New Customer Wants Custom Neck Labels/Care Inst

[bimmridder]

John, unfortunately, "just buying a machine" isn't so easy in this case. I don't believe that Alan can justify it so easily to the pencil pushers there. I'm pretty sure if they'd listen to half of what he says, he wouldn't be so overwhelmed. Just my gut feeling. Also, it doesn't sound like he's convinced this will all pan out.

[jsheridan]

Getting a tagger really is the answer... of course the pencils won't see it that way, and request to find another way to solve the problem..

it's the ferris wheel of production..

[tonypep]

Come on Dave.......you know all these ideas pan out! Seriously, no matter where I am I never commit to this with the exception of established  brands. Other wise the potential customer is asking you to help invest in their project with our money.

[whitewater]

I wonder if that since down in south Texas I imagine there are a lot of jobs and many pay well or more than other areas of the country.  I wonder if your struggling with staff for those reason? Abundance of jobs and higher/similar wages in easier jobs maybe?  Just a guess as to some of your issues.

Im in upstate ny and have pretty much similar issues as alan... its unbelievable..

[whitewater]

sorry i wont change the subject...LOL

[alan802]

On the subject of pay as it pertains to us getting/maintaining employees:  We pay about 30% more now than we did 5 years ago.  Our quality of employee has gradually decreased over the years and the sample size is large enough to be able to examine and say that with certainty.  It isn't the relationship that you would expect to see but I'm not blowing smoke to make myself or the shop look better, I don't have anything to prove to anyone so I'll continue to tell all of you how it is and no matter the ridiculousness that goes on you can count on me to share it with you.  We hired "the best screen guy in central texas" (according to a few suppliers and one of my coworkers that worked with him at another shop years ago) for WAY more than what I was making when I was the screen guy and I'll give you guys a breakdown of what he got done yesterday with no interruptions:  Coated 15 screens, reclaimed 12 screens, burned 14 screens and taped up approximately 20 screens in an 8 hour shift.  In my experience, that is about 3.5 hours worth of work and I'm being VERY GENEROUS and rounding my numbers up and I think I could do that in about 2 hours.  Is there anyone here that would pay someone $15/hr for that kind of production?  What about $17/hr?  Or how about what he was making at his last shop...$25/hr?

And on to the next question that gets raised:  Maybe it's you Alan?  Before it was asked to me I was already wondering if I was the problem.  When Joe C was here he also paid attention to how I was with the crew and couldn't find anything that would be an issue but he was only here 3 days and for all he knew I could be completely different when he was there than my usual self. I can't address it from another's point of view, I can only tell you that the guys that have met me in person that I am the same person with the crew as I am in any other situation or with those that have spent time with me.  There have been quite a few of you that have met me at a show, or spent a good amount of time here at the shop with me and it's not a Jekyll/Hyde thing where I put on a show for guests or the ISS show and I'm completely different with employees.  I'm very observant of my surroundings and more so of myself recently because I've had this question raised more than once or twice when I discuss our lingering employee issues.  I get upset when someone does something stupid, but it's been years since I "chewed" anyone's butt or publicly raised my voice to a crew member.  I walk away and gather myself so that I don't say anything while I'm angry.  I've also worked for many others and can say that I treat everyone that works for me at the very least as good but usually better than I've been treated by employers and feel that if anything, I'm too nice and easy going.  Trust me, there are so many instances where I feel like if anyone of you guys were in my shoes that you'd lose your minds on some people but it really takes a lot to set me off.  My printer made a mistake last week that cost the company almost $2K, he didn't read the production notes that were highlighted yellow on the front of the work order.  I gathered the crew, told them we all need to look at the production notes so we're all familiar with each job and can cover each other's butts so we don't make those mistakes as a crew. I put the mistake on the whole crew, including myself and told them all that it's my responsibility to check that exact type of job and even though I was being the screen guy that day was not a good excuse to not double check something like that.  When I told the owner about the misprints I caught myself ditching the responsibility of the mistake by telling her what I was doing at the time they were setting up/running the job but I made sure I didn't do that when addressing the crew. I didn't raise my voice, I was actually smiling and looking everyone in the eyes and tried to calm them down because they were all thinking that they were the one who made the mistake.  When I told them how much it cost the company their jaws dropped and I told them we'd just have to make sure we don't have another mistake like that and we got back to work.  I've learned over the years that my expectations of employees was too high, and comparing what I did when I was doing those jobs to a current employee wasn't realistic.  If I'm not able to find good people because I'm too nice then oh well, and if I'm treating people poorly then I'm completely oblivious to it and I am way out of touch with reality if that's the case.  If anyone can find fault in my behavior I'm more than willing to listen because if I am the problem at least I'm willing to fix it.  I'm never too proud to be taught something even if it's very personal.

