Corra Daily Planet

Bickering Employees Can Disrupt Office Production and Morale

We saw this article on the KSBI-TV site.

Office Ghouls Don’t Strike Only On Halloween
Survey Shows Managers Have Their Hands Full Resolving Staff Personality Conflicts

MENLO PARK, Calif. — Ghosts and goblins who traditionally make their appearance on October 31 may have office counterparts whose behaviors bedevil their managers throughout the year.

Executives polled in a recent survey say that almost a fifth (18 percent) of managers’ time — or more than seven hours each week — is spent sorting out personality conflicts among staff members.

The national poll includes responses from 150 senior executives — including those from human resources, finance and marketing departments — with the nation’s 1,000 largest companies. It was conducted by an independent research firm and developed by Accountemps, the world’s first and largest specialized staffing service for temporary accounting, finance and bookkeeping professionals.

Executives were asked, “What percentage of management time is wasted resolving staff personality conflicts?” The mean response was 18 percent. Accountemps also conducted surveys asking executives the same question in 1996, 1991 and 1986. Results for this year’s survey were unchanged from the 1996 poll (18 percent) but were up from 13 percent in 1991 and 9 percent in 1986.

While some personality conflicts are serious in nature, even small disagreements can cause friction, according to Accountemps. Managers can reduce office disharmony by being aware of employees with habits that disrupt productivity and nipping problems in the bud, advised Accountemps.

Here are some common year-round workplace goblins and tips on managing them:

– The Laughing Hyena. This personality type finds everything funny — especially her own jokes. She’s not aware that her voice carries and can be heard many cubicles away. Encourage employees to try to keep their voices down during conversations and find a conference room for meetings where speakerphones are used.

– The Ghost Employee. There’s nothing quite as frustrating as a staff member you can never find. Whether out on official business or not, some people seem perpetually away from the office and turn up only rarely for meetings and group events. These ghostlike characters may not realize they have this reputation — and are certainly not prone to correcting it — unless managers regularly remind the entire staff of the importance of being accessible.

– The Witch’s Brewer. It’s hard for people to concentrate on their work when they’re overcome by the smell of someone’s microwave popcorn or reheated dinner. You don’t need to single out offenders, but mention in team meetings that it’s inconsiderate for staff to eat especially pungent foods at their desks.

– The Office Spook. This type relishes scaring coworkers — especially new ones — about the hardships of working at your business. “If you think we’ve had it tough so far, just wait ’til the spring season,” he may be heard to say. Painting the boss as a fire-breathing ogre and spreading other tales of woe are this person’s specialty. The Office Spook may be someone you have to approach individually to turn around his pessimism.

Corra knows at least a few people that can fit into the category of annoying office workers. There are the four types listed and then some. There are the ones who have their inner demons, those with excess baggage, those in search of a perfect world and who will hardly put up with your menial imperfections. There are those who believe everyone desires them, and those who believe that everyone is out to get them. And then there are the ones who can always find a way to get under your skin.

We all know these people. The first thing we wonder is what made them like that. The second thing, is how did they ever get their job? Good questions. But the first requires and analyst while the second requires a sentient Human Resource management team that can weed them out before they make trouble. And trouble they will make, as evidenced by the time managers spend just settling disputes.

The wrong employees, disgruntled ones, incompetent ones, thieves and paranoids are bad for your staff’s morale. They will lower production output and keep most of your workers in a bad mood. Most employees just hope someone will wake up and make the trouble makers disappear. Easier said than done, once they are in your working environment.

The best thing you can do is to weed them out before they get the job. That’s why it pays to run background checks. Employment Screening won’t tell you everything but it will show criminal and financial transgressions and possibly substance and domestic abuse. You will discover early if someone is guilty of sex crimes and is on the sexual offenders’ registry. By reading the behavior patterns as well as the actual records, there is much to find out about a candidate, before you give him a job.

So, as Corra says, check them out before you hire.

Renting your house? Check Out Your Future Tenant.

We found this in the New York Times

Renting Out Your House

By VIVIAN S. TOY

JOYCE AND ERIC PETERSEN started renting out their house in Westport, Conn., about four years ago when they realized that they didn’t need to be rooted to one place anymore.Since then, life and family have taken them to Colorado, to Alaska and most recently to California for months at a time. But the Petersens, who are both 61, love their Westport house, and they haven’t considered selling it, even though these days they spend only a few weeks there each year.“We’re at a very flexible time in our lives, and because we can be mobile, we are,” Mrs. Petersen said. “The challenging part about renting the house out is to make sure that it doesn’t look like a rental, that it’s still your home.”

