For some time I have that thought that I should share a few of my personal experiences with you. You should probably be aware that people here in Ecuador have grown up in a very different environment than many of us and many, are lacking in honesty. The following are some of my experiences in this area, since living in Ecuador.
Several years ago I owned a shrimp farm in Esmeraldas. Friendly police officers, store owners and neighbors very often pried and ask alot about the shrimp, their size and the aproximate date of the harvest. This information gets around quickly and many times I had run ins with people on the property in the middle of the night with nets, stealing large quantities of shrimp. The larger the shrimp, the higher their. I finally put barbed wire anchored to posts just below the surface of the water around the most remote areas of the ponds so their nets would get caught and be irretrievable. That, as well as an armed Colombian guard and two really mean dogs helped curtail much of that. At harvest time, workers we hired had to be searched when they arrived as well as when they left to be certain they didnt bring in their own nets or leave with stolen shrimp. Our harvest there was done with boats on the river and though we didnt find all of the ways they stole from us, on one occasion I did find a large net full of my shrimp they had sunk in the river and tied to the boat with a cord.
After some time I sold the farm and used the money to buy property near Guayaquil to begin building a chain of hotels.. I tried to maintain tight control by requiring that each person who entered or left each day had their bag and person searched. Still, on the first construction site initially we lost thousands of dollars in materials. Including hundreds of bags of cement, porcelain tile, bondex etc.. I found that during the day, at times when I wasnt there, the employees loaded cement and other supplies in a small truck and sold it just down the road to another construction site for half its value. All the employees were involved or complicit except the one who stayed guarding the property at night. I fired all of them along with the contractor. Since then I have never hired another contractor. I now control each building site personally and handle the workers personally. I had been purchasing alot of wire for the electrical contractor who constantly said he needed more. Soon I caught him on camera, acting as a lookout while one of his employees placed a couple of dozen rolls of electrical wire in the trash and then carried the trash out to the street to presumably call a friend or to pick it up later. I fired them both and refused to pay them for the last week of their work to make up for some of the losses.. Later I caught a painter who had dropped a 5 gallon bucket of paint with a cord outside the perimeter wall so that he could retrieve it later. He also was fired. I paid to put in a concrete utility pole in front of the business and paid another $1,500 for a large transformer and mounted it and a light on the pole. A week or so later the power went out. A local electrical company utility truck was parked under the pole and 3 employees were removing the transformer. They claimed the transformer was illegally placed there and they removed and took both the transformer and the light leaving just my pole... I went into the local electric company to complain and they didnt know anything about it. They said that there are alot of thefts like this and suggested I make a report with the local police. Which I did. In the end, I simply purchased another to replace it and now have it anchored with an additional cable and lock.
One day, a constrction worker on his first day said he fell on the stairs and as he could barely walk, he needed to go home early. At the end of the day I found a couple of power tools a d their batteries were missing and realized the new guy had likely stolen it. Since his grandfather worked for me and had recommended him for the job, I went to the grandfathers home and asked to search his house along with a guard that I had brought with me. The grandson wasnt there and we didnt find the tools at the time. I told the grandfather to come to the construction site on the following afternoon and to find and bring the tools, or to simply collect his pay. The following day the grandfather came to work accompanied by a couple of male family members as well as with his grandson. They had beaten the grandson severely and had him apologize to me. I recieved the power tools a couple days later after having to pay a cousin he'd sold them to $50.00. I took the $50.00 out of the grandfathers pay over the next month.
Months later, when the building was open for business, during an inventory my wife found that more than 500 towels and a lot of sheets were missing. Not knowing which employees were guilty of the theft and which were complicit, my wife simply charged all 6 employees the $1,500 by docking each one a hundred dollars from their pay during the next couple of months. Since then and by increasing the number of cameras inside the business to 16, the amount of employee thefts has decreased dramatically.
A few days ago I placed a loaf of warm homemade bread in the business kitchen along with some honey. I sliced it and spoke with one of the employees and asked her to make sure each employee shared it. Later in the day the loaf and the honey were gone and no one seemed to know what happened. I found that the female employee had actually placed the loaf and the honey in her purse to take home rather than share it.... she cried and apologized and I didn't fire her.
I share this information with you not to make judgements, but simply to make you more aware. I personally find its best not to be too trusting and I do what I can to fair but also to hold people accountable.
Ed
Ecuador
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