One of my employees may be dying. The doctor stopped the chemo. He said there was nothing more he could do. For weeks, I've been avoiding Sem. But I can't much longer. At MEECO, there's an unspoken pact that I'll be there for my people.
How involved to get in the lives of my employees posed a dilemma from the start. In 1983, when my father's terminal illness left me suddenly responsible for his industrial-equipment business, I was totally dependent on a small band of office and production workers for support and understanding. I found qualities in them that were uncommon in my New York City friends. My former roommate, a striving journalist from Italy, said my father should be put in a nursing home.
By contrast, one factory worker sent my father a get-well card every day -- I used them to paper his walls. Other employees brought him food and flowers for the three years that he lingered. And they rallied to help me restore our equally ailing company to health. Not surprisingly, I came to love them.
MODEL EMPLOYER. Largely to keep them employed and, in effect, to sustain my newfound family, I continued to run the business after my father's death. I didn't have to juggle work and home because in those days, they were one. But I'm ashamed to say that I began looking to employees for friendship, sympathy, even romance. It was not a good situation.
To be fair, my compassion (as opposed to passion) had a positive side for MEECO's employees. My goal was to be a model employer. In this regard, as in most others, my management philosophy stood in sharp contrast to my father's. No believer in insurance for himself or anybody else, he failed to provide employees with a benefits plan. If a worker had medical bills, MEECO might pay them. If an employee needed money, MEECO might make him a loan. Putting in a good benefits program, with dental and eye care, and affiliating with a credit union were progressive moves that employees value to this day.
All the same, for years I struggled to define my role vis à vis them. With scant management training, I tried to emulate the Japanese managers then in vogue. Supposedly, if one of their employees landed in the emergency room, these dedicated managers would rush to the hospital. So I, too, went to the hospital.
But my visits didn't turn out the way they do in the management texts. One woman, upon hearing I was on my way, dragged herself from her sickbed to do her hair. On another, far more painful occasion, I took a bouquet of brightly colored gerber daisies to cheer one of our ailing machinists and his family. I was arranging them when a tall, young doctor showed up. "What is it, doc? The ground?" asked Jack, extending his arm, thumb down.
"You got it," replied the doctor, so fresh-mouthed I wanted to smack him. What am I doing here? I asked myself, as Jack, his wife, and daughter slumped in anguish.
HEALTHY DISTANCE. My too-close relationship with employees ended in the late '80s when I finally got a life. That, along with employee turnover and the demands of managing a growing business combined to create a healthy distance. Plus, for several years, I had a wonderfully competent assistant who doubled as human-resources manager and tended to employees. I could concentrate 100% on work without feeling the least bit guilty. But she went on to become a psychiatric social worker, and I lost my buffer.
Now, I often feel torn between the needs of the individual employees and those of the business itself. I keep thinking about Sem, one of two Ukrainians who joined us in production several years ago. Both were living within 60 miles of Chernobyl when the accident happened. Is Sem's illness related? A nonsmoker, he seems young at 53 to have cancer. I worry about him when he goes home, sick and alone, with his wife and children working on the other side of the state. Once rosy, his face is now translucent as a ghost's. I have to talk to him.
"No matter how busy you are, don't rush your encounters with co-workers," writes Sarah Ban Breathnach in her inspirational book Simple Abundance. I don't know where she works. In the last week alone, my 30-year-old assistant, who suffers from an amalgam of mysterious ailments, found out, thank God, that her biopsy was negative. Her father, our production manager, walked into my office to say that he's suddenly been stricken with spinal arthritis and may wind up paralyzed. Our national sales director had a painful shoulder operation. On a brighter note, the director of operations' wife had a baby. One thing I've learned is that time is at such a premium you have to pick your moments.
In my grumpier ones, I wonder why providing folks a living isn't enough. Then again, I just interviewed a woman who complained, "You could sit there with broken body parts and my boss wouldn't notice." Sounds pretty rotten. I'd rather take the time to be a little human. Without it, I can't imagine getting the kind of effort I do from my employees, especially in the hard times. Without it, I can't imagine wanting to work here myself.
So it is that when I finally muster the gumption to go out on the plant floor to see Sem, I find my work already done. "You know, Lisa," he says in a thick accent. "For me MEECO is the best cure. I'm going to try to be here as long as I can. Thank you for giving me a job."
Copyright 2000, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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