21) Work=result

Well, I certainly left an empty space of time in my blog, nevertheless not in my whole vision.

I faced different problems, from private to different problems related to my business. This episode will be devoted to a French traineé that I happened to accept in my recently new business from May until June. He was the boyfriend of the daughter of the sister of the best friend of a very close family to me. Why did this matter, because business-friendship/family shouldn't be related, perhaps not always and there are probably a lot of well documented successful family-business stories all over the world, but definitely not in my case.

In this case it was more a funny "pressure" which I accepted, so partially my fault. Before I met this young guy, her (future?) aunt in law, told me that he would like to be a professional football player, however, because of family pressure he started to study international businesses.

Having a trainee under your supervision is quite a responsibility specially in an international environment, if you really want them to learn something more than making coffee, moving beds, making copies, etc. Unfortunately, the trainee didn't want to work, I saw it from the beginning but I didn't want to accept it, since I think we all deserve a second chance. He disappeared from the working days, he didn't do any home assignment I commanded him to do, since we were meeting very few hours per day and his duties were more related to research on internet, he claimed that his English "wasn't so good" and endless excuses, unfortunately he understood that being a trainee means having an old brother or a mom type of boss who will be after him, begging him to do his duties, be patient, forgive and forget. The funny thing, obviously from my point of view, is how easy was for him to give excuses and not assuming his responsibility as a normal employer, without payment of course, but with a payment from the French government to all trainees. Not a great salary, but at least some small help. He definitely enjoyed a nice summer holiday paid by the government of France (or the European Union).

After two weeks of struggling I decided to fire him, he told me that he would have to repeat the first year of school if he didn't accomplish his trainer-ship, so I kindly considered the fact of signing his certificate, a complete lie, but to reap a year of studies is something heavy. However, the guy took like "I deserve your signature", even though he knew he was doing wrong. The guy disappeared again and he didn't contact me at all, nor made any effort to really change his critic situation (he claims that he "learned" from his mistakes).

After more problems and more strugglings I decided that this was all a lie and he really needs to understand a lesson. As I explained in a very well detailed report to his school in France, for a student of international businesses and not being able to do basic marketing analysis there is something wrong, completely and absolutely wrong.

The experience, like any other experience, it was good and bad. Positive and negative. I learned a lot and I even remembered some stuff from my human resources lectures when dealing with him. What's better? to approach to your subordinates as a friend? as a tyran? as in an equal base? as an ass-hole? or as another human person who is working? in hopes or trust that he or she will respect your work as you respect their work. I approached to him as a friend but "friendship", for some people, is not a sign of authority nor compromise. I guess, it's left behind in my past the equal base relationship and now I must continue with the boss-employee relationship.

Other thoughts? Well, indeed yes, the equation "work=result" kept tingling in my head. I feel I have worked a lot, but my results, so far, are very poor. Which makes me rethink the whole logarithmic process I've been going through.

Is it enough? what else do I need? what else should I do?


Summer is here, so sauna is not so needed.