I hired everyone with a pulse at the height of our construction activities.  
Lots of them had records.  Mostly drugs.  One I think had done hard time for 
murder 20 years ago.  That guy had a bad impulse control and was bouncing 
around companies.  He actually quit me to go to another company but he did not 
have a firm offer and they did not hire him.  He blamed me for this whole 
thing.  The druggies typically fail.  I have only had one druggie success story 
in 40 years of doing this.  At least it is a success so far.  They all can do 
OK for a while, but they almost always relapse.  Never had a sex offender that 
I knew of.  

Well.... when I was 16 and my girlfriend was 15... it was the 70s... nobody 
cared about that kind of thing back then.  

From: Steve Jones 
Sent: Wednesday, January 5, 2022 12:42 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group 
Subject: [AFMUG] OT: hiring a person with a bad felony charge

So heres a moral pickle. 

An applicant with a pending criminal charge in general, would you hire?
An applicant with a pending felony charge?
an applicant with a possession of child porn charge?

This is one of those times where if you have ever deferred to the constitution, 
youre skirting the edge of extreme hypocrisy. But reality dictates maintaining 
a constitutionalist posture may not always be possible.

We have one applicant on parole, we are somewhat giving him consideration, 
though it was an aggravated battery, so physical in nature, but his "story" 
does soften the charge. He was able to transfer a parole out of the conviction 
state, thats not something they tend to do for non compliant parolees. Could go 
either way.

Now the pending charges guy happens to be my neighbor, my rental tenant, a 
shirt tail cousin, and my daughter babysat for him (that risk has already been 
assessed). Historically I tried to recruit him as staff, but my nephew got him 
a job in sales, and he made pretty good dough, better than we pay. As a result 
of no call no shows post arrest, hes no longer a team member at my nephews 
workplace (that kept them clean on the legailty of firing over an unconvicted 
charge)

My nephew, who was his supervisor and close friend discussed the charges. What 
was relayed to me is it was something from when he was young and dumb catching 
up to him. My nephew, whose opinion i trust has the full details and said it 
really isnt a "serious" issue. My guess is something dumb like a nude pic on 
his phone from when he was a teen of his current GF at the time (illinois 
codified that as a possesion of child pornagraphy a few years back)

His bond was only 10,000 10% so 1000 to walk, this county never sets bonds that 
low on child porn charges, so it indicates a less severe issue. Our county, 
however doesnt indiscriminately drop sex crime charges, so that tells me its 
reasonably suspiscious and beyon a pic of his kid in the bathtub type of thing.

He says hes fighting it, I assume all predators would say that.


There is a selfish motivation for concerning myself with his employment status, 
we are his landlord, and we need paid.

If I wasnt such a firm believer in the value of our constitution, I may not 
have any quandry here. Its a charge, and a bad one. But, we are supposed to be 
innocent until proven guilty, and as late we have seen popular opinion and 
guilt are not one in the same. So I hate to recommend something that goes 
against my core principles. I also understand that pending charges of any sort 
equate to lost time, but there are many reasons for a new hire to miss time 
toward the beginning of the hire, thats a managable issue. Theres the risk of 
the employee going off to prison, but again, theyre unconvicted. Then there is 
the most real of the concerns, the charge is public knowlege, not put in 
papers, but available by looking up the name in the public court files (another 
oddity, this county always publicizes arrests of this sort, so im not sure what 
not doing so is about)

But our customers would probably not be pleased to know we were sending 
pedophiles into their homes. Granted, this isnt a pedophile charge and theres 
no conviction, I think we all can agree that for the most part any sex offender 
is looked on as a pedophile, I know that until otherwise confirmed, thats how I 
look at them.

The minute I found out about the charge I reached out to a counsellor friend on 
exactly how to approach my 13 year old daughter who had babysat there. I wanted 
to ensure had there been anything nefarious that took place my line of 
questioning wouldnt make her clam up. It turned out to be ok after talking to 
her, but this is a kid Ive known since he was little and my first response was 
to assume he was a pedophile. So customers would react the same


It is a quandry, I dont forsee any way of hiring the guy even if I wanted to 
recommend it, but it does make me question my convictions I had up until this 
point considered to be very firm.



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