asking employee to have their eyes checked, frustrated with daughter’s new job, and more

by Alison Green on July 15, 2024

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. I’m frustrated with my daughter’s new job

Our daughter is struggling. Her job has asked her not to come in for the rest of the month as they are “giving her time to work on herself.” She is a new employee of a brand new ice cream shop that hired 25 people to work as shift leads, managers, and worker bees. This is her first job at the age of 19. She is also a student in culinary school.

Because she is over 18, she almost exclusively works the evening close shift and seems to be scheduled for every Saturday and one other day during the week. Often the manager when she works is the same person who we are reasonably sure is related to the owners somehow.

She left early on one shift due to the smell of something they were making that made her extremely nauseous. She left right at close another time when her manager told her it was okay for her to leave since she was struggling with sore muscles and an injured wrist after wakeboarding earlier in the day. She left early in her last shift due to inexplicable loss of bladder control while washing dishes (which was mortifying and certainly not planned). On another day, she had failed to take her anxiety meds and let the owner know she was struggling to cope appropriately with stress on that occasion, but has since not had any issues with that.

She has been honest with them about her anxiety and ADHD. The employees were apparently told by the owner the first week of training to be open and honest and they would work to accommodate needs. But apparently she has had too many needs? She discovered that the two four-hour shifts she was given for this week were removed. No one spoke to her about it. She was notified in a email, but was still scheduled for two shifts next week.

She texted the owner to ask if that was done because of her most recent issue with her bladder and the owner texted her and said they don’t feel she is a team player and can be relied on. And every communication is via text, not on the phone voice to voice. Super frustrating since we all know that typed messages are often misinterpreted. She has been in tears.

I am not inclined to get involved but my mom heart hurts to watch her trying so hard to conform to what they want and getting her already fragile self-esteem thrown in the trash. I know she is not the only employee with issues and concerns. Why does it feel like she is being singled out for not being an easy employee?

This is food service; if you’re not reliably there or have to leave early a lot, it can mean they just take you off the schedule — or at least schedule you less. It sounds like she left early from four shifts at a brand new job, so it’s not surprising that they’re prioritizing scheduling other people.

I know you’re thinking these were all legitimate reasons to go home, but on their side of it, what they see is a pattern of not reliably working full shifts. Four times in a short period is a lot, regardless of the reason. That doesn’t mean she’s a bad person or not capable of having a job; it just means that this particular job doesn’t think they can rely on her right now.

I get that it sucks that the owner encouraged people to be open about their needs and then she was penalized for it. But it’s could be a good opportunity to talk about what that really means in a work context and how to navigate it, and what will and won’t be considered reasonable or excessive (because in very few jobs will it mean endless patience for whatever you need; it’s a balancing act that takes a while to understand when you’re new to work).

(The texting is also very normal and a thing she should expect in food service jobs; it’s faster than calling because they don’t need to wait until they can reach someone on the phone.)

2. Is this 18-month process typical to fire someone who doesn’t do their work?

I’m a director of a small group of people in a very large professional organization. My team is all remote workers, which generally works out well. I’m not a micromanager by nature, and given our remote status, I can only ascertain someone’s work by their output.

I have one employee who I know has been suffering from mental health issues. This has manifested in, as near as I can see on my end, them “checking out” and doing zero work for days at a time. Work orders would go untouched, and I would receive complaints from other leaders when their tickets had no action. People began to dread when their tickets were assigned to this person because it typically meant a slow process. I began with talking to them in our biweekly meetings and when things didn’t improve, I had to move to HR and PIPs.

I’m sympathetic to their mental health issues and offered solutions such as FMLA, PTO, and our employee health services. PTO was used here and there for some scheduled vacations but also largely on days when we had a scheduled team meeting, I think as a way to avoid me/the team. Things didn’t improve and, while I kept HR looped in every step of the way, their solution was to keep issuing PIPs, just PIP level 1, PIP level 2, PIP level 3, etc. It was ridiculous, in my opinion, and drug out for over 18 months because the employee would improve for a couple of months after receiving a PIP, and then backslide again. After PIP level 3 should have been termination. When I got to that point, I had a meeting with HR and expressed my continued concerns and thought they would support me in my desire for termination, but our HR rep wanted to know what I had done to coach and guide this person before getting to this point.

