Baggage. All help has baggage that has to be understood and either accommodated, compensated for, ignored, endured, or fired.
Farm/ranch work is inherently complex, dangerous, and outside the experience of most workers unless they have lots of rural experience.
Yep, ideally you could hire someone and immediately turn them loose by themselves with equipment and the job would get done just as if you did it yourself.
Can't do it... gotta work at their side, supervise, emphasize safety, teach and educate.... then let them gradually become independent works when you are convinced they are sufficiently capable of the particular task.
I've been around such employees since I was in high school, hired by relatives or myself. Problem is neither new nor unique to a particular area.
Problem (and reality) is that physical laborers/farm workers are VERY often in that state because:
- they are not mental giants... often below average IQ, thus do not learn as quickly or remember as long as others do. One fellow had to be retrained on a manual repetitive task every morning and after the noon break.
- have a substance abuse problem..alcohol or drugs...this can make them unsafe operators or unreliable in various ways. One fellow got drunk and assaulted a family member.
- are mentally ill....bipolar and other illnesses exhibit themselves often in poor judgment, impulsive actions, etc. I cannot tell you how many times I've thought "now why did they do it that way...anybody should have known not to drive equipment there/take safety precautions, that was an idiotic thing to do.
- are untrained, never having done the task or operated the equipment before. This is a dangerous combination, particularly when combined with time pressure and exhaustion.
- Have baggage themselves that causes problems....that is, one person may be OK, but the spouse is not. A wife may be a fine housekeeper and cook, but the husband an unreliable, incapable neer-do-well.
- There may be a language barrier..either documented or undocumented aliens..preventing good communications. I speak Spanish...this helps.
- are from a completely different socioeconomic life experience...thus their approach to doing things is completely unrealistic in the context of the current task. I've had a fellow continue to use a completely blunt hacksaw blade because he had always had to use what was in his hand....never been anywhere where replacement parts such as a hacksaw blade were available.
I could go on and on..... the original question was...is this a common problem...
The quick answer is...very clearly yes....it not only goes with the territory, it IS the territory, part of the human experience... we are not all the same...dull world if we were
The only solution is to very carefully interview and research the experience of new hires and work with them initially, maybe always. Also, sadly, you can either pay low wages and pay for what they break/lose/destroy, etc. Or, you can pay better and have a chance of hiring someone with more native resources, skill and expertise for the tasks at hand and hope this is less than paying for accidents and inexperience.
In the end, when you hire someone, you are their manager and management tasks are completely distinct from farm/ranch operational tasks.
The above said, there have been numerous people who have worked for my relatives and myself, for years. So, there DO exist good, capable, reliable, honest, good hearted people who will work on farms and ranches, but it takes lots of culling to find them.
A ranch/farm game, properly realistic, would be more complex than any game to date.
Weather, tractors, terrain, hp, equipment, fuel, different soil types, different animals/behavior, fencing, time management, budgets, farm programs, commodity prices, lubricants, the entire panoply of TBN topics could be covered. I can't wait....
