"He who marches out of step hears another drum." ~ Ken Kesey
and btw, i was a jerk in high school too. used to come in after school and on weekends to clean/reclaim screens. always clocked out for an hour extra. took my sweet a$$ time doing everything. complained every summer when i had to work. wish i would have taken those years to learn more about the business/printing. would have made my 20's much easier.
Here's a pic of a pic I have at my desk. I thought I had the original somewhere but couldn't find it. This was about 2 years ago when he was about 15 months old.
Quote from: tpitman on December 06, 2013, 03:54:50 PMQuote from: Frog on December 06, 2013, 02:05:13 PMI am probably not alone in noticing the phenomena of how eager to help they are at six changing drastically when they are about thirteen!I was reroofing my house and told my kid that he was to get up there with me to shovel shingles as a lesson in ambition towards eventual employment a step up or two from being on the business end of a shovel. After about 15 minutes of watching him "labor" with his eyes rolling back in his head as if he'd been tethered to an oar in a galley, I told him to get off the roof, pick up all the shingles that had missed the trailer down below, then go do something else. Forcing me to watch a teenager work to avoid work is cruel and unusual punishment.A few years later I sold a couple of palms to a nursery. The guy brought by a load of dirt to fill the holes and proffered a $20 toward my kid to do the job so he could leave with the tree. My kid balked. His mother took the twenty and told the boy to fill the holes -- for nothing -- as a reward for being lazy.Now all that said, once he started working for others at 18, he's been their best employee wherever he went, busting his ass, working Saturdays, whatever. But, man, those early teen years were brutal . . .Nice, good for your wife!Sounds like my daughter (the 19 year old)... except that after doing a bang up job for over a year for other people we offered her a percentage of a new business that we were purchasing. She just had to put in the extra effort in getting it going. BARE MINIMUM and complained/told her friends that she was doing EVERYTHING. Now we are moved and up and running and she still does BARE MINIMUM (actually not enough) and the is kind of crappy to the customers. She told her friend the other day that she isn't cleaning up the counter because "that's not my mess". She is the only official employee as my wife fills in for her when she is at school.So basically we are looking for a replacement. So sad. Oh and her percentage of the company is going to be ZERO! Very sad.
Quote from: Frog on December 06, 2013, 02:05:13 PMI am probably not alone in noticing the phenomena of how eager to help they are at six changing drastically when they are about thirteen!I was reroofing my house and told my kid that he was to get up there with me to shovel shingles as a lesson in ambition towards eventual employment a step up or two from being on the business end of a shovel. After about 15 minutes of watching him "labor" with his eyes rolling back in his head as if he'd been tethered to an oar in a galley, I told him to get off the roof, pick up all the shingles that had missed the trailer down below, then go do something else. Forcing me to watch a teenager work to avoid work is cruel and unusual punishment.A few years later I sold a couple of palms to a nursery. The guy brought by a load of dirt to fill the holes and proffered a $20 toward my kid to do the job so he could leave with the tree. My kid balked. His mother took the twenty and told the boy to fill the holes -- for nothing -- as a reward for being lazy.Now all that said, once he started working for others at 18, he's been their best employee wherever he went, busting his ass, working Saturdays, whatever. But, man, those early teen years were brutal . . .
I am probably not alone in noticing the phenomena of how eager to help they are at six changing drastically when they are about thirteen!
Here's one I found a couple of weeks ago. He's 8 now. John