Loosening up restrictions (for employees) on certain types of images: tattoos, piercings, mode of dress, etc.
Bringing in outsiders for senior leadership positions that do not share Christian values. But hey, they got them "I am smart papers!"
Loosening up standards on employee behavior "because its getting hard to hire people who want to work."
I could go on.
Forgot some other substantial ones.... like turning heads the other way over inappropriate workplace relationships. Not doing random or pre-employment drug testing for fear of what the results may be.
When a company has a Human Resources department that consists of one person and five years later there now are four? That should raise some eyebrows
0 x
Formerly know as steve-in-kville
Hippie Anabaptist, husband, father & grandfather (recently!)
Semi-professional philosopher & poet.
Loosening up restrictions (for employees) on certain types of images: tattoos, piercings, mode of dress, etc.
Bringing in outsiders for senior leadership positions that do not share Christian values. But hey, they got them "I am smart papers!"
Loosening up standards on employee behavior "because its getting hard to hire people who want to work."
I could go on.
I know that has seemed to happen with some of the companies you mentioned, your employer for example, but I know of others where I don't think any of those things have happened, and your description would apply:
the-real-steve wrote: ↑Sat Sep 26, 2026 5:43 pm
All started as a family operation. Grew to have multiple locations, most with locations in other states. Some of these are on the second, third and even fourth generation of family leadership. It may have went from a handful of employees to perhaps dozens or even hundreds.
One such business in your area that I have in mind fits this description. I don't think they have gone down the path you describe, although I don't know as much about their hiring practices as about other aspects of their business. I do some business with them and one of their senior partners is my occasional business advisor.
mike wrote: ↑Sat Sep 26, 2026 6:04 pm
One such business in your area that I have in mind fits this description. I don't think they have gone down the path you describe, although I don't know as much about their hiring practices as about other aspects of their business. I do some business with them and one of their senior partners is my occasional business advisor.
Truth be told, and I'm not attacking anyone here, they all have their shenanigans. They also employ some very good people in senior management as I know one or two of them.
0 x
Formerly know as steve-in-kville
Hippie Anabaptist, husband, father & grandfather (recently!)
Semi-professional philosopher & poet.
I would agree that business growth and erosion of morals and ethics can tend to be intertwined, but I'm unsure if one always predates the other.
For instance - take a trucking/transportation business. Grandpa had a truck and did local hauling. He was good at his job, treated his customers fairly, always showed up on time. Left early some mornings but unless he had a breakdown or something very unexpected, he was home for supper and family worship every evening. His boys helped him work on the truck in the shop on Saturdays, and he would take one or two of them along with him during the day in the summertime. After a couple years, grandpa buys another truck and hires a driver to run it, someone he knows from church one year, a younger brother another year, etc. Providing work for people he knows and who have the same kind of values as he does. Same type of hauling, same kind of hours, etc. A few years later he buys another truck, does the same thing.