I’m kind of incredulous. I work with and hire adults. We have had numerous conversations over the past year, and at the last PIP level 3 meeting, I told the employee that this was the last step before termination. I feel like HR wants me to be a kindergarten teacher and baby everyone. I can coach someone on how to do their job better, or how to better communicate, or how to better handle a process — but coaching someone on actually coming to work every single day seems wildly out of line. Is this normal for large organizations, where it takes an act of congress to terminate someone who is quite obviously not working out?

No, it’s not normal, but you do see it in incompetently run organizations. It’s possible they’re being extra cautious with this person because of the health issues, but even accounting for that, this is a ridiculous process. PIPs don’t need three levels, and they don’t need 18 months (!). They should be a few months at most (often less, depending on the nature of the issues and the nature of the work), and they should include a clear statement that improvement must be sustained; if the problems recur, you don’t repeat the whole process.

In organizations that move as slowly as yours (or even half as slowly), it can help to ask HR at the very start of the process to lay out the process in its entirety — what will be required of you when, and what the timeline will look like. Sometimes if you know what they’ll want to see later in the process, you can work on documenting that you’ve done it early on, and that can save time and aggravation later. It’s also possible that your HR person’s inquiry into what you’ve done to coach the person up until this point doesn’t actually mean, “We’re ignoring everything that came before today and we want you to start from scratch”; it might just be a thing they’re required to document at this stage, and it’s easier to ask you than to go back through all the previous records. You should say directly, “My understanding was that having gone through 18 months of performance management and three levels of PIPs, we would terminate if improvement was not demonstrated. If that’s not the case, what exactly needs to happen between now and when we would be at that point?”

3. Can I ask an employee if they need an eye exam?

I supervise someone who is a few decades older than me. Normally this isn’t a problem for them or me, but it’s making me hesitate to bring something up. Lately they have been submitting things that look blurry or pixelated. This has happened 3-4 times across 3-4 different contexts. It’s always right on the edge, something that I think needs to be crisper and they think can pass or that they didn’t notice. It’s a low stakes issue — I just ask that the photo be swapped — but it’s enough times now that I’m wondering if they need to have their close-up vision checked. However, is that something a supervisor can even bring up? Is it something I would even think about if the person was my age, or would I assume it was just carelessness? For the record, my vision is terrible, so having my eyes checked is always top of mind for me.

Handle it way you would if they were 25, which (hopefully!) means just naming the pattern you’re seeing: “Several times recently, you’ve submitted work that’s looked blurry or pixelated. Can you look into what’s causing that, whether it’s an issue with the tools you’re using to create them or something else?”

If that doesn’t solve it, the next time it happens look at the blurry item together and ask if they can see what you’re talking about. If they can’t, the by-the-book answer is to flag for them that it’s an issue and ask them to look into tools to help them see whatever they’re producing more sharply. Maybe they’ll decide that’s glasses, maybe they’ll decide it’s a magnifier or something else — up to them.

4. Do I have to say who my competing offer is from?

This happened a few years ago, but I realized recently that I still don’t know what the right move would have been. I was interviewing and Job A made an offer. I told Job B this and asked for an update on their decision. In response, Job B asked who Job A was.

I told them. (I ultimately didn’t get an offer from B. They didn’t end up hiring anyone for that role.) I get that it’s not necessarily private or sensitive information, but it felt gauche for them to ask. Was that reaction warranted? Would it have been okay/normal to decline to tell them who the exact other offer was from? If so, what might have been reasonable wording?

