Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Leadership is Feminine. I'm Kris Plachy. I am your host, and the pet sitting saga continues.

So you listened to the last week's podcast, and guess what?

I have two more.

I hired another pet sitter just to come for the day when we went to our daughter's soccer game and she was very meticulous she had like a five-to-eight-page agreement that we had to sign which I did and she wanted all these details all this information fantastic put it all on there and I told her that the dogs that we have three little dogs. They each get a packet of food.

When I left that day, there were four packets of food. So she was only going to feed them once, which means if each dog had gotten a pack of food, then there would have been three packets. Gone, right? There would have been one left. I got home. There were three packets left, which means she only gave them one packet.

And I had a minute. And then I texted her and I said, so why, what did you feed the dogs? Because I told you that they need to get one packet of food each. And there were, there were three packets left, which means you only used one packet.

And she said, oh, and she went back and read what I wrote. And she said, you're absolutely right. I misread that. And I gave them one packet between the three of them. Like these are small little packages, you guys. Like I don't even know, six ounces of food. I don't, I have because I didn't do a good job and I need to do a good job. And so, listen, if we're going to, if we're going to screw up, this is the way to sort of handle it, right?

We had a different woman that I met that came to be with the dogs for a longer time because I was going to be out of town for six days. My husband was going to be out of town for four days.

And, um... you and I asked, you know, are you okay? Are you sick? Have you been sick? And she said, no, I just have long COVID and I've had it for a long time. I'm like, okay, I'm sorry to hear that. So she said she sometimes, if she talks too much, she coughs a lot. Well, she did talk a lot. Then she proceeded to tell me her whole life story. I mean, legit. Like from the time she started having kids, she's 60. From the time she started having kids all the things and her relationship with her children and how she doesn't have one with one of her kids anymore and you know it was it was one of those things where I just as the coach the coach in me just sort of listens and I probably let her go on too long but regardless I was like okay she's lovely she she's probably not someone I'd want to like you know spend a weekend in a cabin with but the dogs really liked her. Everything was great.

So midweek that I'm gone, she sends me a text, give me a little update, and she tells me that she hasn't been able to walk the dogs because they're really hard to catch for, to put their leashes on, and she's really struggling with her oxygen.

And, you know, it's one of those things when you're not there, it's like, okay, well, you know, do the best you can. Now, one of the things I should say is there was something about my conversation with her that also sort of made me have some red flags. And so I asked one of my team members to help me create a pet sitting agreement. And we used good old fashioned ChatGPT and I also then embedded all of the sort of expectations that I have because the more people I meet, the more I realize that we all might think differently about what it means to be in someone's home and what it means to take care of dogs. And so I put everything I can think of in there. You know, we don't eat on the furniture. We don't eat in the bedrooms. These are sort of basic things that to me I take for granted. And then when someone comes and stays in your house, like maybe I should be very clear. And I just, again, I'm echoing all of this because I think all of you listening might be able to relate. There are things that you think are obvious that are not to other people. Like when the pee pads get pee, we throw them in the outside garbage, not in the kitchen, which is what somebody did before. And when we walked in, you can imagine what the house smelled like. These are basic things that I think are true, but not everybody else does. So I tried to be as thorough as I can.

Walk the dogs every day. I recommended that they walk the two dogs, the puppies together and then walk the older dog separately. Not to leave the dogs alone for more than four hours. You know, we're paying for a full pet slash house sit. So anyway, all seemed very reasonable. She signed this agreement. It was all great. Then during midweek, she tells me she can't walk them because she's running low in oxygen. Okay. Then when I am driving home on Sunday, I decided to look at my house camera, which I also put in the agreement that the house had video surveillance and come to see that the day before I got home she had been gone for seven hours from four-ish o 'clock to 11-ish o 'clock p.m. So the dogs were alone for way more than

four hours. And the day before that, they were alone for about five hours. So when I got home, I sent her a text and said, you know, why did you leave the dogs alone for that amount of time on this day and this day? And took her a long time to respond. And she did. And she apologized profusely and said all the reasons why it happened.

