The guy was picking out BluRay DVDs like they were candy. He wasn’t looking at price tags, he wasn’t looking at titles. He was just grabbing and grabbing and grabbing. What did the titles or prices matter to him? He wasn’t planning on paying. When he entered the department, he had looked up to see CCTV cameras, and had decided to risk that someone might be watching it.  It had to make him nervous. His palms had to be sweating. His heart was probably beating at a mile-a-minute.

I know mine was.

I was watching because I work nights in retail loss prevention, and having come by way of restaurants, office work, and consulting, I can comfortably tell you that it’s the most exciting job I’ve ever had. There’s no way to compare anything you’ll ever do in a restaurant or office to the thrill that comes with stopping a thief.

When I applied for the job, I knew confronting shoplifters was a part of the job. I figured it would be challenging and a bit edgy, but I never realized how rewarding it can be to resolve a theft.

I also didn’t realize that whenever someone took a dump in the urinal it would be my job to clean it. Imagine my surprise the first time I had to do that. Overall, I love the job, but every time I have to clean human excrement, I begin to resemble John Travolta explaining to Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction that he is “a race car in the red.”

“I could blow, man.”

How cool are these? (Source)

In addition to moments in which I’m cleaning up someone’s bowel movements, I’m often struck to extraordinary boredom. Have you ever watched a t-shirt in an empty store for six hours, wondering if it will go anywhere? I have. And, no, it won’t go anywhere.

But my mission here isn’t to gripe about my job, it’s to illustrate the extremes of the emotions we face toward our jobs in a given week. At any job, you’re going to have moments when you realize you would do it for free, and you’re going to have moments that leave you so ready to quit that you’re already internally composing your resume.

Often, these moments are unexpected. And part of the reason is that we often don’t know what we’re getting into when we get a job. Sure, you can tell someone that it’s a rush to walk up to someone you know is stealing and confront them, but there’s no way to really understand the feeling until you do it.

But what’s at play even more than that is that we frequently don’t ask about the extreme moments. I know that one of my standard questions when I’m being interviewed is “Could you tell me what an average day in this position would look like?”  I wanted to know how I would be spending the majority of my time. For better or worse, I normally got an answer about what a normal day would look like.

But the more I think about it, the more I think that whether you’re looking to get hired or you’re looking to hire someone, the question shouldn’t just be about what an average day looks like, but what the extremes look like:

What kind of days would you work for free?

What kind of days would make you want to quit?

How do those compare to an average day at the office?

Whether you’re interviewing or being interviewed, understanding the extremes of I-would-do-it-for-free and you-couldn’t-pay-me-enough is much more valuable than simply knowing what an average day at the office looks like. This creates a situation in which someone knows to expect a few of both - rather than being blind-sided by them.

One last thought, though. You may not want to phrase it as “I’d do it for free” or “What would you do here for free?” Because even though I would have caught that guy stealing DVDs a thousand times for free, I didn’t mention that to my boss.

There’s no need to risk her taking me up on it.

One of the primary complaints about Generation Y is that we exhibit an unparalleled sense of entitlement. If you Google “Generation Y entitlement,” it returns some 57,000 results.

We all know that the truth is not all Millennials are like that - just as it’s the case that not every Baby Boomer has a stellar work ethic. The trick is to find young employees who don’t feel unduly entitled to benefits, pay, seniority, etc.

Many Gen Ys have been given the vast majority of what they’ve ever had. Whether it’s money, a car, praise, or various trophies and awards, they’ve been given these things their entire life, simply for showing up. They didn’t have to sacrifice to get them, they just got them, and there is little anyone can do now to convince them that their attendance shouldn’t guarantee them those treasures.

As working with these people so beautifully illustrates, there is a world of difference between getting something and earning something.

So, when you’re interviewing, ask a potential employee:

“Tell me about a time you earned something. Tell me about what it was, what you did to get it, and what it meant to you.”

If you’ve ever worked to earn anything in your life, you’ll know the difference between an answer from someone who has had to sacrifice and toil to get something he wanted and someone who was handed a prize.

After the potential employee has showed you that he’s acquainted with the concept of earning, ask him this:

“What would you like to earn if I hire you?”

The answer to this question won’t just give you a taste of a potential employee’s ambitions, it will show you what they expect just for showing up, and what they know they will have to earn.

Hire the young people who expect to earn money for their work, not the young people who expect to get paid for showing up.

Difficult selection processes can include:

• Applying in person. If someone won’t get out of his chair to come apply for the position you’re offering, this is not passionate person.
• Writing a resume. So, you employ people who are applying for their first job? Request a resume instead of giving them an application form - you’ll see very quickly who is willing to take a little time for their job and who isn’t.
• Taking a test. One public relations position I applied for required a writing test after the first round of interviews. I really enjoyed the test, and it got me fired up about the rest of the application process. If it hadn’t, I would’ve removed myself from the applicant pool with great haste.
• An interview on steroids. It’s one thing to sit down and speak with applicants to see what they say they’re like, and entirely another to force them to act to see what they’re really like. Some managers use a walk test during an interview, where they simply have an applicant follow them for a tour of the facility and gauge applicants’ interest and passion by observing how the applicant keeps up with their brisk pace.