I agree it’s a little gauche of them to ask, although some employers do this. They’d defend it by saying that knowing who your offer is from helps them understand if they’re likely to be able to compete with it (and they can save you both time if they know they can’t) or helps them better understand the totality of your situation and you as a candidate. But it’s really none of their business and you don’t need to disclose it if you don’t want to.

It’s fine to say, “I’d rather not share that at this point; I’m just hoping for an update on your timeline.”

Related:
what does it mean when an employer says, “let us know if you get any offers”?

5. Giving lots of advance notice of a layoff

How do you feel about giving advance notice of an impending layoff that is truly only for financial reasons? The setting in question is a small business (very small) and with some other recent income-generating-staff departures, we no longer need or can afford as much administrative support.

The administrative professional in question is amazing and I stand prepared to give a wonderful reference, but I also think she may struggle in the job market because of possibly encountering bias (she is a visible minority, and I think unfortunately may be subject to discrimination). So I want to give her as much lead time as possible to begin seeking new employment.

How long is too long? Can I tell her 3+ months in advance, “In the fall our budget will be tighter and we may not have room for your position,” thus essentially asking her to begin looking for work? Or should I limit it to a shorter time period such as 4-6 weeks? I truly want the best for her and am heartbroken that I am having to make this decision.

It’s true that much of the conventional wisdom around layoffs says to avoid much/any notice (and to instead offer severance in lieu of notice) because otherwise you open yourself up to sabotage from bitter soon-to-be-former employees, or people slacking off and barely working or affecting the morale of other people. But that’s not your situation! This is a small business, you describe the employee as amazing, and it doesn’t sound like you have reason to be worried about any of those things.

So give her as much notice as you can. Also, if you’re sure you will be laying her off in the fall, don’t say you “may not” be able to keep her. Be clear and direct and tell her that you will need to cut her position then so that she’s very clear on what will be happening. Otherwise, she may not move as quickly or aggressively in a job search, thinking that she might be kept on.

Let her know that it’s purely a financial decision and has nothing to do with her work, she’s great, and you’ll give her a glowing reference as she’s searching. Also, if you can use your network to try to help, do! It’s tough to find really great admin support, and you might be able to make someone in your network very happy by connecting them.

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{ 712 comments }

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  1. Stoli*

    Let her make her way with her employer Mom. That’s a lot of leaving for various reasons. Food service may not be the best field for her.

    1. Daria grace*

      It’s a shame our society treats food service as low skilled and undemanding when it is neither. My health issues are less serious than it sounds like the daughter in the letter has and I don’t think I could manage it. It’s definitely not the right job for everyone

        1. WoodswomanWrites*

          Same. When I was in college, I always marveled that other students could manage food service jobs and was lucky to get part-time office jobs. I still am in awe of people who can do food service work.

        2. Snoodence Pruter*

          Yeah I have a messed-up back and there’s just no way. Food service is hard.

        3. Irish Teacher.*

          Yeah, when I was in college, I did work experience with a Youth Service. My first day, the person who was to be my boss was unavilable so the big boss asked if I would spend a day helping out in the canteen (which was sort of work training for some of the young people they were working with as well as providing food for staff and young people), mainly to give me a sense of the young people they were working with and meet staff and young people and so on.

          It was enough to tell me I never wanted to work food service. And that wasn’t even equivalent to the real job as all the customers were staff and young people involved with the service and all knew I was only helping out for the day and was not trained or experienced and therefore there was far less pressure than there would be from the general public.

          I’m not actually sure there is any such thing as a “low skilled and undemanding” job. It’s just that society tends not to consider stuff like soft skills as being real and challenging skills.

          1. I can read anything except the room*

            Low-skilled and undemanding: The closest I can come up with is the most coveted on-campus jobs back when I was in college: the student workers who were hired to sit at the security desk at the entrance to every dorm building, with round-the-clock shifts, to make sure that residents signed in their guests and weren’t letting in random people who might otherwise loiter around the entrance and try to slip on on someone else’s ID swipe, as well as assist the occasional resident who had misplaced their ID and needed to be looked up in the computer system and let in after their identity was verified.

