Comment by riskable

I knew someone that didn't trust their employees (small business). In the past they ran a different small business where their own employees would steal from them (not money; inventory) and this lead this person into a life-long distrust of people in general.

The problem though is their new small business employed mostly office-type workers yet they still had that hourly/retail employee mindset. Treated their employees very poorly and had high turnover as a result. Then COVID happened and suddenly everything got better for everyone.

He was forced to trust his employees working from home and they loved it. He, of course, was high anxiety all the time worried that his employees were slacking off. I asked him, "are they not getting all the work done?" and he was very adamant that was completely irrelevant. From his perspective, if an employee was doing anything other than "work" while on-the-clock they were stealing from him. It was a pretty clear message.

As soon as COVID was over he forced everyone to come back into the office... And shortly thereafter he had to sell his business because he couldn't find anyone to work for him anymore. No idea what he's doing now but I still see people with his attitude everywhere (in varying degrees from mild to extreme).

On the plus side that guy would never ever bother his employees after work hours. Which is quite a step above employers that treat their employees as always-available serfs.