Difficult to use selection processes can include:

• Not knowing where to apply. It doesn’t matter how motivated I am, if I don’t know when and where to apply, you’re going to have a hard time getting me in the door.
• Tons of meaningless or unrelated paperwork. It’s one thing to take a test related to what I’m doing, and entirely another to fill out forms that don’t seem to relate to what I want to do. If you have forms that seem obliquely related but you know they’re intimately related to the job, explain to applicants how they fit into the big picture.
• Lame people. Whether it’s boring, rude, or disinterested people, the easiest way to knock passionate potential employees out of a hiring process is to have them interact with people they know they won’t want to work with. No matter how well crafted the rest of the process is or how passionate the applicant is, staffing your selection process with grouches and bores will cost you talent.

I’ve been quite a bitter bear lately, so I want to take this opportunity to reverse that trend, and focus on something cool.

It’s graduation time! My little sister graduated from high school this year, and she managed to make my brother and me look bad while she did it. She was awarded a full-ride NROTC scholarship and graduated as the class salutitorian with a 4.22 GPA. She has been involved in sports, and she works a part-time job at a shoe store. Very impressive!

And while she’s out enjoying graduation party after graduation party, I wonder if her bosses are taking steps to be ready to replace her when she takes off for the East Coast at the end of the summer. Because if they aren’t, they’re going to be in a spot at the beginning of the fall. And this isn’t just fraternal pride speaking - this is an issue everyone who employs young people should be thinking about right now. (OK, there is definitely some pride involved.)

As your employees who finished their senior year begin to enter the real world, college, or whatever it is they plan to do, one thing is certain: their major life changes will also be translating into changes for you. The end of the summer will bring with it the loss of some talent, the advancement of other talent, and the need to find new talent.

I suggest asking yourself these questions long before the end of the summer. In fact, you should probably have started thinking about these issues already.

1. Who is staying and who is going?

Some of your recent graduates will be going to school out-of-state. Some will be seeking other employment. Some will be staying with you. You need to start asking your young staff what their plans are right now so you can set yourself up for success accordingly.

2. What will I do with the people who stay?

You might learn that some of your great part-time employees are thinking of coming on full-time. Hooray! Start thinking about the steps you want to take to develop them, and then get them engaged immediately!  This is important because a job that seemed fun for 15 hours per week can get dreary when move up to 40 hours per week. Especially when your school social life is no longer providing stimulation and excitement. Believe me - I’ve been there.

You may also find out that one of your less-than-stellar employees is interested in staying and is even considering trying to work more often. You should look very carefully at whether or not you want to provide more work, more responsibilities, or even keep someone who isn’t impressing you. Don’t allow yourself to think that someone you can barely stand will magically improve with more hours and a freshly printed diploma.

3. How will I replace the people who are leaving?

Odds are pretty good that some of your performers are leaving for school or other jobs. You’re going to be in the position to replace them, and now is the time to start work on that process. You should already have some sort of recruiting practices in line so that you can keep finding fresh talent, and right now the only difference is that you’ve got more than two weeks of notice that some of your best will be departing. If you finish your recruiting before school starts, you’ll have the opportunity to have your new people bought-in, trained, and producing before fall arrives with its craziness.

By dealing with these issues now, you’ll be able to create a much less stressful fall for yourself.

Yesterday, I was scheduled for a day shift at my security job. The weather intervened, however, and dumped more than a foot of snow on Denver. So, despite the fact that we were at work, there was nothing to do - everyone was staying home. Management made the decision to close at 2:00, which left me and my friend with the entire afternoon free.

At first, we weren’t sure what to do. Everything was closed: restaurants, movie theaters, and (not surprisingly) mini-golf courses. So, we headed home, and as I ran the snow blower over my walk, inspiration struck: We could start a small business for the afternoon. This was, after all, a lot of snow, and there were likely to be people willing to give us money to remove it from their walks.

We threw my dad’s snow-blower and a snow-shovel into my buddy’s truck, and off we went. We opted for a door-to-door approach, with my friend driving the truck and me giving the sales pitch.

To be honest, I was a little bit nervous about our competition. Especially little kids. Competing with little kids is brutal.

-They’re cute. (Great branding.)
-They can undercut us. (Lower overhead.)
-They offer a better product. (What’s better than getting your walks cleared? Getting them cleared and feeling like you’re helping a little kid!)
-Did I mention they’re cuter than I am?

Fortunately for our little start-up, we didn’t see any little kids out there competing with us. And while that was great for my pocketbook (we made more than enough for dinner and drinks), I think it’s a drag for these kids and the people who will employ them in the future. Just think about all the great lessons one can learn from running his own small business, even for just a day:

-Just how hard customers are to get. (Only about one in every ten doors we knocked on proved to be a customer for us.)
-The role that costs play in a business, particularly labor costs. (Each kid in the gang cuts into the margins pretty brutally.)
-Seeing the difference that efficient, hard-working employees can make to your bottom-line.

There’s probably a whole host of others, too. Those were just the first three I thought of while my jeans froze into funny shapes.

So, what does this mean to you? It’s simple: Ask your applicants if they’ve ever had their own business (snow-shoveling, lawn-mowing, lemonade stand, etc). If they say yes, they’re not just telling you that they have mastered the demanding skill of making lemonade. They’re telling you:

1. They’ve got initiative. If you can get out and start your own business - even if it’s for only one day - you can get yourself going.

2. They understand something about business. They may not have an MBA, and maybe they can’t even put that understanding into words, but they’ll apply those lessons to their practices at your business.

3. They understand that their efforts turn into money. They see that the money isn’t a gift. They see that it isn’t an entitlement. They understand that if they do nothing, they get nothing.

So, ask your young applicants if they’ve ever started their own business. It’s one question, but it tells you so much.