            They had no other tasks they were instructed to work on when none of the above was happening, and were allowed to read books or do homework as long as they were attentive whenever residents were entering the building. The number of students they needed to staff these positions was so few and the hiring so competitive that it was nearly impossible to get one of these jobs without a personal recommendation from someone already doing the job, so it was a fairly exclusive club.

          2. History Nerd*

            Like so many other things in the United States, “low-skilled” jobs such as food service were separated out because of racism. The incredibly low minimum wage that is totally separate from the regular minimum wage was implemented to keep Black people, who predominantly held these jobs, from being able to make a reasonable wage.

              1. Endorable*

                Fascinating… and explains so much, particularly why the culture in the USA is so at odds with the rest of the world!

        4. DJ Abbott*

          When I was a server, I moved at a fast pace and organized the work in my head, on the fly. There are plenty of managers and executives. who couldn’t do that to save their lives.

          1. Anonnymouse*

            Eh. The idea that an executive doesn’t have to juggle urgent competing priorities or work at a fast pace makes me think you may not really understand what work looks like at that level.

            1. Harper the Other One*

              They didn’t say any executive couldn’t, they said many managers and executives can’t. That matches with some of my experience as well; there are lots of organizations where higher-level management expects to handle long-term strategy decisions and all the on the fly choices are made by supervisors/middle management. And there’s certainly less expectation to juggle it all in your head than there is in food service!

              1. r..*

                That does turn it into a rather empty statement, though, doesn’t it?

                Certain decisions need to be handled with a certain level of deliberation. Unlike you’re in the military or in emergency services, chance are that any high-stake decision needing to be made in a hurry always means one of two things:

                One, you’re mistaken and the decision is either not high stakes, or not truly urgent.
                Two, someone had previously screwed up by the numbers for it to have come to that point.

                “Accusing” someone that they coulnd’t make the decision to let someone go, or whether to make a decision whose consequences come with a multi-million dollar price tag, on the fly is silly, because those decisions should not be made on the fly.

                1. Harper the Other One*

                  It’s not so much an accusation IMO as making the point that so-called “unskilled” labour actually involved substantial skills, they’re just not the same ones that you need to succeed in other fields.

            2. Good Enough For Government Work*

              Please read what the person actually wrote before responding. They said that MANY executives can’t do that, and they’re quite right: I’ve worked with several of them.

              They didn’t say that NO executives can do that, or that it isn’t part of the job of an executive.

              1. Happy meal with extra happy*

                Eh, it’s clearly a dig at executives; otherwise they would have used the equally true statement “many people”.

                1. Just Another Cog in the Machine*

                  I think the wording was to compare food service jobs (which is something that many people think is “low skill” and is definitely low paid to executives, who most people consider “high skill” and is definitely higher paid.

                2. Jaydee*

                  I think it’s a dig at executives, but only because executives are generally paid a lot more money than food service workers, and their job is considered more prestigious and often seen as requiring a higher level of skill (maybe only by people who have never worked food service or other supposedly “low skill” jobs). So it’s saying “as a society we treat this group (executives) as if they are more valuable and more skilled than this other group (food service workers), but in reality the second group requires a whole set of skills many in the first group don’t have.

                3. Rex Libris*

                  I’ve been both, and while I concede that food service is demanding and does take skill, it doesn’t come with a “You’re directly responsible for x number of employees and a million dollar budget with a thousand moving parts that has to magically hit zero without going over on the last day of the fiscal year” level of stress or responsibility.

                4. Orv*

                  Food service may not come with the same level of responsibility, but it also doesn’t come with a golden parachute that sets you up for life even if you fail.

                5. I can read anything except the room*

                  @Jaydee “So it’s saying “as a society we treat this group (executives) as if they are more valuable and more skilled than this other group (food service workers), but in reality the second group requires a whole set of skills many in the first group don’t have.”