Now on the subject of buying a labeling machine:  I had a meeting with our shirt supplier yesterday afternoon and our option of them labeling the shirts prior to arriving here is back on the table and is the direction we are going.  I know it sounds easy to just buy a machine and hire someone to run it, but for us it's really very hard.  If I went to my boss and said we have to buy this $10K machine to get us to the next level then it would be done.  But even the most well heeled of you guys on here wouldn't spend that kind of money on this type of gamble combined with the headaches we have with employees.  At least I hope you wouldn't.  I hope this customer is going to be doing 250K pieces a year, he thinks it will be 1 million, but he's an optimist but I just can't see anyone buying a labeling machine and hiring for it on the hopes and dreams of the next big t-shirt design.   I have 4 production employees on the payroll right now, and guess how many are here working today?  ONE, yes, one, my printer.  The other 3 had things they had to do.  One had his baby yesterday, the other is moving his family to town and my part timer has said many times to just let him know if I need him on Thursday or Friday and he'll come in and I've asked him 3 times now without a yes.  And if our only option was to label in house I'm not sure I'd go with the direct printing option and was leaning towards heat pressing because I have a cap press and I feel way more confident that I could find someone to run the heat press versus running an auto. 

So that's the latest and I think I'm going home.  I was just told that we needed to print two more shirts for a high school team with a 4 color front/back because a new girl joined the team.  I just can't deal with this ignorance till I get a good nights sleep.  Oh, and the guy doing our heat press numbers just screwed up 2 shirts with a 3 color screen printed design on the front.  Guess I'll be replacing those shirts as well.  Yeah Saturday!

[SteveS]

So that's the latest and I think I'm going home.  I was just told that we needed to print two more shirts for a high school team with a 4 color front/back because a new girl joined the team.  I just can't deal with this ignorance till I get a good nights sleep.  Oh, and the guy doing our heat press numbers just screwed up 2 shirts with a 3 color screen printed design on the front.  Guess I'll be replacing those shirts as well.  Yeah Saturday!

Alan,

Don't let it get to you too much. While reading this post, I almost thought you were here describing what goes on around here. Eerily similar in so many ways.

I'll make a single observation in regards to that last paragraph dealing with a school team that wants 2 more shirts after the job has been run and taken down. We've held the line and done two things. We tell them up front, because face it, it's imminent, that they better order a few extra with the original order because they won't want to pay what I will have to charge to set that job back up for 2 shirts. We hold firm to that and in the rare case they HAVE to have them, I explain that our shop operates at $150/hour and we'll need a good half hour to get that job done. $75.00 for 2 shirts frankly teaches them a lesson and they might do that one time before you have them trained. It's sounds really bad but those folks just don't know what it takes to run a shop like yours and mine. I frequently take the new merchandise people for the PTOs and booster clubs on a nickel tour every year into our shop and show them what all goes into a simple t-shirt job. They are just ignorant. And I mean that in a good way. They just don't know and if I had a quarter for every person I've given that tour to that tells me "Wow, there is a lot of work that goes into the jobs!", I'd be sitting at the house drinking beer and not doing this.

Rest easy, bro.

[GraphicDisorder]

You need to get yourself some good people. It's always been my experience that any part time job I had or part timers at jobs ive had that none of them took it serious.  So that may be one reason your guy isn't coming to help you Thursday or Friday IMO. The "best screen guy in central Texas" sounds like a joke if that was his level of output. I haven't done screens in years and id run a circle around him.  Last week I had my wisdom teeth removed, so Shelly and I couldn't be at the shop as a result on Friday. So my 2 screen print guys reclaimed 60 screens, coated 70 screens, ran them on the CTS, burnt, rinsed and tapped them.  With the spare time they shorted 4 days worth of blanks for screen print jobs for the next week. Then they helped my artist laminate/cut/ship 2,500 stickers. They left early. That's 2 guys, neither a ounce of screen printing experience before working here. One worked a call center and the other drove a shuttle for the disabled between 2 locations. Keep in mind they likely texted, called people, and monkeyed around throughout these processes all day. I was proud of them as that was the first day in my shops history it ran without Shelly and/or I in the building. I am not bragging either, my shop is far from as efficient or as good as it should be. I am only illustrating that there are good people out there.

You seem more and more tired of the situation, I would approach the owners with the situation and that its time a solution is reached before YOU burn out. You are clearly their biggest asset out there and it seems like you've about had it with employees.  Are you guys having this level of staffing issues in embroidery?

[alan802]

We've had the same core group over there for 10+ years but the additional 2-3 crew members we need in embroidery have been a revolving door much the same way it has been over here.  The starting pay is considerably less over there which was one of the initial hurdles I had to face when hiring over here and with the trend lately to try and pay more and get better quality employees.  I was getting all these applications and resumes and when I'd show them to Charlotte what they were asking to get paid it was shocking to her.  It surprised me too because I worked in retail throughout college and the last few years I know that out of the 130 or so employees at my store that were hourly I made more than all of them so it wasn't like I was getting the shaft.  My first 2 jobs that required a college degree paid less than what the majority of these applicants were asking for to be in the lowest position in the entire company.  Every once in a while someone will come in and be astounded by how much we're going to pay them that they damn near trip over themselves to shake my hand and join the team.  I'll be completely honest, I'm just not going to pay someone $15/hr to clean screens and virtually have no serious responsibility until they show me something.  I have no problem paying more than that to someone who makes a difference around here.  Right now, out of 25 employees, we have maybe 5 difference makers (3 of them are family) and maybe 10 that do the average and probably another 10 that are leeches and don't deserve a job.   