Accomplishing that, of course, requires an owner to consider and contend with a laundry list of details and concerns. “When you rent,” Mrs. Petersen said, “there are definitely a lot of things to think about.”

From deciding what should go into storage to finding the right tenant to keeping the yard from becoming overgrown when the gardener suddenly stops showing up, the Petersens have learned a number of lessons in their time as temporary landlords.

The most important is probably this: they have hired someone to act as a property manager to avoid trying the patience and good will of neighbors and friends when things go wrong. And they pay all their bills online because mail forwarding “is not what one would hope it would be,” Mrs. Petersen said.

The most obvious benefit from renting out an otherwise unused house is the income, which can pay the mortgage and other bills. “I wouldn’t do it to make money necessarily, but to maintain my property and have my costs covered,” said Kathy Coleman, an agent at Coldwell Banker Doernberg in Scarsdale, N.Y.

So whether you’re having trouble selling your house and have already moved to a new home, or you want to find a winter tenant for a summer vacation home, or your house will be empty because you’re being temporarily relocated for work or just because you want to travel the world, the following is a checklist of things you should consider before handing over the keys.

Choosing a Broker

Taking out a newspaper or online ad may work for owners trying to rent their houses without using a broker, and the popularity of Web sites like Craigslist and Sublet.com have made the process far easier. But brokers can facilitate the process by helping set the rental price with up-to-date comparable rental information, by showing the house, by helping to screen prospective tenants and finally by helping to watch over the property while it is rented out. Brokers typically charge landlords a fee equal to a month’s rent for finding a tenant, although in New York City, the tenant usually pays the fee.

Robert T. Frye, the director of rentals at Brooklyn Heights Real Estate, said, “We have the resources, and we do all the work to find the perfect candidate with excellent credit and job references.”

If you don’t already have a trusted broker, he said, “then I’d recommend shopping for a full-service broker who has a strong presence in the general market where your home is and who really knows your specific neighborhood.”

Perhaps more important, if the tenant suddenly stops paying rent, you can always go to the broker for help. “We’d of course be willing to intervene because we placed the tenant, so it’s somewhat our responsibility,” Mr. Frye said.

Finding the Right Tenants

Any landlord’s greatest fear is a tenant who refuses to pay rent and who also refuses to leave, because the eviction process can be lengthy, litigious and expensive. Finding a reliable tenant is crucial.

Brokers typically run credit checks and ask for letters of reference from employers to screen potential tenants. Sometimes, they even ask for personal references. But you can also do all these things on your own.

Gerald Garber, a retired lawyer who divides his year between Great Neck, N.Y., and Florida, rented out his Great Neck house about 10 years ago through a broker, but this year he decided to do it on his own.

He had left the house vacant for many winters but decided to rent it again because of rising energy costs. “I figured I’d let somebody else pay these ridiculous heating bills for a change,” he said.

He said he planned to run credit and criminal background checks on any serious applicants. “For a couple hundred dollars, you get a service to run these checks and find out who you’re dealing with,” he said. “But to me the most important thing is meeting the people.”

Finding someone to run a background check is as easy as a quick search on the Internet. A criminal check can cost as little as $20 to search criminal records in one state, but they can run as high as $300 for a thorough review that includes nationwide criminal, civil and bankruptcy searches.

Dan Bowersock, a broker at Ferguson Dechert Real Estate in Avalon, N.J., warned that good credit and glowing references could sometimes be misleading. “You can’t know how people are going to live,” he said. “Maybe they have friends who say great things about them, but what about the sister from Texas with three kids who are going to draw on the walls? There are so many ‘what ifs’ that could drive you crazy and which would not be satisfied with a background or credit check.”

He rents out his own vacation house in Avalon, but he doesn’t bother with the usual background checks. Instead, he finds out where prospective tenants have rented before and calls their previous landlords. “That’s the most important thing, if those respective owners give them a clean bill of health,” he said.

Even when a broker has carefully screened potential tenants, Mary Tetzloff, an agent at Montclair Realty in New Jersey, said, homeowners should make a point of meeting the new tenants.

“That way, the owners know who’s going to be in the house,” she said. “It’s also good for the tenant to put a face to the owner because then they make the connection that they are in a real person’s house and they won’t ill-respect their possessions.”

