Stem to Stern: Showing Up

Crystal, our front desk administrator, maintains a weekly calendar next to the time clock, which lists the days of the current work week and who is scheduled to be out on each of the seven days. Yes, the yard is open on Sunday, after the owner knocks over a few liquor stores to make payroll and heads to church to pray for forgiveness and beg the Holy Spirit for the strength to make another week. Saturdays and Sundays are for die-hards. Most of the crew works a straight, five-day, 40-hour week. In times past, there really weren’t many names on that weekly calendar unless a holiday fell within that week, or a debilitating flu was running its course through the area. For the most part, people showed up every day and were anxious to get the job done.

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For many years, we closed the yard for two weeks in the summer and we all took time off together, which was a practice adopted from our days at the old yard. With this policy in place, my family reasoned, no one would be out for any length of time during the remaining fifty weeks. You knew that you could count on the whole crew working together, day in and day out except for those two weeks. It was easy to schedule work around the yard vacation and families had a fixed target for time off before school started. They could plan around it. Management didn’t have to worry about things going awry in their absence and the crew didn’t have to worry about unanswered questions when supervisors were vacationing. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But New Age culture had a better idea. Over time, grumblings in the ranks became louder regarding more and flexible vacation time and PTO. A while back, we re-evaluated our small business employee benefits to more resemble that of current protocol. We figured it was the right thing to do for our crew and besides, the lack of skilled workers has created an extremely competitive employee acquisition atmosphere between industry rivals. Understand: We want our crew to be happy. If it weren’t for the hard-working guys and gals here, this yard would not exist, and we are damn lucky to have them. So … we sweetened the pot and guess what happened. That calendar by the time clock now has no less than five people out most days, close to ten percent of our non-subcontract workforce. What conclusions can we draw from that?

Woody Allen once said: “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” In our yard and in any workplace, showing up tells the crew and customers that you’re serious. Serious about commitment, serious about your part on the team. Wayne Gretsky said, “You miss 100-percent of the shots you don’t take.” How true. The sidelines do nothing to hone your skills or your soul. Most folks who sit on those sidelines quickly become unhealthy in body and mind. How many pro sports teams offer vacation and PTO during the regular season? None. All players take that time off together in the off-season. To win, to be successful, the team needs every player to be healthy, committed, and, of course, they must show up. Patrick Mahomes can’t take vacation or PTO during the season or the post-season. It’s no different in a boatyard. Boatyards, especially these days, can’t just move another person into your spot when you don’t feel like showing up. There aren’t enough skilled craftsmen left in the entire world for that, let alone in our little corner of the planet. Custom boat work requires advanced skills. This is not like McDonald’s or Jiffy Lube where you just grab another body from the personnel files and fill the dilettante vacuum. When someone isn’t here, his or her project comes to a screeching halt. The worst thing you can do is assign that project to another presumptuous craftsman, who is already behind on his or her own project and will immediately begin to snivel about how Billy’s less-than-stellar work can’t be saved and “I’ll have to tear it out and start over.” The clock does not stop, and we fall further behind. At this point, people who are convinced of their superior intelligence, discernment, insight into boatyard operation, good taste and anything else that might amplify the superego, offer us a taste of their brilliance: “You need to hire more people,” or, “You’re pretty good at boatbuilding but you lack management skills.” OK, follow Josh or me around the yard for just one hour and, if you haven’t crushed an entire script of Lexapro with a couple hits of cyanide by then, we’ll talk some more and thank you for your input. Hiring more people sounds simple enough. In reality, we’d have better odds at hooking a blue marlin in our haul-out well. We’ve signed up with all the employment apps: Zip Recruiter, Indeed, Monster, etc., and found what most trade-based employers have come to realize. The odds of finding qualified help on any of those apps are slim to none. You’d be better off spending that money on a Powerball ticket. The only way to acquire good help is to train people, if you’re fortunate enough to find a few whose eyes line up with the holes in their heads. Doing so is damn expensive. When we actually get the opportunity to spend what it takes to develop skills in people with ability, they have to show up.

Occasionally feeling under the weather is part of life on this big blue ball. There are germs flying around and every so often they land on you. Some of us will work sick and some won’t. The ones that won’t, scream about the ones that will. In this modern era, working parents send their kid to daycare, knowing little Suzie has a bug, because they have a job. Why do the same parents call in sick when they have a sniffle or a headache? Don’t they have to go to work? Not if they get paid to stay home. This might be meaningless within a large corporate structure but in a small, trade-based operation, it kills momentum and wrecks scheduling. Serious health or family issues are one thing. All employers must understand and be supportive when it comes to real problems. Daily, life-on-Earth aches and pains are another. Showing up, even when you’re down a few injectors, is a duty, not an option. We can’t tell our customers: “We’ll have you overboard on the 10th, that is, of course, unless we don’t feel like it.”

Everyone has a life outside of work. I do as well. Modern culture teaches us to admire and envy the people with the most free time. I suspect the pressure and anxiety exhibited by the effects of globalization have created the need for more time off. We are constantly bombarded with worldwide images of people traveling, relaxing and generally having a ball, on billboards, television and social media. Destination weddings, sports tourism, gig tripping, etc., require unlimited free time. You can’t do that if you’re at work. It’s as if the worldwide pandemic changed the focus of the entire labor force to some sort of frenzied attempt to out-do one another through extravagant acts of leisure. All that fun gets expensive, drives up the cost of labor and impedes the thrust of accomplishment. Here’s a question: What happens if your back hurts on vacation? Do you call in sick? Hell no. “I’ll be fine. Let’s crack another cold one and turn up the jams.” Man, do I sound like a hard ass?! Yes, I suppose so. But I believe we are put on this Earth to leave behind something more than airline seat assignments and Airbnb receipts. Inverting the work-to-pleasure ratio has taken its toll on our national GDP. Unfortunately, people who work hard and work a lot are labeled with terms of derision. People my age are beseeched to retire and drive an RV across the country in first gear, flying home only for doctor visits and prescription re-fills. Still working?! Are you out of your mind?

I must be out of my mind. This reads like the ranting of a callous, cold, old killjoy workaholic who was born too late and just doesn’t get it. One who just doesn’t understand that people need time off, now more than ever, for family, health, and above all, societal conformity. I’m sorry. I’ll try to be more flexible. Now let me check Crystal’s calendar and see who won’t be here today. Ah hell, what does it matter? Launching that latest hull on time is just not as important as I think it is. Whenever, dude.

This article originally appeared in the December 2024 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.

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Source: https://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/column/stem-to-stern-showing-up