[GraphicDisorder]

Do you think some of that is like I was mentioning that I assume there is a bunch of more jobs in that part of the country than others? Probably better paying jobs as well. Just putting A + B.  If you can't find good people they have either found a easier or better paying job.  It might be such that in that market that you'd have to really ramp it up pay wise to get good people and that would suck if the case.

In my market we are paying more than these guys would be earning without being in a career style job that they attended school for.  We have given 3 of them 25% raises in 1-1.5 years they have been here. We bonus each year as well. Our business is growing and we can't do it without good people so we pass it on as frankly I am earning a excellent wage and am satisfied. I imagine the pace in your shop is a good bit rougher than our shop and those guys have to be balls out to keep up. So if pay is out of line for the market or there is a vast amount of available jobs for similar money I can see how that could/would be a challenge to keep people.  You've probably even had good people but if they can do less and make the same elsewhere they may just not give you much because they have options.

Food for thought. I know you will get it figured out at some point.

[jsheridan]

Brandt makes a good point on the pool of labor you have to dip in.

Over here I have thousands of people to pull from. I could bring in a new guy daily until I find the right one.

Not the case with a buddy, his pool is like 10 people.. and they all suck mud.

[alan802]

The number of potential employees seems large to me but I could be way off in that opinion but what I do know is we get about 100 emails/calls with a Craigslist job posting within 2-3 days.  The last round of hiring I let one of the admin staff next door handle it and CL wasn't the only site used.  I didn't notice a difference in the type of person that came to apply, but I wasn't really looking for it and am going back to memory for that.  I asked that CL not be the only place we listed the job and I was told we posted it at 3 other places besides CL, but the majority of responses I got via email were from CL.  I'd be perfectly fine with not using that site ever again, but it has to be said that over the years we have got some great people from there.  But the amount of stinkers is high and the ratio would likely be much better if we used another source for hiring.  I like the temp agency thing and it worked great in the past but the last few rounds have been trouble, expensive, with no payout. 

Another part of my perception of what the pay should be is due to what I was hired for, what I did for that pay and what I make now.  When I think about how much more we're starting new hires at versus what I made it bothers me, but I have had to get over it and it doesn't enter into the equation any longer.  Another thought is about the work environment and although we're doing twice as many jobs now versus 09', I feel like things are more comfortable in terms of the heat which is the biggest concern in my opinion.  Everyone that works in production except myself has their own personal A/C unit they put on them during the day and I can't imagine how great that would have been during the summer of 11' when we had 100+ days of 100+ degree heat.  Although lately we have had to work a lot of overtime, it's only been the last few months that we've done that.  We went years without working past 5pm or before 8am, never worked a Saturday in 9 years until the last few months, and I don't ask the crew to come in on Sat.  I leave it voluntary, and I come in, the family comes in and helps catch/pull while I run the auto.  So there are more than a few things that I feel that other companies would require their employees to do that we don't.  Even though the work is hard compared to the average general labor job, I don't feel like it's back-breaking work in horrid conditions.  Everyone stands on padded mats, everyone has their A/C unit blowing on them whenever they want, but the workload is high and it's one job after the next all day long.  Gone are the days where we could work at a leisurely pace and stretch 5 or 6 low color count, small quantity jobs into a full day.  Now it's jamming 10-15 jobs of all shapes and sizes into a shift that is usually longer than 8 hours but less than 10.  There have been more than a few days where I've been printing jobs on the manual press for up to 7-8 hours with only the hot air from the crew's A/C units blowing on me and I'm the only one that works longer than a 10 hour day without so much as a break to shove a hamburger down my gullet.  Why does that matter?  Well, it doesn't other than proving that no matter how hard the crew may be working, the old man with bad knees is putting out more than they are.  I want them to see that even though they are working hard, they could be in my shoes and hopefully that is seen and respected but perhaps it's not. 

[GraphicDisorder]

That sounds a like a bunch of phone calls, when we place a ad we get a few dozen pretty quick.  We either are getting lucky or people want to work here. Sure my guys aren't perfect and when needed I out hustle them. But they do work pretty hard when they know we have to hit deadlines. If its casual work always gets finished but its milked some. Im ok with that. 

[jsheridan]

I spent my days on a concrete floor with a fan caked in lint for 11 summers in Florida..

kids these days.. no respect for hard working elders i tell ya

cushy working environment.. decent pay.. no consequences for my actions.. oh look they added some OT. He messed up 2k shirts and still works here.. I can come in late and they don't do anything.. yeah this job rocks!

Tighten up the ship.. you have some resentment on your floor

[alan802]

Well, on a MUCH more serious note, my printer was late coming back from lunch and he came to me when he arrived and showed me a text his wife (who also works here) received from his brother in law, or so he thought.  His wife's brother has been kidnapped by the cartel in Monterey Mexico and they sent a pic and are extorting the family now.  This is bad.  I don't even know what to say.  I don't have a good feeling about this.  I just told him to go handle what he needs to handle and we'll see him when he gets back.  I hope it doesn't turn out any worse than it already is.