Dollars and Sense Part 23

From the employer's standpoint nothing will stand his business in such good stead as to have his employes doubly equipped.

In the printing business, for instance, the old time printer knew how to set type, lock up forms and to run a press.

Nowadays we seldom find a printer in the broad sense of the word.

In the big printing establishment we find the various branches of the printing trade have employes who are specialists at one thing. In the printing trade the craftsman is either a compositor a proof-reader, a make-up man, a pressman or a binder.

The employe who can set type and also run a press is a decided advantage to the employer. The writer knows a certain publishing house whose every employe is doubly equipped. The rule of the proprietor is that every job or branch of the business must have more than one person competent to run it, and that every person must know how to do two things.

Double equipment on the part of the employe gives the employer great resources.

When sickness, accident or other causes prevent the employe from filling his accustomed place, then the proprietor can call on others who have the double equipment, to fill in the gap.

The employe who is following a particular line in the establishment should acquaint himself with some other branch of the business or some other trade, if he is a craftsman.

The employe who is doubly equipped is decidedly at an advantage over the employe who knows but one thing.

Initiative

Initiative is simply the willingness and ability on the part of an employe to do things that are not simply routine, to do things he is not told to do, to look for opportunities to help the boss or to improve the business wherever possible.

The employe who has no initiative in his make up is going around a circle and when you go around a circle you don't go forward. There is no one thing outside of honesty, ability and hard work that will help the employe to go forward like initiative.

In every great business there are many opportunities for the employe to do things he is not told to do and when an employe gets the initiative habit he is not long in attracting the attention of the boss.

Look over the work you are doing, study the matter carefully, figure out some plan whereby the value of the work you are doing will be increased.

Find a chance to lessen the expense in your department.

Put into practice some idea that will increase the receipts.

Acquaint yourself with the operations of other employes in similar work. Wherever you find a plan better than yours, take advantage of it.

Keep your eyes wide open and you will find many opportunities for doing things you are not told to do.

Every employe should carry out to the letter the directions given him by the boss and in addition to this he should have initiative, which is doing things the boss did not tell him.

It is the plus or initiative in a man's make-up that helps him to the front.

Night Work

It is always a question among experienced business men whether night work and Sunday work help the game of business.

Of course there are occasions when a job must be finished or work completed within a specified time and if you are behind with your hauling, it is necessary to turn all your resources into a singleness of purpose to get the thing done.

The trouble is, however, that many business men figure on this night work as part of the regular scheme and in this they overdo the matter.

The law of compensation says that a man is good for just so much work and if he spreads the work over into longer hours the intrinsic value of each hour is lessened.

A man who habitually takes work to his home to finish and counts upon these extra hours, will soon find the value of his work decreases.

We should all remember that we should work while we work and play while we play.

Work hard during your business hours, conserve your energies, but outside of business hours, let play, study and recreation occupy your time.

If you go home from business at night and forget the things you have been doing in the day and use your time for the things in life outside of business, the next day, when you go to your office, you can make things fly.

It is proverbial that the busy man is the one to go to if you wish things done promptly.

Those of us who were born and reared in the country know a familiar type that is to be found in every country town.

He may be a carpenter or blacksmith, or may run a repair shop of some kind. We find him going to the post office in the middle of the day to get his mail. We frequently find him in the back part of the country store playing checkers. At other times he is watching a horse trade.

Again he is arguing politics. This man does not get in over four or five hours' simon pure hard work in a day.

You take a job to this man and it will drag days and weeks. You become impatient at the delay. You get after the man and his answer is that he has not the time.

It is practically a truism that those who offer the excuse that they have not the time are really the ones that have the time.

Some of our friends treat us shabbily in the matter of correspondence and when you get a letter from one of them, he says: "Excuse me for not writing sooner, but I really have been so busy that I have not had the time to write."

As a matter of fact it takes five or ten minutes to write a letter and the person who pleads for forgiveness through lack of time has wasted a hundred times the minutes necessary to write a letter.

The busy man, accepts his duty as a matter of course, a ranges his correspondence and work in systematic order and goes at the thing, hammer and tongs, and gets the thing done.

Night work is usually evidence that the man does not do his work properly in the day time and he is like our friend in the country who wastes time in the day and tries to make up for it by night work.

The thing to do is to work hard in the day time and rest at night.

Obedience

Several years ago, our friend Elbert Hubbard wrote a little sermonette ent.i.tled "Carrying the Message to Garcia." The story was simply this: President McKinley called an orderly and gave him a letter and said: "Deliver this letter to General Garcia."

The employe did not stand around and ask a lot of fool questions about the trains and things. He put on his hat and duster and he delivered the letter to Garcia. These facts were stretched out in many words and made a little booklet. That booklet reached the sale of more than a million copies.

It seemed to make a hit with business men throughout the country. A certain railroad bought and gave a copy to every employe. Business men followed the example. The great sale of the book and the wide-spread interest it created would seem to indicate that carrying the message to Garcia was an unusual thing and so remarkable that it attracted attention.