Hiring a new employee

I know that they say that "Good Help is Hard to Find", but why is acceptable help so hard to find as well? I currently work in the fabrication shop at my company becuase they needed someone to take a dead end project and see it through to completion and none of the qualified people wanted to do it, so I got the nod. Not that I wanted to do it, but because I am the lowest man on the totem pole. I currently have 4 people that work under me in the fabrication shop and we make aluminum handrail and install it out in the field. The key part of this job is traveling to the site to do multiple day installation of twenty foot sections of handrail, usually at 30 feet in the air or higher.

Here is my current situation at work with my 4 employees:

1) Employee #1, who is sadly enough my best employee got a DUI last year. Not just a regular spend a night in jail, pay a fine, and go through counseling to get your license back, but a big time DUI. What is a "big time DUI" you might ask? This is when you blow three times the legal limit and have a court order placed upon you to have to keep a breathalyzer in your car that you must use to start up and continue to drive your vehicle. In addition to this, he cannot operate any vehicle but his own for another 9 months until his breathalyzer restriction is removed, so therefore he cannot drive company trucks to get materials out to the field for installs.

2) Employee #2, who is the most arrogant of my employees also does not have a driver's license. He got pulled over too many times and lost his license due to points. Now, does having a suspended license stop him from driving? Of course not! He is invincible... except for those 5 times he has been pulled over in the 3 months he has been working for me. Luckily the judge keeps rolling all of his offenses into one giant case against him, and if he keeps getting pulled over, his inevitable stay in jail will continue to be put off until I am assigned elsewhere. Not only does he have driver’s license woes, but he has the oh so wonderful habit of asking everyone in the shop (about 22 people altogether) to borrow money every day... money in which he has no intentions of paying back. Finally, the best of all of his many qualities, is the fact that he utterly hates his wife, and gets in loud shouting matches with her over the phone that is available for employees to use on breaks and lunch. Not just the shouting matches, but the fact that I get to hear him bitching about it for the rest of the day.

3) Employee #3 is my welder. It is a very important job, and he is very good at it. Unfortunately he, like the others, lost his drivers license (see a trend here?). He too got a DUI and he also has 3 pending “Driving with a Suspended License” charges against him. Good times. Luckily he lives on the site in his van so he always has to come to work, even when he is too hung over to think straight. He also came in the other day and asked if he could borrow $500 from the company to bail out his wife's boyfriend from jail. Now, I don't know about you, but if a guy want's to bail out the guy his wife is cheating on him with, he isn't the brightest candel in the drawer.

4) Employee #4 is my Guatemalan. Who is by far the best worker and the one I trust the most. He is the only one I can depend on to count inventory correctly or to give me an accurate status of an item. He speaks broken English, but he is an amazing worker and a really nice guy. Unfortunately his Guatemalan driver’s license is not ok for our company insurance so he can’t drive our crew either.

This lack of employees with driver’s licenses leaves us with 2 options
1) Let me drive them out in the field, which is what we have been doing up to this point about every other week. The problem with this is the fact that I am going on a honeymoon next week and can’t drive them and once I am married, I will not be wanting to be gone for 5 days at a time.
2) Hire someone with new with a valid driver’s license who will stick around in the long term.

I called 5 guys who had turned in applications with us, and none of them were willing to travel about 50% of the time or work for 12-14 dollars an hour. One who had been out of work for almost 2 years... 2 YEARS... laughed at me when I told him the pay. If I had been without a job for 2 years, I would be working at McDonalds and the local fat guy strip club on the side to support my family, and I would jump at any opportunity to do anything else.

Oh well, so tomorrow the search for a person with a drivers license continues. I guess I just assumed that most of this country has one and that it is no big deal, but apparently in the construction industry it practically makes you the boss.

One a happier note:
5 days from now I will be married! I truly can’t believe how lucky I am and I can’t wait!!!

Until next time, I wish you all a happy and successful 2009