She had agreed to take care of these other dogs and she had told me about that and they took too long and she was really upset and then also this other dog that she my profession or a combination of both I don't care I don't really care like the story she told me okay in the agreement that she signed it said if you have some sort of emergency and you're not you need help our son lives 15 minutes away you can contact him she could have done that she could have called me she could have texted me she could have said something to someone I just responded and said, thank you for letting me know. I think we can agree that based on the fact that you couldn't walk them and that you couldn't meet the expectations of how long to keep them from being alone, we will not be working together again in the future.

So that makes three pet sitters in just about three weeks that I have fired and who have not delivered and I'm not I don't really think it's a commentary on the profession but I think it's a commentary on a lot of things that I hear from my clients and that I notice myself and this is my perspective and you do not have to agree with me at all but I would invite you to consider always consider other ideas and I have talked about this in the past. I just saw a really good posts with Brene Brown. She's just written a new book, and she's a big favorite of mine. And she, in this clip, is talking about how we are not okay.

If you employ people, you are employing people right now who are traumatized. And many of us submit to and participate in our own trauma every day by watching what's happening in the world on the global front, in the national front, in our communities, and in our reels and social feats. We are bombarded with very disruptive, painful, disconcerting, and oftentimes dystopian craziness.

So if you're an employer right now, you aren't hiring people who are in many ways experiencing some version of repeated or disquieting circumstances. Some people have genuine trauma that they're sort of recycling through their lives every day through what's going on in the world. That's a very real true statement. We are in a circumstance right now where that is true in many cases. We have employers who are equally quick to anger, quick to frustrate, also feeling the weight of the marketplace, the industry, the impact on pricing, that like there are so many things happening and there's no way you can be a human being and be desensitized to this. Like it's just the reality.

So my perspective is I believe we all, we all have to work together. Employees and employers. Like we have to work together to achieve what we all want. Employees accept a job because likely they want to make money, they want to provide for their family, they want to do anything from pay the rent to buy a beautiful vacation. Like that's up to them, what these, what employees in general want to do.

Employers have results they want to achieve for their business and they have results they want to achieve for their clients and they have results they want to achieve for themselves through the lens of business and clients. Yes?

We're all here together and I believe that if I make you an invitation, I should be clear about that invitation. Hey, you want to be my pet sitter? Here's my invitation. Here's my expectations. You say yes to that invitation. You have said yes. That is your commitment. That is your word.

If you say, I would like to be paid to do this job based on how you've outlined it, you have made a commitment. I have made a commitment to you. But I know how many of you are listening to this that our employers are going to yell and agree with me. How many people are not doing what you asked them to do, what they agreed to do, what you would think a person would do.

But I also want to hold you guys that leaders are not doing what they're supposed to do. And that is holding people accountable. You see, I had three pet sitters in the last three weeks who did not meet the expectations that we agreed to. And I know that I was clear. So I'm not, this is not a case of me like, oh, I should do a better, I know. I was very clear. And not even really that demanding, to be honest. I cannot in good conscious hire them again. I can't do it for me. I can't do it for my animals. And I can't do it for all of you. Because if I don't hold them accountable, I recycle inadequacy into the workforce.

If I don't hold someone accountable who doesn't do the job that we agreed to, and I tolerate it, I accept it. Because why? It's really hard to find a good pet sitter. That might be true. And it's turning out to be true, right?

But I am unwilling to tolerate, well, she's really good with the dogs. This is what you guys would say. It was they're really good with the clients. They're just really difficult to manage. They really don't follow through. They make a lot of mistakes, but they're really good with the client. No, because as soon as I can't trust someone, it's over. And if they don't experience the impact of their results, why would they ever change?

And the same is true for you. If you keep tolerating poor performance, unmet expectations, chronic big deal mistakes you do not realize the consequence of your behavior either as the boss you don't learn how to how to walk people out the door how to say to them I’m sorry this isn't going to work out it's very obvious to me that this is not a good deal for either one of us so we're not going to continue like I I don't like to fire people But I really don't like having someone I pay money to that I don't trust.

And so I would just really, really invite you to look at yourself first. Before we start getting all furious, so employees are this, and Gen Z is that, and Gen Alpha is this, and six and seven, and all the things we're all talking about. Like, who cares? you know what I care about is what are you doing and it's a drag right because I as I have said in previous podcasts like other people's poor unrecycle or recycled poor performance becomes my problem and then I'm the one who looks like the Karen manager boss who fires people because my expectations are too high. No, they're not.