                  One could also say, “in reality the second group requires just as high a level of skill as the first group,” without tossing in the “and the second group includes people who are bad at their jobs,” bit.

                6. I can read anything except the room*

                  Oops – meant to write “…and the first group includes people who are bad at their jobs” for that last bit.

                7. Anon for this*

                  It’s not a dig at executives, just a point that someone can be promoted up to that level without developing that skill (and then end up floundering because they don’t have it). I had a manager a few years back who when he left, I noted the name of the company he left for. I will never work there, even after he retires, because he absolutely doesn’t possess these skills, and I don’t want to work somewhere that doesn’t consider that essential for an executive.

            3. Baela Targaryen*

              I’m an assistant at hedge funds & grew up around these kinds of people — believe me, some executives are very specialized in one area and dumb as hell in all others.

              1. Nica*

                So true. I worked for a company and worked closely with the CFO – he was a great guy and fantastic at his job. I remember him being really excited about some new furniture he’d purchased for his basement from a friend who was moving out of the country. This was really high-end furniture that he’d purchased at a fraction of the cost.

                Well, it ended up in his garage for about six months before he resold it at a further loss because he didn’t think to check if the pieces would fit through the very small opening to his basement (and it was the only opening to his basement). This guy handled millions of dollars for a large, international company, but didn’t think to measure his basement door width before purchasing furniture.

            4. 3-Foot Tall Inflatable Rainbow Unicorn*

              Counterpoint: The kind of managers and executives that people write about here prove DJ Abbott correct that some of them can’t organize or handle a fast pace.

          2. DJ Abbott*

            The point is that no matter how fast, smart, and proficient I was in this physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding job, I was never valued as much as white-collar workers who couldn’t have done it in a million years.

          3. Harrowhark*

            I worked in food service (including an ice cream store!) and high-stress retail (customer service desk for the largest location of a big box store in my area that had the highest customer traffic for the entire region) for about 8 years.

            I have worked in the white-collar professional world for about 20 years.

            Food service and retail work were *infinitely* easier than any office job I’ve ever had, from entry-level office admin all the way up to Senior Manager.

            Sure, customers and store managers can be immature jerks, but so can office workers and managers. BUT… retail work stayed in the retail location. And when I got fed up with one shop, I could find another position with equal pay in a matter of days.

            With retail and food service, you just have to show up and Do The Thing. And, typically, The Thing is thoroughly documented — from how many slices of pepperoni to put on a pizza, to how ring up different sizes and types of lumber, to what to say to customers when taking their order.

            You’re not expected to come up with, say, an alternate global supply chain for a series of products, or to figure out how to get terabytes of data from four different systems into a report writing tool and then use that disparate data to create information dashboards that the C-Suite doesn’t yet know they need.

            1. The Unfrazzled Project Manager*

              I’m the opposite. I have found my office jobs and my much more challenging white-collar job much, much easier than my food service work of yore! You are correct that retail/food service is more documented and very task-based, but I have so much more freedom, money, flexibility, and things like good health insurance in my ‘harder’ roles. They are harder on paper- it’s brain work, not physical work. But if I get a migraine from the stress today (which happens), I can take the rest of today off, with pay- or just flex the time and work tonight if the headache goes away. I’ll take a prescription medication given to me by the neurologist that my decent health insurance paid for. And I’m writing this comment during a break I’m taking that I decided I needed for a minute in between tasks – a break I myself chose to take and nobody gave me permission to do. I did not have to clock out; I don’t have a timer going to make sure I get back in time lest I be penalized. I know what my hours are going to be, and they don’t change from week to week for ‘just in time’ scheduling. I know for sure what I’m going to get paid at the end of the month rather than hoping I’m going to get good tips instead of Chick tracts made to look like $100/bill. So it’s a trade-off- but I’ll take the stress of my current job over the years I was a server ANY day.

