Over the last 18 months our company has screened thousands of candidates for varying positions and less than 5% are qualified and worth talking to.

Well over half of the candidates can not pass either a drug screen or a drug background check. For safety reasons; thousands of tons of steel moving on 14 cranes and 12 trucks, we can not tolerate or risk the danger of employees under the influence, including alcohol.

Half of the remaining are disqualified because of a police history of violence, theft or other property crime. I am way too busy to waste time with thieves and I have too much respect for my other co workers to team them up with violence prone colleagues.

Half of the remaining after that have horrible work histories or are unpresentable. A note to you young applicants; if your face and neck are covered in tattoos and piercings, do not apply for sales jobs in Macon, GA that requires customer contacts. My recent favorite was a six foot woman, weighing well over three hundred pounds dressed in an outfit that would have been tight 150 pounds earlier, with a stud through her tongue that clearly affected her speech applying for a receptionist position. I could fill a book with similar stories.

Half of what is left has horrible work habits; are habitually tardy or absent, arrive yawning without enough sleep, are unhealthy to a dysfunctional point, spend way too much time on non business chatter, web surfing, or personal business. These folks do not last long even if they do slip through the employment process.

These hiring experiences are in no way unique to our company or to our city. I have heard similar experiences throughout the rest of the country.

When I hear the politicos whining about the poor I can not help thinking that many of these ‘poor’ damn well deserve to be.

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