Company T-shirts can unify a metal fabrication business

In a metal fabrication shop, workers come and go. Unfortunately, so do the company branded T-shirts they are given. Nick Martin of North Carolina-based Barnes MetalCrafters writes how T-shirts with a company logo should be earned. Getty Images

I’ll go ahead and throw this out there. I have a ton of T-shirts.

Anyone that knows me knows that may be an understatement. Go ahead and add hats, jackets, and shoes too. But my T-shirt collection on my side of the bedroom drawers is a bit ridiculous. Honestly, there isn’t much space on my wife’s side of the clothes storage since I have a whole dresser full of them and they have spilled over into the closet with my work clothes.

Like many people in the metal fabrication industry, you probably have a T-shirt or a collared shirt with your logo on them. And you probably wear something with your name on it every day, especially if you’ve worked there for a while. Since it is nearing Halloween, I figured it would be a good time to tell you about the curse of the T-shirts at our shop.

T-shirts come from all over the place: sporting events, presents, souvenirs, or even a shop uniform. We haven’t always supplied T-shirts or uniforms, but once we did, it kind of unified the shop and we looked quite a bit more professional. I remember when I first started working at the shop, any T-shirt I wore to work better not have been a good one. It was bound to get so dirty that it would never be the same color again. The welders were even worse—it looked like someone used their T-shirt as target practice with a shotgun. There is no way around the holey mess unless you wear a welding jacket, but that is not always feasible in a hot shop.

So when my dad and Barnes MetalCrafters owner, Tim, decided to buy everyone's shirts, it was a big deal. When he first gave a few shirts out to each employee, they wore them nearly every day, for the most part. Everyone was appreciative and we all proceeded to ruin them accordingly around the shop. The problem was that several people almost expected a new shirt whenever it got dirty or a couple small holes. The shirts slowly disappeared, and we went several months without restocking them.

By the second round of shirt ordering, most of the same crew was still around, but there were a couple new guys. This time, we decided to give everyone five shirts, and we switched up the colors a bit. It was obviously more expensive, but we started to look like a team again. One thing I noticed is that one of the guys that got new shirts quit about two weeks later. My dad was not happy that we just gave this guy new work wear and then he left us. But there wasn’t much we could do about it.

We had several shirts left from the order, and we got a new employee. Without anyone thinking, he was given several new T-shirts. I spoke up to my dad and said, “Are you sure you want to give this guy several new shirts when we don’t even know if he is going to cut the mustard?” My dad wasn't too concerned, and sure enough, a couple weeks later, we had to let him go. Several more shirts down the drain.

So by now, we kind of wised up to it. Put in a few months of hard work, give us some confidence that you are going to make it, and then we will think about providing a uniform. We hired another employee, and we noticed he wore a different T-shirt from different fabrication companies nearly every day in our job shop. I talked to the shop lead man, Nick Trueheart, and we started asking him questions about the different shirts he was wearing. He would grunt and tell us a story or two about each flavor of the day. We weren't too impressed. He seemed like a job hopper. Needless to say, he wasn’t going to get any shirts from us.

The next day I came to work, he was wearing a Barnes MetalCrafters T-shirt. I didn’t say anything out loud, but inside I was wondering who in the hell gave this guy a shirt, let alone several of them. We did some research and found out that one of our co-workers, without permission, decided he was the welcome wagon and went in the closet to get him some shirts. We were not happy, and all the employees were instructed to stay away from the shirts. So, a couple weeks went by and the guy didn’t show up for work. He apparently quit and moved with a bunch of our new shirts. The story repeats itself. Are our Barnes MetalCrafters shirts cursed?

Fast forward several years, and some of our employees have several shirts from years past. We have grown much wiser in our disbursement of threads. We now wait two to three months before handing the shirts over to new employees. I mentioned to Nick recently that I was going to write about the curse of the shirts. "That is a good one!" he said. “It’s true, I’ve seen it!” It has happened several times. If we give you T-shirts too early, you will work at our shop for only a few more weeks.

An assortment of Barnes MetalCrafters T-shirts.

Another thing is that our name is on those shirts. I learned a long time ago while wearing my soccer uniform to school on game days that I was representing our team. Same goes for any established business or organization. Don’t do anything stupid that will effect their integrity or representation while wearing their name.

Now, new employees don’t typically ask until they work here for a little while. However, I did have one new worker bug the hell out of me about shirts for several weeks. Some days I would avoid him so I wouldn’t have to deal with it. Little did he know that he didn’t need the shirts because he was going to get let go. He didn’t cut the mustard.

So when you get a new employee, be kind, but hold back on the threads for a bit. They may end up as shop rags or work shirts at some company up the road. At least they are doing a little bit of advertising if they are worn in public—hopefully the positive kind of promotion.