War Stories From the Employment Front

As any student who has ever gone through a career counseling session can tell you, there are dozens of rules to remember if you want to make a good impression and land a job.

But they all really boil down to one thing. Call it courtesy, consideration or common sense, what employers really want is someone who cares enough about the job to show up on time and do it right.

Bob Witoszynski, general manager of the Yogurt Connection shop on Irvine Avenue in Newport Beach, says it well, and he has a few horror stories that say it all.

“Personnel matters are the single biggest problem in business, any business,” Witoszynski said. “The minute it become apparent that one employee is gong to be late, you’ve got a problem with someone else who’s waiting to go home.”

The yogurt shop is in one of Orange County’s premier areas, where homes sell for $500,000 or more and a college education awaits just about every teen.

So how hard could it be to find good help?

“Oh, forget it. It’s impossible,” Witoszynski said.

“Actually, I’ve got some kids who are just fantastic. But I get others who are just there to take up space. The worst part is that parents don’t instill the work ethic in their kids anymore. It’s horribly hard to find good kids, and when you do find a good one, you’ve got to pay ‘em an arm and a leg to hang on to ‘em.”

Witoszynski, like other food service employers, said the turnover rate at his shop is extremely high. “If you can keep a kid for two years, it is a miracle,” he said. “One year is rare. For one thing, around here the parents tell ‘em they don’t have to work. Or the kid just doesn’t keep track of things and comes waltzing in one Friday and tells me he’s going on vacation on Monday and can’t work that week.”

Among Witoszynski’s collection of tales to curl a small business owner’s hair:

*The Memorial Day Massacre. “My phone rang at 2 a.m. It was one of the kids, in tears, calling to tell me she wouldn’t be in at 8 to open up. What am I going to tell her? So I go back to sleep and when the alarm goes off I wake up and say ‘Oh . . . ! She called in!’ I got up and worked her shift Sunday, my day off. That kind of thing happens constantly. I don’t understand it, but they seem to forget really important things until after the schedule for the week is made up. One kid told me, ‘Oh, I’m going to New York the day after tomorrow.’ How do you forget something like that?”

*The Parent From Hell. “One of my kids, her dad calls and says she can’t work the next week because she was going on a tour of colleges back East. I said that we have a rule that once the next week’s schedule is made up, that’s it. So he said he didn’t care, that he wasn’t going to worry about a minimum wage job when his daughter’s whole future was at stake. I asked him what he did, and he said he was a doctor. I asked how he’d like it if his secretary or receptionist didn’t show up, and he says that’s different. But it wasn’t different to me. I needed her. I finally ended up getting some of the other kids to work for her, but the thing that got me was that she knew it was wrong but her father didn’t--she came in and apologized. We get so many kids these days whose parents instill horrible work habits in them.”

*The Other Parent From Hell. The story is almost the same. A father called a few minutes before a mandatory monthly staff meeting to tell Witoszynski that his boy wouldn’t be in because he had to help his father move. “I told him I didn’t need his son all night, to send him to the meeting and he’d be back in an hour, but he tells me that his moving is more important than my meeting. I told the father, ‘Are you trying to tell me you woke up this morning and said, “Gee, I’ll move today?” I think it’s very inconsiderate. Nobody informed me, his boss, that you needed him to help move.’ So the father says that if I fire the kid, he’ll take me to the labor relations board!”

*The Son Who Didn’t Learn. “A little while later, the same kid asked for a week off because of graduation, and I gave it to him. Then he didn’t show up for the first day back and he didn’t bother to call. When he came in the next day, I informed him I no longer needed his services. He actually asked, ‘Why?’ ”

Times staff writer John O’Dell contributed to this report.

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