For all the great experiences I’ve had with some of my employees over the years, I’ve had some downers. I started this business from a hotel room after just having moved to this country, not knowing anyone or how anything works. It was, and still is, based on nothing but hard work. I took jobs that paid barely anything just to supplement my husband’s income. I’ve scrubbed the nastiest toilets, cleaned the dirtiest ovens, and crawled on all fours just to wipe baseboards. One thing I can’t tolerate is when a team member thinks I’m giving them work that I simply don’t want to do just so I can stay home and not work. This is simply not the case.
Running a business means cultivating business, making appointments, ensuring payroll gets processed, washing dirty cleaning rags, processing payments, paying taxes, fixing broken equipment, networking, and ordering supplies. None of these things get done on their own – I do them. It takes an enormous amount of time and money to make sure they get done. Some team members simply don’t understand what it takes behind the scenes to keep this machine well-oiled and running. They come in and demand to be paid $15, or $20 per hour when, in reality, many other companies are paying minimum wage. I pay more, but I can’t pay that. Many people don’t realize that their hourly wage costs the employer much more than that in insurance and payroll taxes. I can only charge so much to clean a house and afford to pay team members to do it. During the peaks of Covid for example I sometimes didn’t even pay myself so I can afford to pay my employees.