“Amish kids show up on time, they work hard, they have a lot of common sense, and they don’t steal. . . . What employer wouldn’t want that?”
—JOYANNE HAM, B&B OWNER
Joyanne sometimes employs Amish girls to help her with the housekeeping and cooking involved in running a B&B, and she has been quick to point out the advantages of having an Amish employee—even if that employee is still a teenager.
“They have a great attitude, a lot of skill, and they actually know how to work,” she says. “In fact, it’s a little hard sometimes for an Englisch teen to get hired around here when employers have the choice of so many Amish young people to hire instead.” She shrugs. “Amish kids show up on time, they work hard, they have a lot of common sense, and they don’t steal. They’re not covered in tattoos and most of them are sober and drug-free. What employer in their right mind wouldn’t want that?”
I know a lot of Englisch teenagers who work hard and have a great attitude, but I think the transition to becoming part of the workforce is sometimes a little rougher on them than someone raised Amish.
For one thing, an Amish teen enters the workforce at a much younger age. In the eighth grade they are already preparing themselves to go to work because they know that will be their last year of school. They know that at around fourteen years old, there might be training and certification classes to take but that their childhood is basically ending.
The earliest many Englisch teens enter the workforce is at age sixteen, when they get a driver’s license. Many don’t have any real-world work experience until after high school, or perhaps even after college.
Basically, the transition from being at home and in school to becoming an employee tends to be a little easier for Amish youth. Often, the standards of work they’ve had to meet while working within their own families are already as stringent as many Englisch employers expect from them. That fact is reiterated when I talk to the men at Keim Lumber Company, based in Charm, Ohio, which employs more than four hundred workers. At present, approximately 75 percent of those workers come from an Amish heritage. Since the Amish forbid formal education past the eighth grade, roughly three-fourths of Keim Lumber’s workforce does not have a high school education or any computer training when they are hired, and Pennsylvania Dutch is their first language.
None of this was a problem for the owner, Bill Keim, who built his successful company from the ground up. He also had only an eighth-grade education. Pennsylvania Dutch was his mother tongue as well.
It is hard to describe Keim Lumber Company to those who have never seen it. The place is unique. I was told repeatedly by locals that I needed to go visit, but I put it off because I couldn’t imagine what a lumber company could possibly have that would be of interest to me. I envisioned stacks and stacks of, well, lumber.
Then one day while visiting the Homestead Restaurant in Charm, with plenty of time on my hands, I walked across the road, entered Keim Lumber, and stood inside the front door gaping. My first impression was that the owner had gone overboard in using the most beautiful woodwork and flooring possible.
There were many different kinds of hardware, all sorts of tools, both electric and nonelectric, as well as rare woods from all over the world. It was a sort of carpenter’s paradise combined with an upscale kitchen and bathroom store. It was so lovely that I took pictures.
Ivan Miller is a Mennonite and works in employee development at Keim Lumber. Because of his lifetime friendship with Paul Stutzman, he agreed to take time to meet with me. I wanted to ask about the Amish work ethic from a major employer’s standpoint. When Amish children grow up and get jobs, what do they bring to the workplace? Are they easier to work with or more difficult? Does the eighth-grade education create a noticeable learning gap? How hard is it to run a large, modern business when much of your workforce has never before touched a computer? Are Amish children prepared for life outside the home when they go out to look for jobs?
On the day that I went to meet Ivan, my husband came with me. We deliberately arrived early to give my husband a chance to check out some tools that he needed. It was the first time he’d ever seen the place.
“Did I exaggerate?” I asked after we’d wandered around for a while.
“Nope,” he said. “Not in the least. I’m in awe.”
One of the most unusual sights one sees while visiting Keim Lumber is Old Order Amish men in traditional beard and dress, sitting behind computers, clicking away at keyboards. To Englisch eyes, that sight is a bit disconcerting. The Amish, on the other hand, are quite matter-of-fact about it. They are accustomed to using tools at work that are not allowed at home. Computers are simply another tool to them. I’ve discovered that in the Amish mind-set, it is one thing to use something that is forbidden, but an entirely different thing to own it.
