The Greenhouse Odyssey: Twenty - Diving for Pearls
By Lorraine Miller
When my younger sister Mayo was about six years old, she went to visit a friend. Mrs. Cook answered the door and my sister asked, “Can Candy come out and play?”
“No. Candy’s at church. Aren’t you LDS?” Mrs. Cook wanted to know.
My sister gave it some thought and answered, “No, we’re VFW.”
VFW is an acronym for the Veterans of Foreign Wars. WW2 was only six years behind us and the camaraderie of returned soldiers was strong. The VFW didn’t have clubs or lodges like the Kiwanis or the Lions or the Elks. They had Posts. We childishly believed our family belonged to that church. Dad was always at the Atomic Post.
A few years later, we moved to a new neighborhood with several Jewish households. That’s when I first learned my father was Jewish. At the age of ten, I wasn’t sure what that meant. Unfortunately, I learned about Judaism through the lens of antisemitism. Even though some backyards of the Jewish families abutted the Salt Lake Country Club, they could not join. Jews were not allowed membership. This was difficult for a child to understand. “Your father can belong but mine can’t?” Private country clubs across America didn’t integrate their membership until the 1980’s.
In so many ways, we are a product of our times. I came of age during the Civil Rights Era, and although there was not one person of color in my high school, I was getting an education in the ways that prejudice and discrimination shape and harm our lives.
I was devastated by the assassination of three great American leaders, John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. I was shaken by civil rights marches and anti-war protests and disappointed by America’s reticence for integration and equality. When President Lyndon Johnson created the War on Poverty, I became a Vista Volunteer. Vistas worked with impoverished communities across America. I trained and worked in eastern North Carolina. Our work included helping the community establish a daycare center and a community newspaper. One community had no running water and we worked with the city to get water to each home. Our trainers often told us that the lives of the volunteers would be more impacted by the experience than the people we worked with. They were right! I had the unparalleled experience of being with people I’d never been with before. People of different cultures and different ways of seeing the world. I experienced the richness of being with people who were unlike me, whose daily lives were poles apart from mine and yet we shared some basic human values and we treated each other with respect.
When I returned to Salt Lake, I took a job at a science lab. I considered the work a temporary position until I found employment that satisfied my soul.
The work was interesting though, and I’m afraid I overwhelmed my boss with questions about the goals and results of the experiments. He constantly told me, “Lorraine, you’ll never understand this. Stop asking questions. Keep your wooly head out of the way.”
Wow! No one should be spoken to like that. Yet, in a funny way, I’m glad he was so arrogant and demeaning. It was another powerful example of ways we should not treat each other. It tipped me over the edge. I decided to be my own boss and of course, I thought about what kind of boss I would be.
When you’re growing a business, it takes a long time to build a team. Creating a team is different than having a staff. People come and go. Not everyone thinks of their job as a lifelong vocation. Finding people that love their work, love the company and want to be a part of its growth is like diving for pearls. There’s one in one hundred oysters.
What makes people want to stay? Mostly, it’s the way we’re treated, the respect and appreciation we receive for our work. Employees are not tools or machines, they are human beings. You may not want to make a profession of being a delivery driver but at the end of the day, it feels good to leave work knowing you did your best and the people you work with appreciated it. A team effort is synergy—the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (or persons). And each part (or person) is also made bigger.
A little better than average wage is a good thing. Occasional bonuses, benefits, perks, parties and compliments go a long way in providing the glue that bonds a company. In some ways, this is easier to do for a small company than a large corporation just because of its size. Money is usually tight but it doesn’t have to be expensive and it should be part of the budget. I could not have grown Cactus & Tropicals by myself. I needed people who cared.
Greenhouse and Garden Center work is mostly physical. Especially in the beginning years of Cactus and Tropicals, there was a lot of post-hole digging, gravel spreading and semi-truck unloading. But as we grew, so did our need for salespeople, plant and gift buyers, office help, an in-house artist and managers. I needed lots of managers: someone in charge of interior plant maintenance and the growing number of plant technicians, someone to manage shipping and receiving, a facilities manager, a manager of retail sales, someone to manage the managers.
I wrote a mission statement:
Create a Beautiful Space
Live a Customer Consciousness
Provide a Distinctive Product and Service
Create a Happy, Healthy Learning Environment
Increase the Economic Well-being for all Stakeholders
Commit to Corporate Social Responsibility
What did I look for when I hired people? There were certain bedrock attributes. One was that the person be curious and eager to learn. There is so much to know about plants. It was a bonus to find someone experienced in a position but more often, it was finding someone who showed an interest in the work. I found that given the freedom to help shape their positions, people discovered and developed judgment and skills and abilities in themselves they didn’t know they had. I wanted Cactus & Tropicals to be a place where one could self-actualize, become one’s best self. A few employees, particularly those working in the interior maintenance division, chose to leave Cactus & Tropicals and start their own maintenance companies. They did so with my blessing (Just don’t steal my accounts). Be all you can be!
I wanted good people from all continents, all planets, all galaxies, all backgrounds. If we couldn’t understand someone, we needed to be better listeners. If someone didn’t know how to do a task, we could all be teachers. Such a rich culture requires mutual respect and both personal and team spirit.
