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Nothing
You Can Do
by
Peary Perry | |
Every
once in a while you do something that really hurts your heart, but you can’t fix
it for one reason or another. Nothing you can do, that’s just the way it is.
You’ve
had this happen to you, maybe you were driving down the road and a dog or cat
ran out and you tried to avoid it, but you couldn’t and well, you know what happened.
You felt terrible, but there really wasn’t anything you could have done. It still
didn’t make it any easier, did it? Maybe you said something to someone that you
wished you could take back, but it was just too late and you lost a friend or
the relationship was just never the same afterwards.
We’ve all been there
and done that. Don’t want that t-shirt.-
Well, last week I interviewed
a young man to help us at our company. He told me he was forty-one years old,
but looked about thirty. Clean cut, just married, baby on the way. Lots of enthusiasm,
willing to work hard, one of those guys you know just know is going to do a good
job for you and be with you a long time. When I interviewed him, he answered all
my questions correctly and like I said, I thought I had a winner.
Yesterday,
when he came in, we had him sit down and fill out the rest of his paperwork so
we could get him started. After he was finished, he got sent over for training
and to get started. The payroll department ran his name through the service we
use for background checks and then they came to see me.
This fine, nice
looking young man had several pages of criminal history. He had served over eight
years in prison for burglary, drugs and assault. I called him in and asked him
if it was him or was it some mistake. On his application, he admitted he had been
arrested, but said it was for not turning in a rent car on time. Nothing we’d
be overly concerned about. Obviously he forgot the rest of the details. He said,
it wasn’t a mistake, it was him.
He looked like a wounded puppy and I
could feel the pain starting inside of him as it probably has done so many times
before. He told me these things had happened when he was a teenager, but some
of them had occurred ten years ago, so that would have happened when he was in
his late twenties or early thirties. I could sense his feeling of defeat as I
walked him out the door.
We own a freight company; we deal in other people’s
materials and possessions. People hire us to transport their things from one place
to another and give them back to them. My contracts read such that I cannot hire
personnel with felony convictions for theft, drugs or violence of any kind. I
am telling our customers that we have investigated our employees and can assure
them that they do not have a criminal history of drugs, theft or violence. The
public wants this kind of assurance.
My problem is this. At what point
does this young man get shed of his history and start to make a new life without
his past following him around?
I realize the choices he made were of his
own choosing and he should have thought about what he was doing before he did
it. But, still when and where does someone go who needs some help?
Not
to me, I can’t hire him. People wouldn’t let me and I would be uneasy having him
on board and under constant scrutiny. But, I do feel sorry for him and wish him
the best. I just don’t know what to do to help him or how to advise someone in
this sort of situation.
Maybe getting married and having a baby has caused
him to change his ways and settle down. My question is how does he ever prove
he’s worthy of becoming a new person and able to inspire trust in those around
him or for whom he works?
I wish I had asked him about his background
more closely before I agreed to hire him, but it just slipped my mind and I didn’t
really think about it due to way he appeared and conducted himself in the interview.
You can’t judge a book by its cover is certainly true, but not always
the right thing that has to be done. Life is hard. | | |