              1. Blue Pen*

                I totally agree. I never worked food service, but my office job now is infinitely easier than when I worked retail (warehouse club grocery store). When I worked retail, I remember waking up in the middle of the night with my fingers aching from carrying heavy boxes nonstop, standing on my feet for hours at a time, etc.

            2. Yadah*

              Same, it’s the mental load of it all.
              IME walking away from the stress of a really hard day in food service/retail etc. is WAY easier than walking away from the stress of a corporate gig.

              I can have an absolutely trash day dealing with angry parents who waited until Christmas eve to do all of their toy shopping, but when I’ve clocked out – I’m out. I don’t need to be thinking about work until I clock back in.
              But the corporate gig is so much harder to check out from.

        5. VermiciousKnid*

          I work in an extremely high pressure corporate position. The stress I feel in my day-t0-day work is NOTHING compared to what I felt when waiting tables. I run into people I waited tables with 15 years ago and it’s like no time has passed. We’re trauma bonded.

          1. Artemesia*

            I’ve always thought everyone should do a gig as a waiter at some point. I still remember my job 62 years ago as a waiter and back up cook and soda jerk at a greasy spoon. Hardest job ever. And it made clear to me how hard low paid work often is and to appreciate people who do this work. (and nobody tipped much in a place like that then).

            The OP though is much to involved in her adult daughter’s job. The description makes clear that her daughter cannot do this job and the workplace is right to not want to schedule her. This sort of job is all about reliability. You don’t get to go home when you aren’t feeling perfect. You don’t get to call out multiple times in the first couple of weeks on the job. Reliability is the most important characteristic of someone doing this work. And Mom can’t micromanage an adult daughter’s work and expect it to go well.

          2. Fidgety Bassist*

            I hire a lot of outside candidates fresh from grad school, some with very limited non-college work experience. I’m thrilled to see someone with a few years experience waiting tables because I know they will show up, be appropriate with customers and can handle stress.

        6. Just me*

          Personally I did food service for a VERY short period of time back in the 80s and I hated it and discovered it is not for me. I do much better in office type desk jobs. I would also say call center jobs wouldn’t work well for her either they are just as demanding mentally as food service. I did call centers for a lot longer and hated every second of it.

        7. goddessoftransitory*

          I wouldn’t last ten minutes. It’s incredibly physically and mentally demanding.

        8. The Unfrazzled Project Manager*

          It is so unbelievably demanding. My college waitressing job was easily the least flexible, most exhausting job I have ever had. I made good money in tips most of the time (earned $2.13/hour +tips) , but it was nights, weekends, long shifts, hot work, carrying heavy stuff, and doing a lot of side work that customers do not see. And if you were sick? No, you weren’t, not without a doctor’s note. And if you got sick too often (or like, at all) you were punished by getting your shifts cut, or being put on less lucrative shifts. My dad was always like, “They can’t do that!” and I was all…” And I, a 19-year-old college student, am going to stop them how, exactly? When this is the literal culture of this type of work? I can work, or I can fight The Man, but I don’t have time to do both and go to class.” And it was not my life’s work- it was a temporary stop for me. I worked with lots of people who this was their *career.* I was also a housekeeper right out of college for a service that was similarly set up (The maid there ain’t so merry, let me tell you!) and there were so many women there for whom that was their career. I would come home so sore and exhausted, and at that time, I was fit and in my 20s.

          1. Catfish Mke*

            In the context of the time “merry” was largely synonymous with what we’d call “shitfaced” so maybe more than you thought. Definitely merry in the kitchen

      2. MassMatt*

        Well, the part she seems to be struggling with is finishing a shift. If she can’t handle that she is going to have trouble keeping a job no matter what field, but maybe culinary school is not for her.

        First jobs are where you learn basic things like showing up, being reliable, following instructions, staying out of drama, etc. And it’s remarkable how many people never master those basic skills.

        I think the Mom needs to butt out of this, all sorts of her comments made me roll my eys: they schedule her for every Saturday night and one other night per week—the nerve! “Often the manager when she works is the same person who we are reasonably sure is related to the owners somehow”—the horror!

