After church this past Sunday, a 15-year-old girl came to me and asked, “Do you allow free help in your stores?”
I told her, “I’ll think about it.” Consequently, it made me think about a number of times I’ve been asked that same question in the past. Sometimes, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, even if you know the individual who is interested. Yes, you can allow a friend to come spend their off hours shelving books in your store. Yes, you can have a good time while they are there, enjoying each other’s company while being doubly productive due to the extra help. But, then there’s the practical side: What happens if they promise to come help, you prepare jobs for them, and they don’t show up one day? Will they expect some sort of compensation by way of a discount on books, a gift card for the store, etc? Will they know how to deal with customers who assume your volunteer is a paid, knowledgeable employee?
It’s almost easier and less hassle to pay someone a set wage for a set number of hours. Free isn’t always free… especially if they cost you sales. Will they know how to defer to customers who are perusing the shelves? Will they move out of the way?
All of these questions come up because we’ve had many paid employees yet we’ve also had a few freebies. The pro bono help has been good overall. However, we had a few times where someone promised to come shelve books and straighten our toy shelves, yet they didn’t come when expected. So, we got backed up in our staging area. I had to pay extra hours to other workers just to cover the backlog of books that needed to be shelved. Then, the free help would show up unexpectedly… after everything had been done. At that point, we need to find work for them… taking time away from our current job to do so.
