THE PERFECT EMPLOYEE

THE PERFECT EMPLOYEE

I once worked with a perfect employee. He came to me with nothing more than an ID (or social security number). He was referred to us by his uncle who works with my wife. His uncle needed to do his sister a favor. The young man really wasn't much to look at, he was small and underfed.  I hired him as a farmhand to "hold things" and make sure "nothing gets lost". He was a normal employee and soon began to damage things that are generally "undamageable". The hoe would break, and walls would crack when he passed by.

After a while he started to "want" do things. This was a dangerous sign.  But he went ahead and asked me for permission to do those things. He wanted to build things and make things at my expense. He made some of the most terrible pieces of stonework you could imagine. He used my cement and bricks to build a water tank that looked like a large, rusted, open cement vase. Amazingly, this guy was not ashamed to show me what he had done. I didn't have the heart to tell him that some of his early works were like a child playing with clay in kindergarten, and that they cost me several hundred dollars for each experiment.

Now this guy had that rare thing in employees called determination. It is one of those things generally driven by a disadvantaged background and deep personal aspiration. His view of life was quite different from mine. What I considered pathetic, he considered privilege. What I thought was a job, he understood to be opportunity. This was the beginning. I will fast forward to get to the heart of the story that made this guy special.

This guy could not be put down. He saw opportunities for what needed to be done and gave me the job of supplying what he needed to do them. Brian began to learn and learn he did. He learned from the builders how to build. He learned from me, how to manage money and leaned to drive from me, in my car! He learned from the church how to sing. He learned from other people how to do other things.  Other people began to hire him. At some point I am not sure he worked for me. Everyone in the community owned him. There was no job too odd, small, or big for this small town boy. Brian would fix it. Even though he still worked for me.

What I did not know was that this "small town boy" had become a celebrity in his village. He had built himself a house with his pay and took care of his siblings and widowed mother. He was also steadily winning the hearts of all the young ladies in the neighborhood by his work. Brian never asked for any "thing". All he needed was a chance.

Brian died on the job. Loyal to the end. But when I think about him, I don't think he worked for me.  He worked for himself. He worked for everybody. All he needed was a chance to be. He came to me with no schooling, but by the time he died, I was thinking of getting him an education and making him my personal assistant. That is some career distance for a small town boy with just an ID.

When I think of the perfect employee, I don't think I want someone who works for me. I would rather have someone who works for himself. To be sure the beginning does not tell you much; it's the process that reveals the person, from there you can easily tell what the end will be. The perfect employee is not in a degree, but in the character and integrity to be. There is more to an employee than skills and knowledge, the perfect employee is someone I would like to be.

Allan Bukusi, 2012