We have to start somewhere. And we don't have to be jerk about it. I was not a jerk to this woman. I was very clear with her. My exact message to her was thanks for letting me know. I think since the dogs were kind of hard for you anyway to handle and get on walks, it's probably better that we don't plan to work together again. Please let me know what I owe you.

You don't have to be a jerk. You don't have to be mean, but you have to be willing. And when you think about the people that you have in your business, do you protect your business's interests like you would protect your children or your pets? Because I think sometimes we don't handle things the same. But your business's interest, if you're paying someone every day to regularly fail, regularly not deliver results, regularly make excuses, regularly burden other people with their lack of effort, lack of motivation, chronic problems, chronic drama, say no.

We have to. We can't recover as a workforce, combined workforce as employees and employers, unless we really make a conscious choice, that we will be mutually accountable to one another. And the same is true for employees. Listen to me, if you work for someone who is an absolute outright jerk, please quit.

Please don't make excuses. please start looking today, you staying and working with them because, and I get it, it's easy for me to say, but because you need the money, because of the benefits, because of this, I know you can create more magic in your life, but you're not going to create it under the umbrella, under the hooded veil of a difficult, horrible boss.

And that boss does not reap the benefit of their consequence when employees stay with them. And this accountability, mutual accountability, it's an epidemic. And it's really, really, it's so upsetting. There are so many spaces in our wives right now where it's so obvious. It's heartbreaks me. It really does. I feel torn up by it. So I can only do my little part. Fire my pet sitter. And we're going to try again. In fact, while I've been recording this, my husband sent me a text. He said, I found another one. Let's meet her tomorrow. I'm like, okay, let's go. Because we have things we're doing. Like, it's, it's, we have to find someone. It's rough. But I don't want to keep someone simply because I think it's hard to find someone.

Please don't do that.

As soon as you let someone go, you create space for a new person and you're not a jerk. You don't have to be mean. And we don't want to fire people out of anger. It was really good because I asked her that question, why did you leave my dogs alone? And she took probably three hours to respond. And in that time, I took some deep breaths. I was home. My dogs were fine. They're lying here right now. Super cute. Everybody's okay. She bit off more than she could too. She made an agreement she couldn't keep. Okay. Maybe she won't next time.

Right? I was talking to my assistant. You know there's that expression. F around and find out, right? Aggressive if you are emotional and moody and difficult to work for and you F around like that and employees don't quit on you and you so it means you don't find out you don't realize the consequences of your behavior and at the end of the day like we don't have to beat each other up we don't have to be mean to each other we don't have to hurt each other all we have to do is say you know what if that's how you're going to roll you're not a part of this with me anymore It's okay. You go be you.

And I can certainly tell you in the example of this person in particular, I was complicit from the moment I let her talk to me for an hour about her life and all her problems. I was complicit. I began there. And that's why I got the weird feeling and I made the agreement because I just knew like something's not right here.

But, you know, I convinced myself it would be okay. My back was to the wall. I needed someone really bad. You know, the things you all do too.

But not again.

So if you don't know how to hold people accountable, if that's really hard for you, if your people pleasing trigger is just consuming, if you are terrified that people will not like you. If you're afraid that you're going to literally melt and fall into the ground, I understand that because I was that way for years.

That is solvable, though. And that is what I help my clients do. So much of the conversations I have with my clients are about how to really move through these difficult moments. Because when you run a business and when you run a big life, you have a lot of them and you can't duck out of them. You've got to face them. You've got to move through them so that we minimize not only their potential in the future, but the impact, the emotional trigger impact they have on you over and over and over again.

Once you know who you are and what you want to create and how you want to create it, you know how to do that. It belongs to you. once you know how to say no not for me no thank you you don't have to do it with all that emotion behind it that feels so bad you can just make the decision we move along women aren't really taught that we're taught to be kind we're taught to be nice we're taught to be accommodating we're taught to be understanding that even when it comes to our own agreements, the things that we ask for of other people, we compromise. We tolerate. We under -expect, even when our expectations were clear. And then we buy into the story that something out, we're the jerk if we hold the expectation. But you're not.

So I hope this gives you a little something, something. The trials and tribulations of pet sitting. I hope I don't ever have another story for you, but you know what? I could. Thanks for tuning in today. Bye.