The Sweet Daddio Medal of Honor

And I do mean Honor.

The Sweet Daddio Medal of Honor is awarded for doing the right thing, not for doing things right.

I have a young employee. He's a friend of #1 son. He had been to the house for dinner a few times with #1. He is one of "the new friends" which #1 made after moving out on his own. He is not cut from the same material as the slacker country club kids #1 hung out with when we first moved here. I'll call him Ladd. Ladd has been on his own since turning 18, he is now 20. He has not seen his father since he was 10. I don't know all the details, but I know his mother moved them to the Deep South from upstate NY, possibly to get away from an abusive situation. Ladd was out on his own for very different reasons than our #1. His mother did all she could to support them, but when he reached the age of consent he went out to find his own way to give her some relief. He had been working at the newspaper (which is where #1 met him, but they happened to live in the same apartment building) and held that job for 2 1/2 years and was making $6.50/hour. He approached me when out at the house one evening, very cautiously.

"Mr. D, I was wanting to talk to you about opportunities for jobs where you work."

"Sure, I'll be glad to talk to you. Are you ready to leave the paper?"

"Yes sir. My girlfriend is pregnant and I want, I need to make more money now that I'm going to be a father."

"Are you going to get married?"

"Yes. She needs to stay on her parents insurance until after the baby comes, so we will get married after the birth. I'm definately going to marry her and raise my child."

"Good, that's the right thing to do. Come out and put in an application and tell the HR guy to put my name at the top."

So, I happen to have a honey of an opening for a warehouseman/inventory control person in the new warehouse/distribution center we completed last fall. No one was surviving on the job mainly because it is both a thinking and working position. It is also the highest paying wage position I have. I put him on the job and never looked back. He took ownership of the job, suggested ways to streamline the process, keeps the new forklift looking showroom new, and has not had an incorrect shipment or inventory error. I rarely "throw my weight" around in personnel matters, but I raised him to top pay 30 days quicker than the norm. I can't say enough good things about the kid. His immediate supervisor is happier than I am with the situation as well.

3 weeks ago his baby was born on Saturday morning. A healthy boy, 7 lbs something. He was on time to work Monday morning, walking 6 inches off the floor. He was obviously happy, and announced he would be getting married in about a month. He moved out of his small but affordable apartment into a house trailer in the country, so his son would have a yard to play in when he starts walking. He's been through the usual new parent issues of dragging a few days from shortage of sleep but hasn't failed in his duties.

Until yesterday.

He is always early, at least 15 minutes. Yesterday he was only 2 minutes early (which is great in my book) but looked very shell shocked. We had some incoming finished stock from the manufacturing plant to locate in the warehouse, he put in the raw materials warehouse. The first outgoing order for the day he pulled the exact right quantity, just wrong color. Something was obviously wrong. Finally about 1:00 his supervisor called and said Ladd wanted to leave early. It seems a DNA test indicated he was not the father of the baby. Obviously, he had a lot to tend to.

This morning he was there 15 minutes early (that location starts the day at 7:00 a.m. so 15 min early is an accomplishment). He and I went for a walk through the warehouse.

"Mr. D I'm sorry about having to leave yesterday. I'll go ahead and start pulling yesterday afternoon's orders right away."

"Ladd, if you need to talk I'll take my boss hat off and we'll sit here on these pallets and talk."

He teared up. "Mr D, I love little Ladd, and I'm going to be his Dad even if I'm not his father. Missy and I have a few things to work through. She says the father is the abusive ex-asshole she was involved with before me and that he came back around for a few days 10 months ago. He's one of those guys with that kind of affect on women. She's got to work out the details with him, but I want to marry her and adopt Little Ladd. I can't let him grow up with an abusive asshole for a father. I just can't."

Having a baby out of wed-lock was not doing things right, but he is certainly doing the right thing.