Paul also came that day, and we were soon seated in a small conference room with Ivan and two other longtime Keim employees who happen to be Old Order Amish. Both were serious, well-spoken, and dignified family men. Lester appeared to be in his early forties. Rudy was a bit younger.
I thanked them for their time and we engaged in a few pleasantries while I pulled out a notebook in which I’d jotted down questions.
“What are the difficulties that you have to deal with as you employ those with so little formal education?” I asked. “Do you ever have trouble training Amish workers in new technology?”
I was aware that my question might sound rude, but getting the answer to this is one of the main reasons I’d gone there. None of the men seemed to be offended by my question.
“No,” Ivan said. “In fact, we’ve found just the opposite. The Amish employees don’t seem to have any ceiling at all on what they can learn. It’s as though they don’t worry about how difficult something might be, or the fact that they don’t have any training in it. They just go ahead and master it. The Amish are great problem solvers.”
“But what about computers? Certainly that must have presented problems.”
“Not really,” Ivan explained. “They pick it up pretty fast. For instance, we had one Amish teenager working for us who became so interested in our computer system that he taught himself to be proficient in it. In fact, it turned out that he had taught himself more than either he or we realized.”
“How’s that?” I was scribbling notes.
“Well, one day there was a major problem with our computer system and we called in an outside professional to fix it,” Ivan said. “The computer expert worked on our system for quite some time before he finally gave up. He told us the problem was beyond his ability. Just about that time, the Amish kid, who had also started tinkering with the system, came in and told us that he’d fixed it. We investigated and found that it was true. He had. He didn’t seem to realize that he wasn’t supposed to know what he was doing—he just went ahead and did it.”
“My youngest son works as an IT computer specialist,” I told him. “I have some idea of how complicated his work is. I’m surprised that someone with no formal training and so little education could teach himself to do that.”
“I hate to say it,” Ivan continued, “and, as a Mennonite, I’m not against formal education, but some of the most difficult people I’ve ever had to train were also some of the most highly educated. It’s as though they had spent so much time in school, they somehow lost their common sense.”
I saw Lester, who is an Old Order minister, nodding in agreement. “Common sense can take a person a long way.”
“You have to understand something else,” Ivan continued. “There is a huge difference between the way Keim Lumber does things involving computers and the way the corporate world does things.”
I was intrigued. “How so?”
“It involves the software. In the corporate world, the software they use tends to be something designed to control their workers. In fact, the software is usually marketed with the basic assumption that the company is employing dishonest workers. At Keim that isn’t our mind-set. Until someone proves otherwise, it is assumed that all our workers are honest. If you don’t trust a member of your team, you can’t work with them, so why even try?”
“So you are telling me,” I said, “that you believe the Amish that you hire are more honest than those who aren’t Amish?”
“Don’t get me wrong.” Ivan seemed a little uncomfortable with my interpretation of his words. “We have plenty of very honest Englisch people who work here, and I can’t say that every Amish person is honest—although I wish I could. Let me just say that overall we have found most of our employees to have a great deal of integrity.”
“What about sick days and coming in late?” I asked. “Seventy-five percent of your workforce drives a buggy, walks, rides a bike, or catches a ride to work with someone else. How do the Amish stack up against Englisch workers when it comes to promptness and dependability?”
“They do really well,” Ivan said. “These are people who know how to work, and more importantly, they want to work. They’ve been brought up this way. They’re not going to jeopardize a good job by being late if there is any possible way to avoid doing so.”
“The Amish workers I hired back when I managed a restaurant,” Paul added, “were rarely late getting to work in spite of slower forms of transportation, and they were very good about showing up. I found I could almost always depend on them.”
“Do you think that is because they get more satisfaction from their work than Englisch workers?” I asked.
“Perhaps,” Paul said. “The idea of ‘finding yourself’ is not an Amish concept. To the Amish, a job is a job. Work is work, and to have work is a good thing. If it pays well enough to support their family, an Amish person is content.”
