My husband had an employee that he was having some issues with. Now, here is what muddies the waters a bit. The employee is married to one of my closest friends. The job the guys does invloves lots of driving around and checking on things and meeting with clients. However, this guy was spending lots of time at home. I knew this for three reasons. 1. he was there when I visited my friend, though he usually would not stay long when I was there and would make a point of telling me he had just stopped in for coffee. 2. Everytime I called my friend he answered the phone (kind of dumb in my opinion since caller ID would show my husband - his boss) and 3. Because my friend complained to me that he would hang out at the house for hours which drove her nuts. They live out in the country and have a very long driveway and he would park behind the house, which would prevent anyone from seeing his car parked thier for hours.
I told my husband this, but he felt he really could not act on the fact that "my wife, says his wife says". But he was annoyed. He was getting calls from clients and knew the guy was barely doing his job.
One day dh was at a communitee event and talking with a man, a third man that did not know my husband joined them and started talking about how he wished he had a job like my friends husband. He then talked about how he had heard from a guy who lives on a hill behind my friends house that he was home for hours every day. The guy was telling everyone. This my husband did use. He called the guy in and gave him a reprimand and made the guy account for every minute of the day. For a while he did really well, but then he started falling into old habits. Luckily he decided to retire. My friend was shocked dh didn't fire him, but dh told me that he could not just fire someone. He was required to document so many things and so many warnings and stuff that it was really hard, especially for stuff that was hard to prove. Now he is wondering what to do if something like this happens again. Any good advice out there?