We are finding ourselves in a relatively mild dilemma at work. We have hired a young girl, just out of high school, to help out around the office 3 days a week. She is to answer the phone, do some filing, tend to laundry (we have a washer and dryer for doing mops and the towels we use in cleaning), and whatever other chores might come up. She has enrolled at our local community college and needs the money. She has our blessing to read, do homework, or whatever when we don't have something specific for her to do except wait for the phone to ring.
We are finding ourselves more appalled each day at her incompetence. I cringe when the phone rings because we have found out that her phone manners are atrocious. Today hubby overheard her telling a job applicant "well, that sucks!" when the lady mentioned that she had lost her full-time job. She can't file ..... she doesn't even do the laundry properly ...... those mops take a LOT of rinsing and she doesn't catch on. I have pulled more than one load out of the dryer and washed them some more.
She simply doesn't know how to think .... and I blame the school system more than I do this sweet young girl.
Our problem .... her mother is our very best supervisor and we don't know how she will react if we let her daughter go. But we think we're going to have to. She's just too unprofessional on the phone .... based on the things we have heard her say (for example, "who is this?" rather than "may I ask who is calling?") we don't even want to think about the things we may not have heard. She really needs the helping hand with the finances. I guess in ways we are too tender-hearted to be good business people ..... *sigh*
Gentle correction and instruction don't seem to help. We even have a video on proper phone behavior and viewing it didn't improve her telephone behavior one bit.
We've about decided that we simply must let her go but it's bothering both of us to do it. And it really disturbs me that someone could get a high school diploma and know so very few basic things about living in the adult world. It's really scary.