We have certainly had it numerous times where our help cost us more than we made.
A customer of mine once told me he'd rather pay $25 an hour and have a $7 an hour headache than pay $7 an hour and have a $25 an hour headache.
More work gets done when I have help, but sometimes only because Im working harder.
You help to train, unless it's physically impossible for one to do the work by themselves, otherwise you will always be helping others and never getting any of your own work done.
In a child rearing class we took, it was pointed out that if you continually do the work for the child because they can't seem to do the task right themselves, you may fall into a trap because the child figures out if they don't do the task right, you will take care of the job for them and they will be free of "work".
Last year I had a subordinate complain to me that my managerial skills were lacking because it always seemed to him that my e-mails (documentation on my end) to him about his job performance needed work, and that if he kept making mistakes, drastic changes would have to be made with his position.
I asked this employee how he thought I should handle his situation.
He informed me that perhaps instead of making threats about terminating his position that perhaps I should try to motivate him with a positive (reward) instead of a negative (perhaps having to let him go).
I asked this employee if I have ever denied him training. He said no. I also asked him when I ever denied him help because he asked for it. He said never. I asked him if at any time when I documented his mistakes (on a regular basis at times) if I was unfair in how I wrote up the situation trying to make him "look bad". He said that what I had written up "pretty much is what happened".
So...
I asked this employee if our company was paying him over 40k per year (actual pay) to pick only red M&M's off a conveyor belt (as an example, not his real job) and he keeps picking blue and green M&M's as well as the red M&M's, why should I have to motivate him to ensure he only picks up red M&M's when he isn't doing his job, and I'm the one who gets hammered for the mistakes he's making? I also asked him what he thought he was getting paid for? I mentioned that at his pay rate, I would think that would be motivation enough to ensure you'd want to do your job right.
Kind of funny, he had this deer in the headlight look
Now all of that said, sometimes you really do get what you pay for, and like inflation, $10 an hour doesn't get you what it once did.
