Community ClicksWhen helping out is not helping at all
I coach a youth all-star baseball team.
After tryouts, our league director chose the 13 best players for our team, leaving about six kids unselected.
Among those is a boy whose father recently died of cancer.
The boy is not very good at baseball, about the worst among those who tried out.
The community is pressuring the director to “do the right thing” for the boy and a family coping with tragedy.
They say some things transcend baseball skill.
But what about the better player whose spot he would be taking?
What is “the right thing”?
— Name Withheld, California
Your community’s desire to respond to a family’s misfortune is admirable, but I’m not persuaded that they have found the best way to do so.
This well-intended gesture could be seen as condescending to the boy who is to be helped — it says he can’t succeed on his merits — and unfair to the better player, whose spot on the roster is simply not the community’s to bestow elsewhere.
Assuming this boy isn’t stuck on the end of the bench and actually gets into a game, it will take him about three pitches to realize he’s not good enough to hold his own among the all-stars.
It will not be a pleasant moment.
His well-wishers may be setting him up for failure, accompanied by the queasy sensation of his not deserving to be there, along with the resentment of teammates who genuinely earned their place on the squad.
Some gift.
The community should consider alternatives that will bring this boy more satisfaction and do the other children less harm.
Perhaps there’s another way he could be involved with the team: Practicing but not playing, for example, or working with the coaches.
His benefactors should discuss this with his family and find out what the boy would most enjoy.
Excluding my TV set.
That, too, is not theirs to give.
Update: The league director put this boy on the all-star team.
League rules say that all on the roster must bat, but only nine will play in the field.
In his first few games, he never got a hit and did not field.
In recent games, he has gotten on base and caught a fly ball.
He enjoys playing, and his teammates — and coach — have accepted him.
Bidding coach
A freelance project manager, I was hired to find someone to fill a highly specialized job.
When I asked an impressive candidate her pay rate, she named a figure far below the industry standard.
I could have rejected her for this lack of sophistication or exploited her low bid.
Instead, I coached her to a figure nearly twice her bid yet about 30 percent below my client’s budget.
I did not inform my client about the discrepancy, and she was hired at the rate I recommended.
Did I do wrong by either party?
— Name Withheld, New York
You did right by both, matching client and candidate at a fair price.
You would not serve the candidate well by taking advantage of her ignorance of the prevailing pay in this field.
Nor would you serve your client well by lowballing the candidate.
People eventually learn the going rate, and nobody likes feeling taken advantage of.
Any economic benefit to your client would have been, at best, temporary, and perhaps more than offset by the cost of finding a replacement, which, as I’m sure you know, isn’t easy.
In general, it’s more economical to retain current employees than recruit new ones.
You might have avoided this conundrum if, instead of asking the candidate to name her price, you began negotiations by proposing a figure at around the industry norm.
You would have been in a more precarious position if your client had instructed you to find a good-enough client at the lowest possible pay, perhaps by recruiting at the gates of a Honda factory in China.
But as things stand, you fulfilled your duty to the client, the candidate, your own integrity and the people of Mars.
Scratch that last; it’s a sci-fi idea I’ve been fiddling with: freelance project managers in outer space.
Update: One year later, the new employee is still on the job, and everyone is happy.