Then his boys grow up and join the company, and changes start to happen. One of their main customers expands, adding a regular freight run to a city about 450 miles away. The customer is extremely pleased with the service they've always received from Grandpa & Sons Trucking - would G&ST please consider servicing this new route for them. It's too good of an opportunity to turn down, so Dad and Uncle Dan agree that they will take turns on this run. It's just two runs per week, so if they share it out each of them is only gone one night per week. Grandpa isn't real happy - he's always thought it was important for a father to be home almost every night - but the boys think it will be OK. They'll make it up by working shorter hours the other days. Dad and Uncle Dan continue to expand the operation, buying more trucks, finding more customers. A greater percentage of their runs are regional now rather than local, but the drivers they are hiring (advertising on Facebook, the local paper, job boards, etc) don't mind - they like the hours and the income. The drivers who are doing the longer hauls (long distance, now) like to leave out early Monday morning so they can finish their run and be home by noon on Friday. They're leaving at 12:01 AM Monday morning - company policy says they can't leave earlier than that. But they keep asking, "Can't I leave Sunday evening after dark? I like driving at night. I keep my Sabbath on Saturday, why can't I leave on Sunday?" Some of the drivers start leaving an hour early. The dispatcher doesn't care - Sunday work never bothered him. HR doesn't care - she never had a problem working Sundays. By the time Uncle Dan, now president of GST, finds out that trucks are regularly leaving at 10PM Sunday night, there's ten drivers doing it and they have no intention of going back to Monday morning start time. And as company president, Uncle Dan has enough other things going on that he lets it slide. He wouldn't work Sundays himself (well, except for handling emergency schedule changes, driver call-offs, and, occasionally, other paperwork that didn't get done Saturday but needs to be finished before Monday), but if the drivers do it on their own he isn't going to make a fuss about it. Officially, the company doesn't work Sundays.... but he doesn't tell the drivers they can't. By the time Grandson is in charge of operations, there's well over 100 trucks. A lot of drivers are back every weekend, and the service department can't handle everything on Saturday. Plus the drivers that are leaving out Sunday evening sometimes need a mechanic to fix the last minute issues that come up - a truck that won't start, a trailer light out, etc. So now the shop runs a Sunday afternoon shift. The port account needs trucks there to receive cargo off of a ship on Sunday morning, and the salesman promised to make it happen. So the trucks go out Sunday morning to offload the ship. And so it goes....
ken_sylvania wrote: ↑Sat Sep 26, 2026 6:42 pm
I would agree that business growth and erosion of morals and ethics can tend to be intertwined, but I'm unsure if one always predates the other.
For instance - take a trucking/transportation business. Grandpa had a truck and did local hauling. He was good at his job, treated his customers fairly, always showed up on time. Left early some mornings but unless he had a breakdown or something very unexpected, he was home for supper and family worship every evening. His boys helped him work on the truck in the shop on Saturdays, and he would take one or two of them along with him during the day in the summertime. After a couple years, grandpa buys another truck and hires a driver to run it, someone he knows from church one year, a younger brother another year, etc. Providing work for people he knows and who have the same kind of values as he does. Same type of hauling, same kind of hours, etc. A few years later he buys another truck, does the same thing.
Then his boys grow up and join the company, and changes start to happen. One of their main customers expands, adding a regular freight run to a city about 450 miles away. The customer is extremely pleased with the service they've always received from Grandpa & Sons Trucking - would G&ST please consider servicing this new route for them. It's too good of an opportunity to turn down, so Dad and Uncle Dan agree that they will take turns on this run. It's just two runs per week, so if they share it out each of them is only gone one night per week. Grandpa isn't real happy - he's always thought it was important for a father to be home almost every night - but the boys think it will be OK. They'll make it up by working shorter hours the other days. Dad and Uncle Dan continue to expand the operation, buying more trucks, finding more customers. A greater percentage of their runs are regional now rather than local, but the drivers they are hiring (advertising on Facebook, the local paper, job boards, etc) don't mind - they like the hours and the income. The drivers who are doing the longer hauls (long distance, now) like to leave out early Monday morning so they can finish their run and be home by noon on Friday. They're leaving at 12:01 AM Monday morning - company policy says they can't leave earlier than that. But they keep asking, "Can't I leave Sunday evening after dark? I like driving at night. I keep my Sabbath on Saturday, why can't I leave on Sunday?" Some of the drivers start leaving an hour early. The dispatcher doesn't care - Sunday work never bothered him. HR doesn't care - she never had a problem working Sundays. By the time Uncle Dan, now president of GST, finds out that trucks are regularly leaving at 10PM Sunday night, there's ten drivers doing it and they have no intention of going back to Monday morning start time. And as company president, Uncle Dan has enough other things going on that he lets it slide. He wouldn't work Sundays himself (well, except for handling emergency schedule changes, driver call-offs, and, occasionally, other paperwork that didn't get done Saturday but needs to be finished before Monday), but if the drivers do it on their own he isn't going to make a fuss about it. Officially, the company doesn't work Sundays.... but he doesn't tell the drivers they can't. By the time Grandson is in charge of operations, there's well over 100 trucks. A lot of drivers are back every weekend, and the service department can't handle everything on Saturday. Plus the drivers that are leaving out Sunday evening sometimes need a mechanic to fix the last minute issues that come up - a truck that won't start, a trailer light out, etc. So now the shop runs a Sunday afternoon shift. The port account needs trucks there to receive cargo off of a ship on Sunday morning, and the salesman promised to make it happen. So the trucks go out Sunday morning to offload the ship. And so it goes....
