Problem Employees

I'm late posting today, largely because I got off work AN HOUR AND A HALF LATE. I'm a salaried employee, so when my paperwork is done I get to leave. But I rarely, rarely, rarely get to leave early and often leave a little late (10-15 minutes, not a big deal). But tonight was ridiculous! Between the high school kid and the new employee, I felt like I was running the store practically by myself. Really, it would have been easier without them.

First, the high school kid. "If I only had a brain," sang the scarecrow. When helping customers if he doesn't know something he simply says that he doesn't know instead of reading the product or asking another employee for help. So I had a couple of customer complaints about him tonight and ended up having to help those customers myself. Then he messed up on the shared register, leaving us $40 short. Luckily a papertrail was left that had his initials on it, thus I knew who to charge the shortage to. (Yes, our company charges employees for any shortages. I don't know if other companies are quite as greedy.)

Second, the new employee (cashier tonight because I didn't really have anyone else to put there) kept making mistakes that I had to come and fix. She was also INCREDIBLY slow, such that someone had to come to the front pretty often to open another register. I'm not talking "she's a new employee so she doesn't know where all the buttons are and she wants to do things right." I'm talking "something is wrong with her and she's NEVER going to get any better." This is the employee that I didn't want to hire in the first place, but the other manager felt guilty because the girl had already quit her other job (WHY?) so she hired her. I had a bad feeling about her, another manager had a bad feeling about her, yet the one manager HIRED HER ANYWAY. AUGH!!!!!!!! And that's the manager that's transferring soon so she won't have to deal with this employee anymore.

OH, I also found out that the new employee lied about a couple of things on her job application. By that time she was already hired, though, and while lying on her application is grounds for dismissal, I can't tell HOW I know that she lied on her application because then I'd be in trouble.

Anyways, she's slow and so in order for my hourly people to get out close to on time I had to do a lot of the new employee's close out duties PLUS mine, so I was late. If I had known that she wasn't going to get things done, then I would have started way earlier to get the work of two people done.

Something's wrong with her. Her hands shake nearly all the time. Does she have a problem with her nerves, a medical issue, or is she on drugs? No, I'm serious. Something is not right about her. It's hard to describe exactly. She asked me four times tonight if she could take a break to smoke a cigarette. I let her go twice. She wasn't happy about that. Would not having cigarettes make a person's hands shake that badly? Her shift was only 5 hours long, and she had two breaks during that time period. That is more than sufficient. If she has a problem with that then she can go and work someplace else.

I've been given permission to hire one person (my first time hiring someone--how exciting!). I went through 50+ applications and called the best 8 of those. Four people are coming in on Monday for interviews. If they're good then I'm going to push for permission to hire two so that I can see if I can force this problem employee (in her first week of work) to quit. It's not like I can fire her for being slow and stupid and asking for too many breaks. What I CAN do is reduce her hours and only give her the legally mandated breaks (and give her the worst shifts and the nastiest jobs if necessary). But that might take several weeks. Help me out. I need a valid reason to fire her NOW!