Furnished or Unfurnished

One of the first decisions you have to make is whether to rent your house furnished or unfurnished. Your own reasons for moving out may dictate which route you take. A work reassignment, say for a three-year stint, would suggest an unfurnished rental because you’re probably going to want to take your own things with you. But you’re more likely to rent out a vacation house fully furnished.

Furnished houses tend to appeal to people looking for a home for a few months. Mrs. Petersen said that because she and her husband rent their house furnished, “we tend to have people who are in a transitional part of their lives, too, people who are here on business for a few months, or people whose marriages are falling apart, and they’re trying to pull themselves together, or people who are renovating their homes and need someplace to stay while it’s being done.”

Unfurnished houses are more likely to attract people who want leases that are at least a year long, usually because of corporate relocations. When Maria Hayes and her family moved from Scarsdale to London for a few years because of her husband’s job, they packed up their belongings and rented out an empty house to a German family who had been temporarily relocated to New York.

Adriana O’Toole, the owner of Montclair Realty, said that even in a furnished rental, you should consider putting some of your things into storage, which could be as simple as locking them in a closet. Personal items like photographs and clothing should be put away, and expensive furniture or anything of sentimental value should also be considered for storage, she said.

“If you have valuable antiques, you can maybe charge higher rent, but then you risk damage to those items,” she said.

The Lease

Standard blank leases can be had for just a few dollars at any office-supply store, but for peace of mind, you should add riders that spell out specific maintenance requirements or that list important pieces of furniture that have to be safeguarded. Adding a rider is as simple as typing or writing in a new item on a standard lease. You can hire a lawyer to review the lease, but even without a lawyer, it becomes a binding legal document once it is signed by both parties.

Jay M. Heidt, an associate broker at Citi Habitats in Manhattan, said owners should consider collecting two months’ rent as a security deposit, which has to go into a separate interest-bearing account. Specify in the lease that the deposit will be returned by mail only after the renters have moved out and the owner has thoroughly inspected the space.

“You should also include a rider that says what you consider to be beyond usual wear and tear, things like cracks in the floor,” he said. “You just never know, and it’s good to be safe.”

Mr. Bowersock, the Avalon, N.J., broker, said he routinely adds a clause telling tenants that they will be responsible for having his house professionally cleaned, and he includes the name of a recommended cleaning service. “This gets you away from: ‘How do you define clean, and how do I define clean?’ ” he said. “Plus, they know going in that there will be this additional cost at the end of the lease.”

Other things that can be spelled out in the lease include what the deadlines are for paying rent, how much notice you must give before visiting the house, how much notice you must give if for some reason you need to move back and who is going to pay various maintenance costs.

Paying the Utilities

For a short-term rental, you will probably keep the utilities in your name, pay the bills and then charge the tenant, either as part of the rent or in a separate bill. But for longer-term rentals, it makes sense to have tenants take over telephone, cable, electricity, gas or oil, and garbage collection accounts, particularly because it means that much less for you to manage from afar.

Colleen Porteus, who helps her 84-year-old mother, Margaret Fay-Fleminks, rent out her summer bungalow in Putnam Valley, N.Y., once made the mistake of leaving the electrical service in her mother’s name. “That was the time we rented it out to two young campaign workers who were in their 20’s, and they were nice young men, but they didn’t clean up after themselves, and they left a $600 electric bill, which I was responsible for,” she said. “I did that rental by trust, and I don’t do that anymore.”

Maintaining the Property

Homeowners typically continue to pay the usual service contracts that come with home maintenance, including those for the lawn, furnace and air-conditioner.

“You could try to push these costs off to the renter, but it’s probably easier just to take care of it because otherwise they might not know who to go to,” said Anita Newman, the manager of Coldwell Banker Doernberg in Scarsdale. Hire someone to take care of the yard, she added, “because if you leave it up to renters, they won’t do it.”

Getting the House Ready

For the most part, if you’re renting out a furnished house that you’ve been living in, it probably doesn’t need much work.

Before renting, you should either check with a broker who is familiar with local laws or put in a call to local officials to find out about rental code requirements. Ms. Tetzloff, the Montclair Realty agent, said she routinely hands out a list of “must do’s,” including compliance with local laws requiring smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors and a fire extinguisher near the kitchen.

If you’re renting your house unfurnished, though, it might need some additional work because once your furniture is moved out, the walls will probably need to be painted, and the floors may need to be refinished to make the space presentable.

Preparing for Emergencies

If you’re going to be far away and difficult to reach, you will have to leave emergency contact numbers for your tenants.