          1. .*

            While you’re removing teapot community’s comment for violating Rule 5, do not forget Rule 1 when you look at the comment they replied to.

        3. ecnaseener*

          Re “if she can’t finish a shift she’ll have trouble keeping a job no matter what field” — not necessarily. There are plenty of jobs where you get to sit down, and that makes a big difference — I’d much rather do 8 hours of office work than 4 hours of food service. Admittedly chef is generally not one of those jobs where you get to sit down, but I don’t want LW’s daughter to think she’ll be unemployable forever in all fields.

          1. Cmdrshprd*

            I get what you are saying that yes an office job is less physically demanding than a food service job.

            But it was a single statement about not finishing a shift at any job (not just a food service job), I do think that would apply for all jobs. If you can’t finish shifts at an office job sitting down, you would likely not be a good fit for it and be fired.

            1. Zweisatz*

              Disagreed. My office job has flex time. I truly can work 4,5 hours one day and 9 the next. It is quite accommodating for health issues.

              Sure, you generally get more flexibility when you’ve had more tenure, but I laid out in my first two months, “Here are my challenges and this would help me” and they agreed.

              1. Cmdrshprd*

                But is it a shift office job? A shift job imo is an hourly job that requires you to clock in and out with a set schedule, think call center, admin support etc… A salaried office job would not be a shift.

                But is that on a regular basis, or more once in a while situations? You could regularly and unexpectedly take off early for some shifts and make them up the next day?

                I have an office shift job and we have some flexibility but not a lot and not regularly. From the original letter 4 shifts in a new short time seems like a regular occurrence.

                1. Zweisatz*

                  You were talking about all office jobs and that is what I’m disagreeing with. Not all office jobs are shift jobs and therefore there will be office jobs with other rules/flex time.

                  Incidentally I also have shifts sometimes and my job is making it as easy as possible to cover those wherever you are (so not necessarily in front of a desk every second). But that just as an aside.

              2. Lana Kane*

                It would apply to shift-based office roles, certainly. If you’re taking phone calls, for example, it’s an office job but there is an expectation to be availale for the entirety of your shift. Frequent callouts in the middle of the day are going to be considered an attendance issues. These are also not jobs that necessarily qualigy for flex time. You can work the shift, or there is very little in terms of reasonable accomodation available.

              3. Tiger Snake*

                That still doesn’t work though. Flexitime is that you can save up a little bit of extra time or pay it back (only within a couple of hours). You get sick one day, but you not only finished your shift the day after, you went OVER it and spent multiple additional hours to make up the time you’d left before.

                But even with flexitime, your flexibility is subject to you getting your work done when it needs to get done. You don’t skip meetings because you’ll make up the time later – the time is only one part of the equation, the work being done when its supposed to is the other.

                1. Zweisatz*

                  Okay and? You make it up another day when you feel better, easy.

                  I have the feeling a lot of people are trying to paint a picture where LW’s daughter/people with medical conditions cannot be part of the work world because idk they can’t hack it or they wouldn’t be able to meet the demands. Apart from the fact that I don’t know where this slant is coming from, it has not been my experience.

            2. The Unionizer Bunny*

              If you can’t finish shifts at an office job sitting down, you would likely not be a good fit for it and be fired.

              A standing desk is very likely to be a reasonable accommodation.

              In this case it’s the standing that may have caused the incontinence, but some desks can adjust between sitting and standing, enabling workers to switch between those positions throughout the day.

            3. ecnaseener*

              What I meant was mainly that being unable to reliably finish a 4-hour food service shift doesn’t mean you’ll be unable to finish an 8-hour office shift. But also what zweisatz says, not all work is coverage-based.

