This is a true story about a guy named Frank who was struggling to build his business. Aw heck, he was struggling just to pay the rent while a whole lot of other bills weren’t getting paid at all. He was just months from going under, though he didn’t know it at the time.
All he did know was that his mentors, advisers, friends and business associates kept telling him: “Frank, if you want to grow, you can’t do everything yourself. You need to give your employees a chance to grow too, and if you take a break from the daily details, you’ll be amazed at what your employees can accomplish on your behalf.”
So last winter, when the company needed a new delivery driver, Frank saw it as a chance to delegate. He handed off the task to his trusted warehouse manager. Let’s call him Roger.
Roger had never hired an employee before and didn’t know much about the process—what questions he should and couldn’t ask, what qualifications he should seek among the candidates.
Roger had a friend who had recently been laid off. Figuring anybody could drive a light delivery truck, Roger interviewed and hired his friend, Les.
Now you know the cast of characters:
- Frank, the earnest but struggling owner;
- Roger, the able and trusted manager;
- Les, the new driver.
There’s a fourth character—a nameless insurance agent who Frank contacted as soon as Les was on the job. What the insurance agent found when he tried to add the new driver’s name to Frank’s business policy is that Les had a less-than-sterling driving record. In fact, it was so tarnished, he was uninsurable.
The insurance company made Frank sign a document stating that Les would never be allowed to drive any company vehicles.
It was quite a lesson in delegation; the first time he actually hands off an important job, it gets botched up.
“I should have done a pre-employment screening on the driver,” Frank says in hindsight. “When we found out about his driving record, I should have taken care of the problem fast and not tried to be the nice guy. The minute I learned he was uninsurable, I should have let him go. I guess I learned you can’t be a nice guy to everyone. I hired him as a driver, but I couldn’t use him as a driver.”
Instead, Les went to work on the loading dock and in the warehouse, while Roger—the guy who hired him—started making deliveries.
It might have all worked, but Les started to feel guilty; he had taken over the job of the guy who hired him and caused the struggling owner a whole new set of headaches.
That’s why Les was always looking to do more. Which brings us to the day Les found himself alone on the loading dock with one truck idle in the bay and another waiting to load up.
Les hopped behind the wheel of the idle truck and moved it out of the way. Somewhere in the three minutes the whole transaction required, Les managed to bump into—and damage—the corner of another company’s truck.
The accident gave Frank a reason to get Les off the payroll immediately—an act that was probably a relief to everyone involved.
But Frank’s problems continued. He couldn’t turn in the claim to his insurance company, so he asked an acquaintance in the auto body repair business to look at the damaged truck.
“The body shop gave the guy an estimate of $947,” Frank says. Not a lot of money for a commercial fender bender perhaps, but more than Frank’s little business could absorb in its weak financial condition.
“I wrote out the check to the body shop,” Frank continues. “But when the owner of the truck came to pick up the check, he refused it because it wasn’t made out to him personally.”
Now feeling like he was being hustled, Frank called his attorney. “That 12 minutes cost me some bucks,” Frank says. “The guy [who owned the vehicle] made it clear he was using the money to go on vacation. My attorney told me there was nothing we could do about it.”
The truck never did get fixed.
“It burned me, seeing that truck every day … knowing how badly we needed that money,” Frank says. “That $947 may as well have been $9,000.”
In retrospect, Frank says, “It’s a matter of principle and business ethics. That situation helped me learn more about [me] than anything, and I ask myself, ‘Why am I like this?’”
Today, his company is closed and liquidated, and Frank is relieved to be on somebody else’s payroll. Roger found a new job quickly enough too, and we don’t know what Les is doing—though we’re reasonably sure it wouldn’t involve mileage reimbursement.
For what it’s worth, Frank learned some important lessons about the responsibilities that come with delegation, and about the owner’s careful balancing act between concern for the employees and the business.
If this were really a fable, you would now get the moral of the story. And it might go something like this: The best way to look out for your employees is to look out for the business first.
But since this is a true story, and fables, by definition, are not, all that’s left to say is that Frank’s painfully learned lessons have probably helped him become an ideal employee for some lucky owner.
Editor’s note: The names in this article have been changed as a condition of telling this story. The facts, however, are true, and occurred between late 1997 and early 1998.