In many cases, the broker who has helped rent out the property can play that role for a fee or by the hour, as needed. Ms. Tetzloff said she helped manage a property for a couple who moved to Texas from Scarsdale and wound up charging them only about $100 for an entire year because the house was in very good shape.

She said the tenants called on her only twice, once because “they had an odor in the house they couldn’t place a finger on” — it turned out to be an odd chemical reaction between sunlight and the material in some blinds — and once because someone had driven onto the lawn, and they needed to track down the gardener.

An alternative would be to leave a list of service people whom your tenants should use in an emergency and to set up ground rules on who pays for different services. A tenant, for example, might be expected to pay any service cost under $100, since that could be assumed to fall under usual wear and tear. The list should include a trusted electrician, plumber and roofer.

The costliest, but in many ways easiest, way to make sure your house is well maintained is to hire a property manager. Management companies are easy to find in vacation and second-home areas but much harder to come by in New York City and in the suburbs, where most management companies handle co-ops and condominiums, but not single-family houses.

The Petersens, of Westport, have turned to Janine Scotti, a friend who used to own a house-cleaning business and who now works part-time as a property manager. The Petersens are paying Ms. Scotti a $100 monthly fee to be on call once their house is rented out and to check on the property regularly while it is still vacant.

Ms. Scotti said she charges $10 to $20 a visit depending on how frequently a client wants her to check on a property.

“People who are away for months and who don’t think they need someone to check on their house are crazy, because you just never know,” she said. Once while visiting a client’s vacant house, she noticed that the furnace wasn’t working properly and discovered a leak in the underground oil tank. “That could have been a big leaching problem, so I got that tank out right away,” she said.

Bob Harding, the president of RLH Management in Port Washington, on Long Island, which manages single-family homes and condominium developments, said a management company comes in especially handy when problems arise with a tenant.

“We’re responsible when the rent is late, and we’ll loan up to a month’s rent to the account to make sure the mortgage gets paid,” he said. “It’s also the manager’s job to evict a tenant that needs to be evicted, and that can take a long time and a lot of work.”

Managing Your Finances

Finally, after you’ve rented out your house, don’t forget you have to report the rental income to the Internal Revenue Service. “You’re essentially running a business,” said Brian F. Zucker, an accountant in Morganville, N.J. “The objective is to have your revenue exceed your expenses as well as hope that the market value will continue to appreciate.”

To minimize taxes on rental income, he said, you can take the usual deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes, and you can also deduct all your expenses for the property while you have it rented.

Those expenses can include insurance, repairs, maintenance, landscaping and property management fees. You can also deduct for depreciation on the house, but check with an accountant or the I.R.S. to get the formula for calculating the allowed amount. If you capture the depreciation on the house while you rent it, though, your cost basis will be reduced commensurately when you finally sell it. Also bear in mind that when you sell, your exemption from capital-gains taxes will not be available if you have not lived in the hom for at least two of the last five years.

Corra says that if you don’t think tenants can cause your place any harm you have never seen the film, Pacific Heights. Above is an excellent article detailing what you should do when renting a home or apartment. It shouldn’t go unnoticed that a background check is prominent on your check list. So do yourself a favor and make sure your new tenants are who they really say they are, and that haven’t been evicted before or sued for damaging a previous rental.

Check them out before you rent to them.

When Employers Are the Best They Get Good Job Candidates

We found this article on Inc.com

Nation’s Top 10 Small Employers Announced

The annual Principal Financial rankings highlight the best small businesses for employee financial security.

By: Angus Loten

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Amid a tightening labor market, taking good care of workers pays off, according to a new report from the Principal Financial Group.In its annual picks of the nation’s best small businesses for employee financial security, which were announced on Monday, the Des Moines, Iowa-based financial firm identified fast-growing companies from a range of industries that use innovative benefits packages — from wellness programs to an auto-pilot retirement savings plan — to maintain “exceptionally low turnover rates.
“This year’s 10 winners, which had between five and 1,000 employees, included a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, utilities company, a Miramar, Fla., credit union, and a Saline, Mich., bookmaker, and other companies in a range of industries — from manufacturing and marketing, to agriculture and financial services.

“They’ve found ways to reach a balance between the cost of benefits and providing good employee security,” Renee Schaaf, Principal Financial Group’s vice president, said in a statement. As such, Schaaf said, they’re able to leverage good benefits to “help drive their business success, because it allows them to attract and retain the best talent out there.

