People Problems and Business

A lot of businesses are founded by family or good friends. A lot of bands -- and music can be big business -- are founded by siblings. Allah, the Fortune 200 company I worked at for 5 years, was founded by three brothers. 

And yet we have laws about nepotism and discrimination and making sure you don't have exclusionary hiring practices.

I don't know the answer to this problem but a large part of running a business is hiring not only talented people but people you trust. Knowing exactly what they are capable of doing and trusting them is a large part of why successful organizations are frequently founded by related individuals. 

I was probably thirteen to fourteen years old when the manufacturing business I spoke of in my last post was being established. I believe I was fifteen when my brother was fired from it.

The story I heard was that they hired my brother, a talented, intelligent young guy, as the buyer. He was young for a buyer and good at it.

Then they hired his girlfriend as the secretary for the owner. She typed 160 wpm.

She rented a trailer across the street from the business, she and my brother broke up and began having screaming fights at work. I have no idea which of them was "starting it."

So the business was growing, they hired an assistant for my brother and as soon as the assistant was trained, they fired my brother and promoted the assistant. 

I never liked that girlfriend. She moved in with us, so probably her parents were awful, my family got her a job and then they broke up. She was probably using my brother to escape a bad family situation. 

When she moved out of our house and into a trailer, my mother "lent" her my mini deep fryer "because she needed and I didn't." I never got it back. I never got compensated for it. My mother never replaced it.

No, she didn't NEED my mini deep fryer to set up her kitchen in a trailer as her first independent home as a young adult. That has stuck in my craw for decades and not because I am some nut job completely incapableof letting minor BS go.

A couple years earlier, my mother probably suggested I lend my gloves to a friend of my brother who was doing auto work in the cold and dirt poor. I don't remember. Maybe he asked. Maybe my brother asked. It never stuck in my craw, so the details haven't stuck with me.

My mom was a maid working for wealthy families. They would have parties, set up a zillion NEW candles to decorate the party and THROW OUT the partially burned candles afterwards as not pretty enough to ever use again. My mom brought home shoeboxes of half burned candles and gave them to this same guy because his parent's house had no electricity. 

He was POOR, okay? They were living in a shack in the country with no electricity.

So I was annoyed that I lost my fashion accessory of pretty suede gloves and never saw them again, thoigh I wouldn't have wanted them back anyway because they were covered in grease immediately and no longer pretty.

It didn't stick in my craw though like the mini deep fryer because he genuinely NEEDED a pair of good work gloves that to me were a fashion accessory and, no, couldn't afford them.

Even at age fifteen, it struck me as odd that they fired my brother -- someone who was key personnel -- and kept the secretary, supposedly to put a stop to the fighting. No disrespect intended to secretaries who can be much more valuable and important than a lot of people appreciate. 

I never spoke with the business owner. I don't actually know what happened or why. Both my parents are dead. The business owner is dead. My brother and his girlfriend were both young and probably bought whatever cover story they were given. 

One possibility: Maybe the boss was having an affair with the secretary and felt my brother was the most likely threat to keeping the dirty secret.

Another possibility: My brother's FATHER did a lot of the legal work for setting up the business and my brother was extremely talented and intelligent. A combination of knowing too much about the business and our family potentially having legal grounds to cause trouble may have meant the business owner decided my brother was a threat to his control and ownership and thus needed to go.

Only an idiot would announce "You're a threat to my control of my business!" The tactically correct approach is fire him for a plausible alternate reason and say NOTHING about "You know too much and potentially have legal standing to take over the business."

Which means my brother may have been fired BECAUSE he was key personnel, not in spite of it. Perhaps he was too key.

Even if you buy the cover story, well, there's a lesson to be learned. Hiring the girlfriend wasn't drama. It became a personnel issue after they broke up. That's when the screaming fights began. 

If you want to start a business, it's generally not illegal to do so with a relative. But as it grows, you might run into equal opportunity laws impacting your hiring choices.

Just keep in mind that people problems are business problems and so are the laws intended to protect against certain kinds of people problems which don't necessarily have the intended effect and sometimes have other unintended effects.