Payday and running a business

We have a little bitty place on the beach, where we go EVERY weekend. I get the timecards on Friday morning about 6 am (I go in expressly AT 6AM to do payroll and I am NOT a 6 AM person) and we pay people around 7 am, get stuff started and then we leave. That way, if you are truly just "running late" you can still make it in in time to get paid.

Now, having worked for about 40 years, I know that it is VERY important to call in if you are not going to be at work on any given day. It is even MORE important if the day you are taking off is Friday, you get paid at 7 am and the person PAYING you leaves town by 8:30.

Now some of the people who work for us have a tough time making it to work. The common excuse is that they
A) have no alarm clock or
B) the alarm didn't go off
C) they thought it was the weekend

And just because I like to keep track of these things, 80% of the absences are on Mondays and 10% of the absences are on Fridays.

I've even had guy's MOTHERS call to tell me that Baby Boy isn;t going to make it in today....something I figured out, oh, around 6:15. Mama usually calls around 10:30 or so.

Now in my line of work, if you don't make it to the trust office to pick up your check, you are SOL until it opens up the next day. And if it a Friday payday, you can just wait until Monday. ANd if Monday is a holiday, well, there is always Tuesday. The check is ready....you just didn't manage to make it in during the trust office hours.

That's the way it works here. I do call to wake guys up but they usually have their phones off. That's understandable, since they've been up all night playing XBox or something. Except I PAY FOR THE PHONE.

So it sorta kinda bothers me that despite my dozen voice mails, telling them I will be on the freeway by 8:30, they manage to slumber on. (And we've been doing it this way for, oh...the last 35 years, so it should come as no surprise. To anyone.) Because they have all been there on Friday and listened to me rant and rave about guys who think I am going to wait all day for them. For all I know, they are in jail or prison or drunk in a gutter. And since they won't answer the phone, there is no way for me to know what is going on.

Then, oh, around 10:30..just about the time I am unloading the groceries at the beach, I will get these frantic phone calls, telling me that it is payday and I AM NOT THERE. No, silly boy, I'm not. I was there at 6 AM.

But they need some money for the weekend; what are they going to do? I understand this, which is why I was there at 6 AM. However, I guess it didn't dawn on them that after a dozen phone calls, I figured they were rolling in dough and could wait until we come back on Monday.

Oh, they go crazy on me; yelling and screaming...but since I am at the beach and they are getting to work on a bicycle, I'm not real worried that they are coming to beat me to a pulp. It's a 2 hour drive, so I feel pretty safe.

And yes, I guess I could pay them every Thursday or I could do like my Mom did; she paid them every other Monday so they couldn't drink their checks up. But Friday is convienent for ME, so that's the way we do it.

At my workplace, there isn't a special payday so that we can go shopping for Christmas...if Christmas is on a Monday and it would sure be handy if they paid us on the Friday before...THEY DON'T CARE.

Payday is the last day of the month and that is the way it is. If the last day is on the weekend, well, there is always Monday. And if for some reason I can't make it in on Monday....well, there IS the rest of the week. In fact, there is the entire rest of the month. But they have no real desire to jump in a car, race down to the office and fish out MY check.

So there is my little rant. I think these guys are the ones we had in school and it was truly a surprise that they even knew what DAY it was, much less what month...so why should it surprise me that setting an alarm clock on the one day of the week that it matters is beyond them.