“Whenever possible, workers make job choices based on an employer’s benefits offer, said Dallas Salisbury, head of the Employee Benefit Research Institute, and a member of this year’s judging panel. Employers need to understand the “tremendous value in providing great employee benefits programs.”Of the top 10 companies, eight offered automatic investment options — allowing workers to identify their year of retirement and adjust their assets accordingly, the firm said.

Two others offered automatic deferral increases, where the percentage deferred for retirement savings rises year by year, while at least one provided automatic enrolment in 401(k) plans.Nearly all made target date or lifetime investment options, among other “do-it-for-me” incentives in their 401(k) plans, the firm said.In addition, half also offered defined benefit plans or enhanced defined contribution retirement plans, which boost employees’ defined benefit options with an income or variable annuity, the firm said.

Yet, beyond providing extra benefits, the companies also found ways of making them more meaningful to their employees, said Dan McCarthy, another member of this year’s judging panel. “Whether it was immunizations of wellness benefits, financial planning or automatic enrollment,” McCarthy said. “They are enabling employees to make better use of those benefits.”

To do that, nearly every company also provided one-on-one benefit guidance or financial planning training at the workplace, the firm said.

Corra believes the essential ingredient to making a good employer is having good employees. No company will offer great opportunities unless it has employees willing to take advantage of those opportunities. To get good employees more than eighty percent of American businesses resort to background checks, among other things. These companies believe checking someone’s past history will help them ascerain whether a candidate is a good long term empllyment prospect.

Corra realizes that in a time of an often overworked and underpaid labor force we should be grateful to the companies who go the extra mile for its people. We admire the fact that these listed companies not only offer greater benefits but take the time to make sure their employees know how to use these benefits to their best advantage. These are the things that can make a major difference in someone’s life, especially as they near retirement.

So if you are not among the eighty percent of the American companies running background checks, rethink your policies and get on the ball. Employee screening is cost effective and can serve well in preventing rehires, retraining and liability issues.

As Corra says, check them out before you hire.

When Speed Dating Isn’t Exactly Dating, But A Unique Quest For A Companion

We saw this article in the New York Times
It’s Muslim Boy Meets Girl, but Don’t Call It Dating

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

CHICAGO — So here’s the thing about speed dating for Muslims.Many American Muslims — or at least those bent on maintaining certain conservative traditions — equate anything labeled “dating” with hellfire, no matter how short a time is involved. Hence the wildly popular speed dating sessions at the largest annual Muslim conference in North America were given an entirely more respectable label. They were called the “matrimonial banquet.”“If we called it speed dating, it will end up with real dating,” said Shamshad Hussain, one of the organizers, grimacing.Both the banquet earlier this month and various related seminars underscored the difficulty that some American Muslim families face in grappling with an issue on which many prefer not to assimilate. One seminar, called “Dating,” promised attendees helpful hints for “Muslim families struggling to save their children from it.”The couple of hundred people attending the dating seminar burst out laughing when Imam Muhamed Magid of the Adams Center, a collective of seven mosques in Virginia, summed up the basic instructions that Muslim American parents give their adolescent children, particularly males: “Don’t talk to the Muslim girls, ever, but you are going to marry them. As for the non-Muslim girls, talk to them, but don’t ever bring one home.”“These kids grew up in America, where the social norm is that it is O.K. to date, that it is O.K. to have sex before marriage,” Imam Magid said in an interview. “So the kids are caught between the ideal of their parents and the openness of the culture on this issue.”The questions raised at the seminar reflected just how pained many American Muslims are by the subject. One middle-aged man wondered if there was anything he could do now that his 32-year-old son had declared his intention of marrying a (shudder) Roman Catholic. A young man asked what might be considered going too far when courting a Muslim woman.

Panelists warned that even seemingly innocuous e-mail exchanges or online dating could topple one off the Islamic path if one lacked vigilance. “All of these are traps of the Devil to pull us in and we have no idea we are even going that way,” said Ameena Jandali, the moderator of the dating seminar.

Hence the need to come up with acceptable alternatives in North America, particularly for families from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, where there is a long tradition of arranged marriages.

One panelist, Yasmeen Qadri, suggested that Muslim mothers across the continent band together in an organization called “Mothers Against Dating,” modeled on Mothers Against Drunk Driving. If the term “arranged marriage” is too distasteful to the next generation, she said, then perhaps the practice could be Americanized simply by renaming it “assisted marriage,” just like assisted living for the elderly.

“In the United States we can play with words however we want, but we are not trying to set aside our cultural values,” said Mrs. Qadri, a professor of education.

