There's an interesting article here that talks about the aspirations of employers and what they actually get. It's exemplified with the chart above, which I would much rather riff off than the actual article. I've managed people as a line manager in large companies and it's significantly different in a small business. There is the obvious difference between skill sets in say, an IT department, than your typical minimum wage job, but the basic issues remain.
To start, as a general rule in this country, just about everyone without a severe cognitive disability, is employable somewhere. This is important, because as a small business owner, I regularly employ across the spectrum we see above. My problem, the problem most small business owners have, is we have a much narrower window of compatibility compared to big business. We have fewer positions and they're not fillable by most people.
I need an employee to master half a dozen important skillsets while showing competence in customer service. A bigger business can always shoehorn in an employee into a narrower slot. I did a lot of those jobs in my life, from word processing specialist, to chauffeur to car washer. Those jobs required you do one thing, and had little customer facing interaction and a low bar for competence.
My business tries hard to find the right fit, like every other business, but inevitably we hire employees outside the upper right box. We need competent and outstanding nice guys. If you're incompetent and nice, there's no car wash position to shunt you off to. If you're an asshole but great technically, there's no back office word processing job to keep you away from customers.
Parents regularly suggest their children apply for positions with us, but the reality is our needs and requirements are far narrower than larger employers. In fact, we never hire someone as their first job. There's too much baseline employment training we don't have time to teach.
We can train people for the job, but there are those for whom competence will be elusive, even as they master some skills. We might love that a person is great on the computer and is great working on technical tasks, but if they can't smile and develop customer service skills, or if they can't put their ego down long enough to let those skills shine through, there's not much we can do with them.
While a larger business will employ the entire spectrum, we essentially have only two viable categories: nice and competent (line employees), and nice and outstanding (managers who will eventually shine elsewhere). All others need not apply, or if they're already hired, they're usually on their way out or we're exasperated they're still around. There's exasperation with the large employer too, but in our case, we're far more likely to fire the assholes and we're always looking for an excuse with nice incompetent guy. Large employers will always keep the assholes if they're competent, while the incompetent ones can often outlive their managers.
If this all sounds arrogant and demeaning, let me tell you, nobody recognizes they're an asshole more often than store owners. Amongst my peers, it's pretty much a given you self identify if you've survived more than a few years. You've had to make hard decisions, often because people try to regularly take advantage of you.
Myself? I needed to step away from daily work at the counter because I was most definitely becoming an asshole. Just ask my manager. Don't be so surprised. To stay in the same exact job for nine years, you've either found your true calling or you've reached your level of incompetence, which for me was competent asshole in need of something else to do. I was lucky as owner to be able to carve out a new job that fit my skillset, but others aren't so lucky. It's a good enough reason as any to close your store.
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