in steel spurs for a Looong time.




Produce what you can produce with the gear they provide for a while.


$1500 of deductible gear expense for the company to own good gear, not the Poulan-Wild-Thing- of-gear, should not be an issue.


Sounds like a bad management move as to how they handled it.


I'd like to know what the two policy sentences say.

Would you say that you took the word of someone with a vested interest in the accepted culture being as he said? Did this conflict with the written policy? Did you seek clarification from someone without vested interest (or actually the opposite) about a gray situation?


Is it possible that the suspension is due to something that they were not aware of happening for this long while?




.
 
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In regards to the folks saying a 25 dollar brush pile or 100 dollar tree could lead to a 3000 dollar job that they now lost out on, how's that the case? The homeowner sees the trucks knows the name hands an employee of the tree company a little cash for a quick job how do they know it's not going to the company? They are still going to call for that tree in the future... not saying the money shouldn't go to the company but the point of future biz doesn't really work... unless of coarse you put there info in a data base then solicit them for work which we don't do. I know of more then a few jobs that came from me chipping that neighbors brush pile for a few dollars, we did them a favor they called us first! Now our company doesn't really care about that little bitty brush pile or the 25 bucks every once in awhile, once your income is into the millions that few dollars don't make no difference. Hell our payroll was 900k and change... I do have a cool boss tho

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I'm still not seeing the justification. For me its a integrity issue. I have free reign of the place. My boss doesn't even micro manage my time. He throws me paid lunches and full pay for partial days all the time. I believe it's because I have integrity. Not saying you don't! I have seen too many times the customer taking advantage of knowing the workers will often take cash so the down have to pay what it's worth. That $25 brush pile is only $25 if it takes you 5 min to chip and clean up. Man hours, fuel, dump fees, mileage to the dump. Hell we can't get on the job for less than $375. The other thing I don't like that we do is have the customer make some of the checks out into the company owners name. It's not my gig but that screams cheating as well. Anyway, the future job deals is setting up an expectation for low cost work. Bids that you won't get. They will tell all their neighbors those guys cut my tree down for $100 so I don't understand why yours costs so much. It's a loose win situation and the only person who wins is the customer who got off for cheap.
 
Don't forget the employee stealing wages and use of equipment, putting extra money in their pocket. WIN!


Again, if you feel like you need to steal from the company to get what you're worth, go elsewhere. Its a free country.

Start your own show. Allow employees to take your money, and pay for all their screw-ups, whether they are their fault (error or omission) or the 'stuff happens' screw-ups, as well as paying them to do their jobs right.




Chris, are you really suggesting that a groundie taking $25 does all the company promotion with company marketing materials that a salesman does? Does that groundie have the knowledge to perform hazard assessment, to be aware of cultural practices improvement, possibly selling installations, cabling, etc. Shoot, make that groundie a salesman, he's working way below his potential. How can he be that smart and still be stealing work from the company?

If you don't see $25 brush chipping as an opportunity to make a new, long term customer, I'd guess you haven't been in sales / management/ ownership very long, I don't think. I could be wrong, not knowing you from Adam. What is your company ownership experience?





Again, if the policy put down by the person signing checks is that the crew can have company jobs with company equipment, on or off the clock, its all good. That's not stealing.
 
I would hazard a guess that when an employee will do a pile for $25, while getting paid, and using company equipment, I would charge at least $100, since I have to pay for everything. Could be $200.


Would you come out and do that work on a Saturday/ day off, even with the equipment still there, for $25?
 
I wish I could reply to all of these but it just seems that they handled it by using their discretion as I used mine to determine this wasn't the end of the world for 15 minutes of our time and a couple pieces of brush through the companies chipper (we even got done the day a half hour early and did a fix up).I was originally gonna ask for 60 for the tree but my crew leader said tell her a hundred. If we did it for 60 I doubt this would have happened but 100 sounds like a lot I guess.
 
southsoundtree said:
I would hazard a guess that when an employee will do a pile for $25, while getting paid, and using company equipment, I would charge at least $100, since I have to pay for everything. Could be $200.

Would you come out and do that work on a Saturday/ day off, even with the equipment still there, for $25?
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Will you drive the truck out to the job and I can just meet you there?
 
southsoundtree said:
Don't forget the employee stealing wages and use of equipment, putting extra money in their pocket. WIN!


Again, if you feel like you need to steal from the company to get what you're worth, go elsewhere. Its a free country.

Start your own show. Allow employees to take your money, and pay for all their screw-ups, whether they are their fault (error or omission) or the 'stuff happens' screw-ups, as well as paying them to do their jobs right.




Chris, are you really suggesting that a groundie taking $25 does all the company promotion with company marketing materials that a salesman does? Does that groundie have the knowledge to perform hazard assessment, to be aware of cultural practices improvement, possibly selling installations, cabling, etc. Shoot, make that groundie a salesman, he's working way below his potential. How can he be that smart and still be stealing work from the company?

If you don't see $25 brush chipping as an opportunity to make a new, long term customer, I'd guess you haven't been in sales / management/ ownership very long, I don't think. I could be wrong, not knowing you from Adam. What is your company ownership experience?





Again, if the policy put down by the person signing checks is that the crew can have company jobs with company equipment, on or off the clock, its all good. That's not stealing.
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First of all how much do your employees fuck up? Last year we had one whoopsie I believe cost 35 bucks total time included. 2 shingles 6 roofing nails 2 mins drive time 10 mins on site. We had a branch spear a garage roof while trimming.

I'm saying that 5 min brush pile for 25 bucks for the neighbor stands a better chance of sticking your company name in there head then trying to get your full show up cost. For something that many people will leave and rot if the number is too high.

Normally the groundie who knows nothing is not the one going to look at that little job for a neighbor it would be me the Foreman/certified arborist/estimator... yeah if there is more work I can try for the bigger money stuff but in many cases the only thing that is on the property at that time is that 5 mins of work. I can't sell the removal on that beautiful tree or the trimming on a tree that don't need it, they will and do call when it's time.
Is it still stealing company time if a groundie would be standing there with his thumb up his butt waiting for a climber to get in the tree?
Yes a 25 dollar job is a potential customer. Make them feel like you are doing them a favor for doing it for 25 bucks so they don't expect cheap work but you would be suprised how many people remember the favor I did for them. I go back to many locations a year or 2 or 5 years later

Now this is in regards to 5 min things not that tree that added an extra hour to the day or something like that.

The boss man is very open to little tiny extras and us using equipment I borrow the bucket, crane, chipper, grapple pretty much any time I want if it's for my house he covers fuel otherwise that's on me.
We do not have written policy on anything but that's where the common sense has to come in. Hell I've been late to work everyday for 2 years but I'm still the first crew out of the yard in the morning 99% of the time.

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DruidCarol said:
Knowing that you fellas are out swinging on the ropes, I saw the title "Discipline" and immediately thought "Bondage and... " And no, I ain't that kind of girl.

There, bet I brought the whole tone of the thread down to another low.
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That's how I feel tied up and f$&@ed after all this bullshit
 
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