Let's Get the Right One for the Job

​We had a new hire at our land surveying company. We will call him “Joe”. It was my responsibility to supervise him as leader of our survey crew whenever we went out of the office to work. Everybody was of the opinion he was a nice guy. Joe had a valid NC driver’s license so I decided to let him drive one day to evaluate his skills.
 
We had worked that morning and while on the way back to the office Joe was at the wheel. We chose to stop for a soft drink at the D & J Country store in the tiny crossroads community of Delway, NC. The store was located on the right just past the intersection of Hwy 421 and Hwy 903. Already dubious of Joe’s driving skills I cautioned him not to turn on his turn signal yet for I could see an 18 wheeler stopped at the intersection on the right with his left turn signal on. We were going North and the large truck was signaling to turn South on 421. Somehow Joe either thought he knew better than I did, didn’t hear me, or didn’t understand my instructions.
 
He turned his head, looked at me, and turned on the right turn signal. Just as I feared, the big 18 wheeler pulled out in front of us to make his left turn to go south on Hwy 421. “Stop!” I said. “Stop!” I repeated. For a third time louder I yelled, “Stop!”. I reevaluated Joe and concluded he didn’t understand that instruction either because he wasn’t stopping, no, he wasn’t even slowing down! At the last second I grabbed the steering wheel and turned it just in time to avoid crashing into the huge 18 wheeler.
 
Now Joe was very agreeable and would try his best to do anything you asked of him, but as the saying goes, he couldn’t pour water out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel. I tried my best to find something Joe could do adequately on the job. After about a month I concluded there was not a single thing he could do that would not slow us down and that cost our customers money. We charged by the hour and land surveying isn’t cheap. Something had to change.
 
We didn’t want to fire him because there was one thing he could do well. Joe had 11 children with one more on the way. But very sadly one day I had to pull him aside and recommend that while he was still working for us he should look another job. He didn’t listen to me about that either for he just quit right then and there.
 
Our company owner was an outstanding Christian man. But we would have never had this problem if he had done a good job of interviewing and doing background checks. Because of this over time I had to work with alcoholics, incompetents, and convicts.
 
This brings me to the point. When hiring someone to minister to youth and children we need to take the time do a good job of getting the right person. We need to pray for the right person, our personnel committee, our pastor, our children and youth, and most of all, for God’s will to be done.
 
Pastor Pat