Small business owner - Found an employee watching videos on her phone. WWYD?

[Anonymous]

I am a small business owner. Service-oriented cleaning business. Found an employee watching videos for two to three hours a day on her phone. What would you do? (Of course, my instincts are to replace this person rapidly. But, I am curious what is the trend nowadays in other small businesses. Is watching videos, facebook etc considered normal or strictly prohibited?

[Anonymous]

How on earth can we answer this??

Is your small business pet sitting? Was the employee an hourly paid tax attorney?

[Anonymous]

Did it interfere with her getting her work done? Or was she just watching while she waited for her next assignment?

[Anonymous]

Watching while waiting for the next customer.

[Anonymous]

Oh, my bad. I see. Cleaning business. Is she paid hourly? Is she part of a crew? Was the homeowner there?

[Anonymous]

How did you find this out? Is it possible she was just listening and working at the same time? It would influence whether I was leaning towards a reprimand or a dismissal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Watching while waiting for the next customer.

So?Is there something else she should have been doing during the downtime between customers?

[Anonymous]

Adding a note, we have a daily checklist. When you await a customer, you are supposed to clean the facility, follow up with other customers, review inventory, etc. So there is a significant amount of work which can be done. The reason why I pose this question is because it is a low paying job ($12 per hour). I should have asked whether it's a norm for low wage workers to constantly spend their time on the phone.

[Anonymous]

I have a friend who owns some small retail stores in the area. It's not out of the ordinary. You may want to give a warning, and for the checklist, make a way to mark that it's done. For example, ever 2 hours they need to sign off that they did X. If they are actually doing it, they won't have as much time to play on their phone.

[Anonymous]

Just ask her to cut back on watching her phone to breaks. Don’t fire her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just ask her to cut back on watching her phone to breaks. Don’t fire her.

This.

Dealing with bad employees stinks. My sister has to deal with it all the time. She wound up developing a daily checklist of activities her receptionist has to do.

FWIW I pay my nanny $20/hr and found her laying in my couch with my gas fireplace on watching her computer and talking in the phone while my 6 year old was just sitting on the floor doing nothing. Finding people who bring professionalism into certain jobs is close to impossible. And, when you find one you treat them like the rare jewels they are. I wound up signing my kids up for more after school activities so at least in know her feet are off my couch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Adding a note, we have a daily checklist. When you await a customer, you are supposed to clean the facility, follow up with other customers, review inventory, etc. So there is a significant amount of work which can be done. The reason why I pose this question is because it is a low paying job ($12 per hour). I should have asked whether it's a norm for low wage workers to constantly spend their time on the phone.

Did she get that stuff done?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Adding a note, we have a daily checklist. When you await a customer, you are supposed to clean the facility, follow up with other customers, review inventory, etc. So there is a significant amount of work which can be done. The reason why I pose this question is because it is a low paying job ($12 per hour). I should have asked whether it's a norm for low wage workers to constantly spend their time on the phone.

That sounds like busy work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Adding a note, we have a daily checklist. When you await a customer, you are supposed to clean the facility, follow up with other customers, review inventory, etc. So there is a significant amount of work which can be done. The reason why I pose this question is because it is a low paying job ($12 per hour). I should have asked whether it's a norm for low wage workers to constantly spend their time on the phone.

You’d think she wouldn’t be able to afford that much data.

[Anonymous]

When I was in high school, I worked at a drugstore like CVS. I was in National Honor Society and later went to a SLAC. Our managers had lists of things we should do, but mostly we just talked to each other if we did not have customers (which wasn't often). Just saying...

Of course in those days we didn't have phones.

But how can you tell how much time she is spending on her phone?