For sure, at one point in around 2011 I had 16 people working for me, from 8am until dinner time I spent all my time on the phone dealing with complaints, people hadn't turned up yet, they were well behind schedule etc, etc. Because my work involves penalty clauses and liquidated damages if projects weren't completed on time this ended with firstly my business looking crap after spending ten years making a name for myself, lots of sleepless nights and early on set of a heart attack. I've managed to whittle it back to one team just big enough to cope when jobs over lap and small enough to care and not empty my pockets when things are quiet. When you start getting big you lose sight of your customers and forget why you started in the first place. Job satisfaction means more to me than any amount of money and people might think I'm mad but it really isn't about the bottom line for me although to stay a float it does have to be a priority. The only thing that happens when you have too many people and more mouths to feed is you end up buying in work at a low margin to keep people employed, then the people who you did this for start wanting to leave and throw it back in your face because it puts you under pressure to get the job done faster which ends up down the line at them from me and all of a sudden I'm the bad guy. Small margins can easily turn into losses and to be honest you're better off having less work at a higher margin than loads of work at low margins then you can provide a decent service. Yep, it's soul destroying at times
I think back to a case where some people who were working for me and a company I was doing a large project for had a management buyout smack bang in the middle of it and the company accounts were frozen while it got carried out meaning I had no money for 3 months. I had done without wages myself for 6 weeks and was maxed out with all suppliers which you can imagine how my home life was going at that point. I couldn't get rid of two people because one had just had a baby and the other bought his first house and that wasn't sitting well for me so I rode it out, robbing Peter to pay Paul and eventually muddled through it. 3 months later one of the guys left to start a different career and a month after that he got the other guy a start at the same factory. All worth while thanks. People often forget when they're sat in front of their employer complaining because someone has used their milk in the staff canteen exactly what it took for them to be sitting in a staff canteen drinking tea. Especially when back in the day during a recession I was using a pallet of plasterboards and a bag of skim as a bed and pillow and going to a train station or swimming pool to get a wash because there was no money in the job to pay for hotels. Having a business takes a level of commitment most don't have so going down that route requires some serious thought about what you want in life.
Coming back to Brexit though, I voted to leave. People will say racist, bigot, xenophobe etc whatever. My reasoning is that if I pay all my taxes over to this government I want that government to be answerable to me, too many politicians say it's out of their hands its an EU decision and to me that's just a cop out. I understand how a common market can work, everything to the same standard, but laws, military, border control no, I'm not having that, for me that's giving too much away. Independent sovereign countries should have the ability to opt out of things if it helps in the running of their own country. If they can't have that it's time to leave. Free movement of people just isn't working, arguably the govt should have invested more in infrastructure, hospitals, schools and policing but unless anybody didn't notice we've been in austerity for the last ten years because of the banking collapse. In all fairness to the govt, if you're trying to organise a wedding it would be good to know how many people's coming right? No point having ten sausages on sticks if there's 100 guests!
I don't have any issues with free movement of labour rather than people. I think we all should be free to work around Europe if you want and have a job to go to. I had a plasterer worked for me who I took off the dole and after a couple of months approached me for more money or cash when in my eyes he was making good money. He reasoned that after his benefits, rent paid, poll tax paid and the money he got for his two kids he was only about £30 per week better off for coming to work! I tried to explain to him that when he does that though the money comes out of my pocket and all the people he was working with which he didn't seem to get. Bye, bye plasterer.
On the other hand I had two Romanian labourers who were staying here for five years, they travelled from job to job on the train, camped out on site, got a bath in a plastic tub which they filled up with hot water from the tea urn. Their only possessions were a suitcase full of clothes, a two ring breville stove, a small tv and a playstation. They went to a supermarket just before it closed and bought up all the stuff that was going out of date and ate like kings. Their families were sending them stuff they had taped off tv on CD's in their own language and they watched it on the Playstation. Neither of them had to do this, they got paid the same as everyone else and took their accommodation money in wages rather than me booking hotels. They reasoned that they were going to work here for five years, go home and buy some land and build a house on it.
I would rather have had two of the them than ten of the UK plasterer. My issue is with the people who come to milk the system, believe me we have plenty already and don't need any more thanks.
My apologies for the extremely long winded post, I feel like I've just off loaded 25 years of being in business just in that post
But now that I've managed to get all my end month tax return stuff done in the office since 8am this morning I now to get ready for a night shift I have to do in the local hospital because one of my employees has gone awol and he's the one with the driving licence so when I finish at around 4am tomorrow you can imagine I'll have some choice words for him and again, it will be me who's the bad guy.
Thanks for listening.