Originally posted by Amir:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by r tapia:
I would think that they could hire a high school kid to come in for 2-3 hours twice a week and package/ship the units. I would think that would be worth $50/week.
Note: I did NOT stay in a Holiday Inn last night.
I once had an electronics consumer device business same size and scope of Rock's. As you suggested, we did hire a high-school kid to help us. My partner's mother was a principal at a school and they had a program where they would take straight "A" students and find them part-time job.
We interviewed one of the kids and he seemed like an ideal employee. He learned everything fast and really helped us improve throughput in addition to answering the phone and such.
A couple of months goes by and I get a call from my partner (he ran the office). He tells me he just found out someone had been forging our checks and taking money out of bank account!
Well, the story got better. My partner grilled the kid and he confesses that he has a drug problem and was buying the goods at our store, and forging checks to pay for it!
Wait, the story gets even better. He says that he told the drug dealer that he was buying the drugs for us and hence the reason he was using company checks!
We call his father and he tells us that the kid had a serious drug problem and they had moved to our area just to get away from it!
Needless to say, we let the kid go and went back to doing everything ourself. And boy, was it a lot of work, seeing how I had my "day job" in addition to designing and manufacturing the goods.
It sure is a pain to run a small business and rely on help like this... </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
Really I hear what you're saying. My real job is with the federal gov't and is entrepreneurially focused. That said, I also do part time work for a small business in my local area and we employ young high school kids. You CAN find good part time help. Heck, I myself worked all through high school and I wasn't a pothead. So I'm not too sympathetic about the "good help is hard to find" issue. John has a great product, period. So does his competitor. If his wife had not stepped up and called me to apprise me of my order status (and big thanks to her BTW), I might've just cancelled my $220 order and bought a complete unit from Guru. So John, if you're reading, I really enjoy using your product. Please get a min wage employee to help you keep the trains running. At around $7.00 per hour, you'd have paid for around a week's worth of help, which would've paid for my potential lost order alone.