“So, in your opinion,” I asked the three Keim employees, “what do the Amish do right to instill this wonderful work ethic in their children?”
As so often is the case in conversations with the Amish, there was a respectful pause while everyone pondered the question.
“In my family, it is my wife,” Lester answered after a short silence. “She is the one who is with the children all day and she teaches them constantly. I’m amazed at what she accomplishes. She always goes the extra mile in making sure they know how to do things.”
Rudy nodded in agreement. “That’s the way it is at my house, too. My wife has taught our children from the time they were little how to help out the family.”
“In Amish society,” Paul added, “the children get up early and have chores. It gives them a purpose for existing. In Englisch society, they get up and watch cartoons. Reality versus make-believe. It definitely makes a difference in their work ethic as well as their worldview.”
Lester leaned toward me, his expression earnest. “The impact of all that training teaches children what it feels like to think that ‘I am a useful, helpful, necessary part of my community and my family.’ That is a good feeling, and it is an important gift to give a child.”
“There is a word I would use to describe how the Amish raise their children,” Ivan said. “That word is intentionality. Very little is left to chance in an Amish home. They intentionally teach their children how to work and they intentionally teach their children the value of honesty.”
“And as a culture,” Lester reiterated, “we’re able to instill this work ethic primarily because of the dedication and hard work of our wives.”
Keim Lumber is a busy, thriving workplace and I know it is a sacrifice for these men to take time out of their workday to meet with me. I thanked them for their time and left, pretty sure I had my answers. The Amish work ethic does not happen by accident. Amish children are intentionally taught how to work by the words and examples of their parents, and that ethic is modeled by everyone else within their culture. This pays off in their employability, even without formal education.
If they are going to survive as a culture, it has to be this way. These are a people for whom welfare or government aid is not considered an option. Historically, they have neither contributed to nor accepted Social Security to help cushion their old age. An Amish man assumes he will keep working until he can no longer hold a hammer or walk behind a plow. They do not seem to begrudge this fact. Work at any age not only provides income, it gives a person a feeling of purpose.
I used to wonder if the Amish are just naturally born competent businesspeople. My Amish friends are constantly coming up with creative (and usually successful) ways to add to the family finances. Abram works in a woodworking shop and raises livestock to sell on the side. Naomi and Luke’s oldest boys work full-time as carpenters. Leah, in addition to doing a great deal of gardening, has a small business in which she turns people’s sentimental material or garments into memory-type stuffed animals. (“It was so hard to cut into that lovely wedding dress,” she once wrote me. “But the customer really wanted it made into a teddy bear.”) Another daughter babysits. Another one makes rag rugs on a floor loom. One of Mary’s girls trains horses. An Amish woman near my home makes beautiful hand-painted greeting cards and has quite a brisk trade before Valentine’s Day when young Amish men line up to buy her special creations for their sweethearts.
Some of the Amish people supplement their incomes with writing. At the yearly book signing at the Gospel Bookstore in Berlin, there are always several tables filled with Amish people selling self-published memoirs, cookbooks, or books about local Amish history that they’ve researched and written. Like the teenage Amish computer expert at Keim Lumber, they don’t care that they have no real training in commercial writing—they just go ahead and do it and some of them are doing it very well.
“Do you discuss family finances in front of your children?” I ask Mary. “Do you let them know how much money you have or don’t have?”
“John and I are open about our finances with them up to a point,” Mary says. “I don’t think small children should have the pressure of worrying about their parents’ finances—but the older children know basically what their father makes, and how much we have in our savings account. We allow them to hear us discussing the wisdom of certain purchases, and how much to give to someone when there is a need in our community. It is a way of teaching them about handling money. That is why we are open with them about why we make the financial decisions we make.”
It is clear to me that Amish children are expected to pull their weight at home and in their surrounding society at a much earlier age than we Englisch tend to expect. The result is that they do not allow an unnatural childhood to be fostered in their adult children. The Amish are a competent, skillful, hardworking people. This does not come about by accident, but by a deliberate nurturing of an admirable work ethic, and it may be one of the most important things we can learn from Amish parenting.