Lowitz & Company is hiring!

Ravenswood/Montrose, ½ block from the Brown line station
Starting pay $15/hour
Paid holidays and vacation
Warm, friendly workplace

We are a small company, and everyone wears a lot of hats here. The job is a blend of hands-on production, administrative work, customer service, and shipping and receiving. The person we hire will have a strong back and an agile mind.

We’re looking for someone who::

• has experience using and maintaining a power tools
• can lift a 4×8 foot sheet of plywood
• is comfortable entering data into a computer,
• has a pleasant, helpful manner when talking with customers on the phone
• has a discerning eye and manual dexterity

Bonus points for knowledge of WordPress, Facebook advertising, Adobe applications, forklift operation, or retail sales.

Lowitz & Company is an art tile studio-workshop where we design and make decorative tile and trim. We’ve been in business for 31 years, and we are known for quality, innovation, and service throughout the US and UK. You can see our work on this website and at Claremont Tile, our online shop.

We’re looking for someone with an artist’s spirit, a great sense of responsibility, and a broad range of abilities. You will be a member of a small, tight-knit, friendly, three or four person team.

Over the years, our company has earned a reputation for exceptionally friendly and reliable service. That’s because we hire exceptionally friendly and reliable people. We also have a good track record for finding the right people for the job, so we don’t have a lot of turnover. (Over the last fifteen years, almost everyone we’ve hired has stayed at Lowitz & Company more than four years.)

Your work will be balanced between physical work and administrative work. You’ll grind, polish and wax our handmade bronze tiles and extruded metal trims. You may spend a few hours a day on your feet, wearing a dust mask, working with electric grinders, sanders and saws. You’ll pack tiles for safe shipping. You’ll help fabricate tile display boards for our showrooms, and help with other hands-on jobs around the studio.

You’ll also share in administrative and customer service responsibilities, including entering orders and shipping records into the computer and answering customers’ questions on the phone.

Depending on your experience, you might also help prepare marketing materials using Adobe Photoshop and InDesign. If you are familiar with HTML and WordPress, you might also help maintain our websites and social media accounts.

Your happiness and success in this job will depend on your having an exceptional work ethic and being able to work quickly with great attention to detail. You’ll need both a sharp mind and a strong body. 

REQUIRED EXPERIENCE

The only absolute requirement is that you have experience working with power tools: table saw, grinder, orbital sander, chop saw.

DESIRABLE EXPERIENCE

Some experience in any of these areas will make you a more desirable candidate for the job.

• Hands-on artistic work, such as painting, sculpting, printmaking, ceramics, woodworking, metalwork or stagecraft.
• Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign
• Studio photography and lighting for photography
• PC computer troubleshooting and network setup
• Mold-making
• Detailed artistic carving
• Forklift operation
• Customer service
• Retail sales
• Tile or stone installation
• Bookkeeping, QuickBooks
• Purchasing
• Writing press releases
• Building and maintaining websites in WordPress

SO, SHOULD YOU APPLY?

While we always consider applications from people with a wide range of experience, we typically hire people who:

• have taken college art courses
• have worked at least one very routine and physical job in the past. (This might be in a factory, a bakery, a landscaping company, a grocery store, a fast food restaurant….)

It’s also good if you…

• can demonstrate that you are very neat and organized
• understand that cleaning the slop sink (now and then) is a respectable part of a good day’s work.

A BIT MORE ABOUT LIFE IN OUR STUDIO

You’ll find an unusually high level of cooperation in our studio. We approach our work as if everything is everyone’s responsibility. You’ll hear “Can I help you with that?” a hundred times more than you’ll hear “When will you have that finished?” 

We break for lunch around noon and typically we all sit together and catch up on what’s going on outside of work. 

Of course, as with any job, this job is not without its shortcomings. Polishing metal tiles can tire your arms. You’ll be wearing eye and ear protection and a dust mask. Packing tiles requires sustained focus and is repetitive (although sometimes you’ll be working across the table from a smiling face). Helping unload a semi-trailer in a cold, snowy alley requires fortitude.

Although our work is largely routine, we always hire creative people. We like to keep a creative spirit in the place, and we find that creative people write more engaging and imaginative notes to our customers and are more likely to be inventive when we’re trying to solve a practical problem around the studio.

I must make it clear, however, that while this is a creative environment, this is not a design job — it is a production and service job. The work is routine and exacting, and what you will be doing is fairly well prescribed. As you gain experience, you will find room for creativity in how you do your work and how you manage your time. And, of course, your creativity is always welcome in adding a little levity to the workday! 

I should also mention that we are flexible in scheduling vacation time, and you’ll get a week’s paid vacation after six months on the job. We also contribute to your health insurance costs.

Now if I may get philosophical for a moment: my guiding rule is that the quality of daily life is primary. The reason our company exists is to allow us to earn a living and enjoy the day at the same time. As Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” We try to keep the stress level low, and the enjoyment level high. This doesn’t mean we just hang out all day and tell jokes. We work hard ­— both physically and mentally. We share an unusually high work ethic. This dedication to doing our jobs well is, in fact, what allows us to have a good time at work: not making mistakes means we don’t spend a lot of time cleaning up after ourselves or calming irate customers. And, of course, meeting high standards gives us all a strong sense of personal satisfaction. 

If all this sounds good to you, and you have the right experience and you’re looking for a long term, part-time job, please apply!

In addition to your resume, please write a letter or note. Let me know… 

1) what kind of hands-on, physical work you’ve done

2) if you’ve ever done routine production work

3) a few words about a favorite boss or teacher

4) a concrete example of something you have done that shows your inclination to take initiative to make something happen

5) a few words about what you did not like about past jobs (I don’t like to be negative, but this question helps us know if we’re a good match for you)

6) which parts of this longer-than-average job description especially made you think you might be a match for our studio

Please don’t hold back and don’t feel you have to write brilliantly. Just tell me stuff. Ramble a bit, like I’ve done here. Let me know who you are. (But don’t spend all day on this! We typically get a lot of applicants, and we only interview a few. I promise that I read every single letter, but I don’t want you to feel like you wasted a whole day if I don’t call you for an interview!)

If you have some artwork or writing on the on the web, or you’re in a band with a website, send me the links. Or just light up my resume-reading routine by sending me a link to a couple of websites you really like. The more I know about you, the more likely I am to call you for an interview.

I know this is a lot to ask, but we take hiring very seriously. In the scheme of life, who we work with is even more important than what we do, so we like to make sure we find a good match. The person we ultimately choose to hire will understand this!

Thanks for taking the time to learn about our company. I hope that reading this has given you a few moments of reverie, imagining yourself in an enjoyable job. And I truly hope you find an enjoyable job — whether it’s here or somewhere else.