<Begin Segment 20>

NH: Well, one of my big mistakes was hiring high school girls that were friends, half a dozen of them at one time, biggest mistake in my life.

VY: What happened?

NH: They're either arguing with each other or playing around. One time I found all these Coke bottles on the ground, and one of the gals had orange soda all over her shirt. Someone would come in late, like ten minutes late, it doesn't matter. One time I kept them ten minutes over, well, the mother came in, she got mad and said, "My daughter is not working here anymore." Daughter turns around real sweet and said, "Goodbye." [Laughs] She wasn't mad, but the mother was mad. Big mistake, they're just too young. Never hire a group of friends, you have to kind of split them up. That was before your time. [Laughs]

VY: How about some good workers that you remember? Do you remember any good workers that stand out?

NH: Oh, yeah. One especially... well, lot of it has to do with personality, one guy who eventually became a... easy going guy, easy to get along with, never argues, but he can make decisions. There was another guy who was super clean, he wore a white shirt to a nursery, and he'd go home super clean, and he liked to clean up. So I gave him the key and he'd come in a six o'clock, even though he doesn't punch in 'til seven. And he'd start cleaning things up, he'll take the trucks out, park 'em, things like that so you don't have to.

VY: How long did he work for you?

NH: Until we closed. Limited English.

VY: Limited English?

NH: Yeah.

VY: What was his native language?

NH: He was Mexico. At that time, the industry relied on the green card or whatever, before the green card. Just like the way the restaurant business is changing now because the wages are going up, depend on entry people.

VY: Did you have a lot of workers from Mexico?

NH: Yeah.

VY: Okay.

NH: Three quarters.

VY: Three quarters.

NH: It's not because... because our wages, everybody got paid the same, not Hispanic people, same, there just wasn't anybody who liked to do dirty work, you know, getting their hands dirty. And it's not really dirty because the soil was clean, really. It's not like going in a dirty mud puddle. Physically, I guess a lot of the work is just, people don't understand it because they didn't grow up that way, for one thing.

VY: Sounds like it's a lot of hard work.

NH: Lot of physical work.

VY: Lot of physical work. Did you have a lot of people who would try it out and just realize that they couldn't do it?

NH: Yes, it's about a couple weeks or so. Mostly, to me, they were clock watchers. I can tell their head's not in it.

VY: How would you find new people to work for you?

NH: Early part, never had a problem, people were looking for jobs. Eventually I went to summertime high school, summertime, give kids a part time job for the summer. That's okay, short time.

VY: Do you think the kids that worked there during the summer, did they do pretty good, because they knew it was going to be a short time?

NH: Yes.

VY: Did any of them ever come back?

NH: No, they went on to further education. We had one gal that, she was late, ten, fifteen minutes every day. And I just got fed up one day and I pulled her timecard, and she came to the office, and she knew. And she was saying, well, this and that, and I said, "Well, I can't help that, but I'll have to repeat the work order for you," and there were some group of people short one person.

VY: So you let her go?

NH: Yeah. She was a good worker and everything, but she was late all the time. I had a part time worker two days, and she got to the point where she was missing one of the days out of two. I had to let her go, that's my mom's friend from the church. It was just, work four hours a day. Her daughter got all mad and I said, "What do you want me to do? I depend on part time worker." She didn't understand. They think that I should accommodate her, because she's only working, she's an old lady and all that kind of thing. Part time workers are important because they have to fill that timeslot and get work done.

VY: Is that because it's seasonal? Like there's more work different times of year?

NH: Yeah, some work we didn't have to have. Some people wanted that short hour thing. We didn't have a lot of part time workers.

VY: No, was it mostly full time?

NH: Yes.

VY: Was it hard finding people that would stay for a long period of time?

NH: Yeah. We didn't even have a one percent turnover, we had a pretty stable work crew.

VY: So people did stay for a long time.

NH: Yeah. There's some young people, of course, they get married or something and need a higher wage, and they wanted something more stable, or not stable... and I never held any grudge or anything, they just, people want to progress, right? And, unfortunately, when it's a small nursery, there's no place to go.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.