Pay People What They’re Worth
A Panhandlers Guide to Business, Life & Love
Like you, I’m a busy executive.
I spend my days dashing from meeting to meeting, putting out fires, returning phone calls. I spend my meetings reviewing designs, assessing concepts and directing my team. I spend my mornings reading the Wall Street Journal and my evenings watching the news. I’d say I’m connected. I’d say I’m successful. I’d say I’m spent!
I drive to work. On a good day it’s thirty minutes each way. On a bad day it’s an hour and thirty minutes. If I leave early enough I can get there in twenty minutes — now that’s time management.
My drive, however, is one of the most consistent things I do. I’m on autopilot from the minute I leave my house to the instant I pull into the parking space at our old mill offices. It’s like the car drives itself to work. You know those instances where you suddenly realize you’re driving and that, somehow, for the last fifteen minutes, you can’t actually remember anything that happened? You don’t know exactly where you are. What exit you just passed. Yet you’re safe, you’re driving a consistent speed and no one is honking at you. The brain is an amazing thing.
My drive time is sacred. Sure, I listen to NPR or the classical radio station. I listen to morning drive time talk and I hit the seek button occasionally to hear something different. But the car radio is really background noise to keep me sane. I think in the car. I talk in the car. I sing in the car. Yes, if you were to sit in the back seat of my car on the ride to or from work you would, I’m sure, think I was insane.
I brainstorm ideas in the car. I remember things I’ve forgotten. I talk to people who are no longer here like my friend Dean, my Grandmother and Grandfather and even my Mother-in-Law. They give me advice, they make me laugh and they’ve certainly made me cry. Everyone has time like this. It may be in the shower, in the garden, in the garage or on a walk. It may be at the gym or the kids’ playground. Some people think that this time is wasted, for me it’s the most productive time of the day.
It’s only recently that I realized this, embraced it, and cherished it. You see, on the ride home from work for the last year I got a graduate degree in Marketing. It’s not from an accredited university. There’s no graduation ceremony or printed diploma. I got my degree from a panhandler I noticed one day on the way home from work.
The light was red for an unusually long time — an eternity in traffic time — and I sat in my seat staring off into nowhere when I noticed him outside my window. He was a tall, scruffy black man. His face was worn, his hands covered by brown woolen mittens and he held a cardboard sign just under his chin. I snapped out of my drive time daze when he rapped on the window. Startled, I waved him on, which is my normal reaction to traffic pan handlers.
“Did you read my sign?” He enunciated through my shatterproof glass.
The sign hung crooked as he pointed to the over-traced words with one of his black mittens. He stepped back from my car to make sure I could read it easily. And there it was. Right there at the end of the exit ramp of Interstate 93: the first lesson in my degree program.
His sign said: “Always, pay people what they’re worth. How much an hour would you pay me?”
I waved an awkward ‘thanks’, imparted my most sincere, ‘I’m sorry’ smile and drove off.
As I drove the last ten minutes home, I couldn’t stop thinking about that sign. How much was that panhandler worth? Was he worth a dollar? A dollar an hour? A dollar a day? A penny? I couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t know him, know his skills or his abilities, his level of education or his specialties. I hadn’t seen his resume. How could I know how much he was worth?
At work, I make just enough money. I don’t make more than enough. I don’t make enough. I make JUST enough. I wish I made more money, and I believe I’m worth more. But how much? How much is anyone worth?
As soon as I got to work the next day, I ran a payroll report to see how much everyone in the company made. I printed it out and as the pages slid into the top tray of the giant printer in the hall I wondered how much the printer was worth.
The printer was worth more if I needed to print something. If I didn’t need to print something it was worth less. So, basically, the printer was worth the average of what it was worth when I needed to print and when I didn’t need to print. That average would be the price I would pay to know that I could print if I needed to.
I glossed over the payroll report and thought that everyone’s salary seemed fair. Fair? I thought. Fair is nice, but that’s not what the sign said. Pay people what they’re worth. Not pay people what’s fair.
I thought again about the printer. The printer’s value is relative to my needs. Someone who needs to print all day might believe the printer is worth more than me, given that I only print a couple times a day. Like a printer, a person’s worth might be the same. It’s relative to the company, to their tasks, to their needs and to their capabilities, which is all relative to the people around them.
I figured it out. As I looked at the payroll report I quickly looked through the list to find someone I felt was indispensable. Tim made almost as much as me. This made me happy, to know that I paid Tim as much as I was paid so relative to the rest of the company we were worth most.
That meant, for a company our size, Tim and I were getting paid what we were worth. We had the highest salaries, we were indispensable. Now, I thought, what would happen if Tim thought he was worth more? Would he leave? Would he ask for a raise?
He could leave and we’d be in a difficult place, or he could ask for a raise and we couldn’t afford more than a modest increase, otherwise it would jeopardize the company’s stability. So basically, as long as we paid Tim what he was worth to our company we couldn’t do any better and as long as we paid him what he was worth we’d be doing the best we could to keep him on.
But surely, his idea of what he’s worth must be different than ours. I know I’m worth more and I know I could leave at any time for a better salary and so could he.
As soon as I realized this I decided that paying people what they’re worth is just about the best salary advice I’d ever heard. I could forget about industry averages, and expensive HR salary surveys. Pay Tim what he’s worth to us and we’d both be fine. But, I couldn’t expect him to stay forever.
On my ride home I was elated. I was ready to pay the panhandler what he was worth. To me, he was worth twenty-dollars. For twenty-dollars I’d secured my hiring philosophy forever. I’d offer people a salary that was commensurate with our needs and their job within the structure of our current pay scale.
I stopped by the ATM, got a crisp new twenty-dollar bill and left it in my breast pocket for easy accessibility.
When my car swooped down the I-93 exit ramp, I noticed that the panhandler was nowhere to be found.
“Damn!” I blurted out.
He’d missed his opportunity to be paid what he was worth.
And then, as I pulled through the green light at the intersection I saw a cardboard sign propped up against the light post on the side of the exit ramp. I pulled over in rush hour traffic to read it.
“Always pay people what they’re worth, today. Because, tomorrow they might be gone.” It said.
He was gone.
Reader Note:
This is the first in my Panhandler’s Guide to Business Series.
Read the second story here: The Difference Between Wants & Needs.
