Work lessons, life lessons - handling young employees

HR Magazine, Oct, 1999 by John T. Adams

I was a 20-year-old college student when I got my first paying job at a newspaper. I was a paste-up person; we arranged long columns of type and fragmented headlines on full-size newspaper sheets - by hand. We followed a "dummy," which was a diagram provided by the editor.

I started out on news pages, which were relatively easy to paste up. After a few months, I could turn out news pages as fast as anyone else in the shop, and more accurately than many. I measured carefully, and finished my work on time.

I didn't know it, but my boss had his eye on me. One Saturday he led me to the advertising section. Spread on a table before us were hundreds of pieces of type. They were supposed to fit together into a single grocery store ad. The dummy was barely legible, drawn out by the grocery store manager in longhand. My job for the day was to finish this jigsaw puzzle.

I skipped lunch and spent more than seven hours bent over the table, piecing together bits of type, lining things up, double checking the dummy.

Suddenly, I was done. There had never been a grocery ad this beautiful. But I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was go back to news pages, where I could talk to my friends again and still work faster than they did.

I took the finished ad to my boss for review. Carefully, he scanned every portion of the page. "Good job," he finally announced. "I'm going to have you do these every Saturday from now on."

"Geez," I blurted out (remember, I was only 20). "If I had done a worse job, I'd still be doing the fun stuff."

"John," he said, "I just paid you a compliment. This is our most important advertiser. And I trusted you with the ad. I wouldn't let 10 other people in the shop near it, and they've been here longer than you. Most of the time I do this ad myself. You did a great job. But if that's your attitude, I'm not sure I want you working here."

He didn't raise his voice. He didn't pound his desk. But I felt like he'd punched me in the stomach.

I meant what I had said: I never wanted to work on a grocery store ad again. But, as I stammered for a response, I realized that this was a real job. And if it was difficult, well, that was why they called it work.

I apologized. And from then on, I volunteered for the hardest, dirtiest, most tedious jobs in the shop.

Since then, whenever I think I can get away with doing a job halfway, I remember my first newspaper boss. And I work a little harder, do a little more.

How you handle young employees can make a big difference in how they work when they're older. Lin Grensing-Pophal's article on page 55 tells you more.