Duh Boy

Duh Boy is really coming along (see here, here, and here for a reminder of who he is). He's becoming more competent and has a better attitude. He still needs more supervision and instruction than the majority of my employees, but at least he's trying.

The other day I had a list of things I wanted done. A couple of them I assigned to specific employees who had the knowledge and skills to do them well. The other tasks anyone could do. Well, Duh Boy generally picks the tasks that he considers easiest and that can get done quickly. Then he can brag, "I've done 4 things off the list!" when other employees might have only done 1 more complicated and time-consuming thing.

This particular day he stocked some shelves, built some things, and instead of starting in on cleaning the actual store, he decided to clean the bathrooms. Personally not my first choice of things to do, but it needed to be done and that's what he wanted to do. Fine.

Later I saw him emerge from the employee bathroom with a mop. I praised him, because some employees only clean the toilets, sinks, and mirrors, and conveniently forget the floors. He had the wet floor sign out like he's supposed to. I had been waiting and waiting to use the bathroom (busy with customers), so figured I'd go ahead into the bathroom and re-mop over any foot prints I left. As I entered he warned me, "You might want to wait; it's still pretty wet in there." That's OK, I'll fix the floor when I'm finished.

He returned to the sales floor to help a few customers before leaving for the day; I walked into the bathroom. It was, indeed, "pretty wet" in there. The floors were, indeed, wet. So were the walls. And the toilets. And the sinks. And the shelves (luckily empty at the time). Instead of cleaning the bathroom like a normal person, he had taken a water hose and sprayed all of the surfaces in the bathroom, using the floor drain to get rid of most of the water and minimally mopping the floor while conducting the rest of the water to the drain. Creative in a weird kind of way. I had to dry things off before use, but besides everything being wet, it looked clean. His mother still needs to teach him a few things before he goes off to college!