Equal Opportunity Employment
Payne’s Nurseries and Greenhouses, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. This means that Payne’s is committed to conducting its hiring, firing, disciplinary action, promotion, and all other personnel matters without prejudice or regard to an employee’s age, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, or national origin. Personnel actions are taken by this company based solely upon an employee’s ability, attitude, availability, conduct, length of service, performance and other work-relevant factors.

This means that at Payne’s, what matters is not the color of your skin, where your ancestors came from, your religion or lack of it, whether you’re a man or a woman, whether you’re gay or straight, or whether you were born in this country or not. What matters is solely how well you do your job and how well you get along with supervisors, fellow employees, and customers. That’s what “equal opportunity” is all about!

Hiring
All Payne’s hiring is conducted by the company’s President or by his designated management representatives. All hiring is carried out in strict accordance with Payne’s equal opportunity policy as stated above.

To be hired, a prospective Payne’s employee must first (1) fill out an application; (2) have an interview with a member of the Payne’s management staff; and (3) cooperate with a drug test at Concentra Medical Services, the local clinic (in the mall directly opposite the South store on St. Michael’s Drive) that serves Payne’s and its employees.  Failure to pass this drug test is grounds for a prospective employee’s application to be rejected. A prospective employee shall consider him- or herself hired only after having been officially notified of this fact by Payne’s management staff.

Once hired, each employee is required to fill out certain forms contained in the New Employee Packet. These forms include a Payroll Status Change Sheet, a Form W-4, and a Form I-9. Each employee is also required to sign statements that he or she has read and understood the Employee Handbook, Workers’ Compensation Personnel Assessment, Safety Acknowledgment and our Designated Care Provider Statement.

Employees
Some employees are hired to work in the peak or high seasons only. These employees are essentially temporary employees and receive benefits as indicated under the definition of “Temporary Employees” (Section Three, Part One, C of the Payne's policy manual).