This is my employer almost word for word. Without looking it up, if we don't have a hundred trucks, we're pretty close. I have my own opinions on leaving Sundays myself. My wife does as well
0 x
Formerly know as steve-in-kville
Hippie Anabaptist, husband, father & grandfather (recently!)
Semi-professional philosopher & poet.
An ongoing question in some OO circles is whether or not you should hire someone to do something you wouldn't do yourself.
Some groups are leaning towards the "We should avoid that sort of thing" mindset. For example, the Scottsville-type churches refrain from hiring drivers. They will use public transportation under the consideration it is an entire system, with drivers or railroad engineers who get breaks, etc. that would exist whether or not they decided to ride the train or not. But with a van driver - it is rather obvious when a person's livelihood depends on hauling Amish people around.
This is not a new debate. Some dairies used to dump milk on Sundays because they were unwilling to accept a milk truck driver having to drive to their farm to collect the milk on a Sunday.
Obviously, it's "better for business" (in the short term) to just work your employees 7 days a week and not care about things like them being home in the evenings or free to attend church on Sundays. The shrewd entrepreneur will justify this by saying those people are worldly and wouldn't be attending church anyway, and don't have families. This is simply a sign of people who no longer see their employees as a mission field.
JohnH wrote: ↑Sun Sep 27, 2026 9:40 am
This is simply a sign of people who no longer see their employees as a mission field.
I don't view my employees as a "mission field". I stick w the traditional Mennonite view regarding missions. The groups that embraced it have been as successful as the ones who started colleges.
JohnH wrote: ↑Sun Sep 27, 2026 9:40 am
This is simply a sign of people who no longer see their employees as a mission field.
I don't view my employees as a "mission field". I stick w the traditional Mennonite view regarding missions. The groups that embraced it have been as successful as the ones who started colleges.
Interesting. I view employees, employers, vendors, customers, and random guys on the street as my mission field.
JohnH wrote: ↑Fri Sep 25, 2026 9:42 am
For a seeker in a "high tech" career, I would caution against trying to change careers too quickly. Most other types of jobs and businesses don't produce large amounts of income with relatively little work. It could be a big adjustment to try to shift, and many other Anabaptists have a head start since they've been working in a family business since they could hold a harmer, and full time since they were 14. (Most Anabaptists reject higher education, such as 9-12th grade education, which ties in to family formation and sustainable family sizes.)
Indeed. I am glad that I have stuck with my office job in a technical field.
Sorry to quote myself...but continuing this thought, how do people like us get the next generation, especially sons, ready to participate in the Mennonite economy?
I have no idea. I've given this a lot of thought, and really don't have great answers, other than to make sure I am doing things outside of my "profession" so my kids have other things to do.
It's pretty hard to get the whole family involved in, for example, sitting around reverse engineering the MTP processor on an Apple Silicon based computer.
Indeed. I am glad that I have stuck with my office job in a technical field.
Sorry to quote myself...but continuing this thought, how do people like us get the next generation, especially sons, ready to participate in the Mennonite economy?
I have no idea. I've given this a lot of thought, and really don't have great answers, other than to make sure I am doing things outside of my "profession" so my kids have other things to do.
It's pretty hard to get the whole family involved in, for example, sitting around reverse engineering the MTP processor on an Apple Silicon based computer.
Or try to teach your children how to place a trach...
