The following article really doesn't have much to do with starting or growing a small contracting business, but it caused quite a stir when I posted it to the Service Round Table forums (www.servicerountdable.com), and I got tons of replies thanking me for bringing up the subject. I also got a bunch of people tellin' me I was ignorant, stupid, insane, or all three. I'm of the opinion that every response was spot-on.
I don't know what reaction will happen here, if any, but it seems as if a lot of us weren't exactly paragons of virtue before establishing — or re-establishing — ourselves back into polite society, so I thought it would be worth the effort to go off my usual topic and see if any good might come of it.
Hiring ex-cons, alkies, dopers, and the like — whoa! What a charged subject, and I am definitely of two minds.
Objectively: As the owner of a service business, my first reaction would be to stay away from hiring any of these “types,” though in my own past I fit all the descriptions at one time or another ... sometimes all at the same time.
Subjectively: As an ex-all-the-above type dude, I have a somewhat more, let's just say, “flexible” attitude about hiring those with jaded pasts because of a guy who took a chance on me over 35 years ago when I wandered in off the streets.
When Bill Lutz, Lutz Plumbing in San Francisco, hired me after my 10 years livin' as a street person, he took great pains to keep an eye on me. Much of his business was in a part of San Francisco (North Beach) that was so densely populated I wasn't even allowed a truck to get around in, operating out of his shop in a basement on the corner of Grant and Green Streets using a big sack to carry my tools and supplies over my shoulder.
Even then, most of my work was scheduled in some of the more unsavory, though famous, businesses in the area, like topless joints (Big Al's, Carol Doda's); crummy bars and beer halls; filthy transient hotels, etc. This was in the early 1980's, and I “earned” my way back into our trade doin' the worst-of-the-worst plumbing jobs.
Ultimately, I was allowed to have a truck, enter respectable homes all over San Francisco, and prove myself, finally becoming one of Bill's best and most trusted employees. I came to love and respect that guy so much I might still be working for him had he not sold his business to somebody else.
The moral of the story? You might decide to take a chance on someone whose past is not beyond repute. I did, and got some of my best employees that way over the years … but be careful. Do your homework. Bill interviewed my parole officer (down on Bryant Street); the head of my halfway house (ARA House on Haight St.); my V.A. group-therapy leader (Ft. Miley), my AA sponsor (a San Fran cop, of all people!) before he gave me my chance. Maybe it was because I was a vet and Bill was a Korean war vet that I got the break that most will never get, but it paid off for both of us.
I'm certainly not advocating rushin' out and hiring rapists, pedophiles, or murderers; but an ex-convict could be a guy like me lookin' for a second chance, someone doing time as a result of poverty, alcohol abuse, or some other kind of changeable behavior rather than a sociopath or habitual criminal.
Apparently, my story isn't unique. From the reactions I received on the Service Round Table Forums, there are many others like me who got a second chance, and there must be others now who also are lookin' for the same. So, while “experts” advise owners to spend one-third their time hiring, firing, and screening for past offenses, sometimes a gut instinct can be more powerful than a dozen background checks. Above all, be careful ... but, while doing so, also think about bein' human.
Retired master plumber Ed O'Connell is a sub-contracting business “Starter Coach” for small contractors. He is the founder emeritus of O'Connell Plumbing Inc. He can be reached at 415/453-2291 and by email at [email protected].