Basically, for conservative Muslims, dating is a euphemism for premarital sex. Anyone who partakes risks being considered morally louche, with their marriage prospects dimming accordingly, particularly young women.

Mrs. Qadri and other panelists see a kind of hybrid version emerging in the United States, where the young do choose their own mates, but the parents are at least partly involved in the process in something like half the cases.

Having the families involved can help reduce the divorce rate, Imam Majid said, citing a recent informal study that indicated that one third of Muslim marriages in the United States end in divorce. It was still far too high, he noted, but lower than the overall American average. Intermarriages outside Islam occur, but remain relatively rare, he said.

Scores of parents showed up at the marriage banquet to chaperone their children. Many had gone through arranged marriages — meeting the bride or groom chosen by their parents sometimes as late as their wedding day and hoping for the best. They recognize that the tradition is untenable in the United States, but still want to influence the process.

The banquet is considered one preferable alternative to going online, although that too is becoming more common. The event was unquestionably one of the big draws at the Islamic Society of North America’s annual convention, which attracted thousands of Muslims to Chicago over Labor Day weekend, with many participants bemoaning the relatively small pool of eligible candidates even in large cities.

There were two banquets, with a maximum 150 men and 150 women participating each day for $55 apiece. They sat 10 per table and the men rotated every seven minutes.

At the end there was an hourlong social hour that allowed participants time to collect e-mail addresses and telephone numbers over a pasta dinner with sodas. (Given the Muslim ban on alcohol, no one could soothe jumpy nerves with a drink.) Organizers said many of the women still asked men to approach their families first. Some families accept that the couple can then meet in public, some do not.

A few years ago the organizers were forced to establish a limit of one parent per participant and bar them from the tables until the social hour because so many interfered. Parents are now corralled along one edge of the reception hall, where they alternate between craning their necks to see who their adult children are meeting or horse-trading bios, photographs and telephone numbers among themselves.

Talking to the mothers — and participants with a parent usually take a mother — is like surveying members of the varsity suddenly confined to the bleachers.

“To know someone for seven minutes is not enough,” scoffed Awila Siddique, 46, convinced she was making better contacts via the other mothers.

Mrs. Siddique said her shy, 20-year-old daughter spent the hours leading up to the banquet crying that her father was forcing her to do something weird. “Back home in Pakistan, the families meet first,’’ she said. “You are not marrying the guy only, but his whole family.”

Samia Abbas, 59 and originally from Alexandria, Egypt, bustled out to the tables as soon as social hour was called to see whom her daughter Alia, 29, had met.

“I’m her mother so of course I’m looking for her husband,” said Mrs. Abbas, ticking off the qualities she was looking for, including a good heart, handsome, as highly educated as her daughter and a good Muslim.

Did he have to be Egyptian?

“She’s desperate for anyone!” laughed Alia, a vivacious technology manager for a New York firm, noting that the “Made in Egypt” stipulation had long since been cast overboard.

“Her cousin who is younger has babies now!” exclaimed the mother, dialing relatives on her cellphone to handicap potential candidates.

For doubters, organizers produced a success story, a strikingly good-looking pair of Chicago doctors who met at the banquet two years ago. Organizers boast of at least 25 marriages over the past six years.

Fatima Alim, 50, was disappointed when her son Suehaib, a 26-year-old pharmacist, did not meet anyone special on the first day. They had flown up from Houston especially for the event, and she figured chances were 50-50 that he would find a bride.

When she arrived in Texas as a 23-year-old in an arranged marriage, Mrs. Alim envied the girls around her, enthralled by their discussions about all the fun they were having with their boyfriends, she said, even if she was eventually shocked to learn how quickly they moved from one to the next and how easily they divorced. Still, she was determined that her children would chose their own spouses.

“We want a good, moderate Muslim girl, not a very, very modern girl,” she said. “The family values are the one thing I like better back home. Divorces are high here because of the corruption, the intermingling with other men and other women.”

For his part, Mr. Alim was resisting the strong suggestion from his parents that they switch tactics and start looking for a nice girl back in Pakistan. Many of the participants reject that approach, describing themselves as too Americanized — plus the visas required are far harder to obtain in the post-Sept. 11 world.

Mr. Alim said he still believed what he had been taught as a child, that sex outside marriage was among the gravest sins, but he wants to marry a fellow American Muslim no matter how hard she is to find.

“I think I can hold out a couple more years,” he said in his soft Texas drawl with a boyish smile. “The sooner the better, but I think I can wait. By 30, hopefully, even if that is kind of late.”