Today, as a bit of a shock, we were asked by a fellow LJN Member if they could work, for free at our Nursery, so that they can learn more about plants. For obvious reasons, we will not name the Landscaper, however we will tell Phil Voice, if he needs to know.
We do not like the idea of free-labour on our Nursery, as basically we can run our Nursery with just Tina & Steve.
The idea though, of sharing our plant knowledge with our trade excites us.
Steve has worked in Nurseries for 32 years, come 1st September. Tina ran her own Garden Design business, and has 17 years Nursery experience.
The opportunity to share our plant knowledge, and experience we welcome.
To be honest, we are honoured to be asked.
Working with your customers, helping each other is how T&S Plants works anyway. It is nice to see it taken on one step further.
Thank you LJN Member, happy to help.
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Gary, helping fellow LJN Members is not your obvious strong point, so here goes, again.
Our customer, an LJN Member, asked if it would be possible for them to spend some time working on our Nursery to increase their plant knowledge, to compliment an existing course that they are doing, as a part of their training.
Please read "We do not like the idea of free-labour on our Nursery, as basically we can run our Nursery with just Tina & Steve". From our post.
Our customer will not move, water or prune one of our plants. Instead we will train them on each of our plants for two hours per month, for free.
We are offering our skills, knowledge and experience to help our customers for free.
Sadly Gary, you come over as ever, as unhelpful and not in the ethos of LJN.
They are after all a customer and a mate, so no contract is needed!
I'll re-instate my response for all to see:
Steve, reference that first line :
""Today, as a bit of a shock, we were asked by a fellow LJN Member if they could work, for free at our Nursery,""
Be very careful about how you contractually set this up. You already mentioned the word 'Work" in your post and as I understand it this could be construed as 'paying below NMW".
It has to be set up correctly so as no supply of services (correct term I believe) exists between you and your 'volunteer'.
As you mentioned on chat, it's not my problem but was trying to offer best advice - which obviously you can take on-board or ignore.
Not trying to spoil your party, just trying to impart a bit of caution and is not a reflection of what you are trying to do, the essence of which I totally support having just had a work experience student for 10 days.
I'm sorry you see my contributions as thus :
"Gary, helping fellow LJN Members is not your obvious strong point, so here goes, again."
"Sadly Gary, you come over as ever, as unhelpful and not in the ethos of LJN."
Clearly not my intention, but I'll leave it to others to make a decision on your responses.....
Delete replies, then reinstating them, so unsure then?
Cherry picking answers?
No surprise LJN Members no longer take part in LJN.
Positive post on our part, helping LJN Members, ruined again.
LJN has perhaps had it's day with people like this around, I remember when LJN was here to help our industry.
I tried to add something to your post that I felt would help you following advice we received in a similar situation.
Sorry it did not and you took it the wrong way - that I 'ruined' your post.
For that I have already apologised.
I then deleted my response as I felt it did not add to or help our discussion further and would have left it at that. However, following your response, above, I felt it should be reinstated for clarity.
If you would like, I can paste the conversation from chat into here to remove any accusations of cherry picking answers.
Gary, just trying to help an LJN Member.
Just grow up, and move on.
You know nothing, you understand nothing, so move on and stop spoiling LJN
Thanks for your understanding, Steve. Much appreciated.
This post seems to have very quickly taken an unpleasant turn, maybe initially through a simple mis understanding.
As an objective viewer it does appear that on the face of it Gary has offered advice and voiced concerns which were intended to be helpful and constructive. And for whatever reason, T & S Plants appear to have taken umbrage at these remarks and have been fairly blunt with Gary in their manner towards him.
It's all there for others to see and draw their own conclusions. Not great viewing though.