        4. ferrina*

          Yeah, OP doesn’t seem to have a good sense of what is/isn’t a reasonable expectation in a food service job. Like “they schedule her for every Saturday night”….like, okay? If she’s not available during the day because she’s at school, yeah, they’ll schedule her for weekend and night shifts. And yes, usually managers try to keep the shifts consistent because 1) it’s easier to make the schedule that way and 2) it’s more predictable for the employees. It’s actually pretty wonderful that the manager remembers the daughter’s availability and hasn’t scheduled her for times she can’t work!!
          And “I’m sore from wakeboarding and can’t work a full shift” isn’t the airtight excuse that OP seems to think it is- most employers would be pretty frustrated by hearing this from an already inconsistent employee. In coverage-based work, you learn pretty quickly not to do activities that will leave you sore before coming into work–or if you do, be prepared to suck it up. (I used to work with a former rodeo performer who did food service in the off-season. She walked into work with some pretty amazing tales; she was also one of the most hard-working and consistent people I’ve had the pleasure of working with).
          Also, “leaving just before close” isn’t what OP seems to think it is. I assume OP means leaving just before the shop closes. That doesn’t mean that the work is done- most places have a full checklist of closing activities that are done after the shop is closed.

          The daughter is 19. She’s young, and she’s learning to manage herself and her health conditions in a workplace. She picked a tough industry to work in (food service). OP needs to stay out of this- daughter will either figure out how to navigate this on her own, or decide that food service isn’t for her.

          1. Smithy*

            Yeah – I also think a huge reality with food service is that for smaller or independently owned places it’s not uncommon for there to not be much formal training/onboarding. When I was around 16 or so, I had two types of food service jobs where about after a week or two I got written out of the schedule. And in complete fairness to those who hired me, in both spots I have no disagreement that I wasn’t thriving.

            Now, I also had reasons/explanations why I wasn’t thriving. In no were those reasons worth protesting, but they did help my confidence and thinking that I would be able to do food service in a different environment. So then from like 17-19 I was able to work at different coffee shops during summers. In my case, starting at a place like Starbucks that had a more standardized corporate onboarding really helped me so that when I started working at smaller, locally owned places – I didn’t need as much structure. I don’t know 100% for sure, but I do imagine now that had I started in any other corporate food service environment – I likely would have done much better at 16 because I was so much better suited to structured learning vs intuitive learning. Especially at that time.

            Right now the OP’s daughter is figuring out the working world for themselves – so this truly is an amazing time to struggle/fail a bit and use it going forward. The blessing of the “fast fail” is using it as a tool and not as something to spend a lot of time trying to fix.

            1. bamcheeks*

              Huh, I found the opposite– my first waitressing job was in a family-owned restaurant where they were used to hiring 17-yos and I worked alongside the owners’ daughter, and they were very clear about expectations but also used to being flexible and expecting that my A levels came first and my schedule had to fit around that. When I went to work at a corporate-owned restaurant, there was a much bigger expectation that you fit in with the corporate way of doing things, but also that you were easy-come, easy-go, probably on drugs, and the company didn’t care much whether you stayed for three shifts or three years. I looked for family-owned small businesses after that!

              1. Smithy*

                Yeah – again to temperament, at that age I just found it easier to learn a “corporate way” and then once I found my feet, go to small businesses. At that age, I really found following rules just less stressful than intuiting what to do.

                I will say, that has not 100% applied to my adult professional life, but I also think I can predict that I wouldn’t likely love a start-up workplace culture either.

                I do think big picture that’s where trying/failing at some early jobs can really help people figure out what suits their personality best.

          2. Hyaline*

            Yeah—I think Mom is too close to the situation here and is more willing to handwave away what could be staffing problems for the employer.

            1. goddessoftransitory*

              For mom it’s, I think, a string off one-offs, stuff that to a parent you would just deal with as they came. For an employer, it’s a clear pattern, and one that signals “this person is more trouble to deal with than she is worth as a worker.”

              Harsh, but there it is. She isn’t a precious child to the employer. She’s either an asset or a debit.

          3. Kara*

            Yes, this comment is spot on, especially with the bit about leaving “close to closing”. My first thought upon reading that was “so one person was left to close out the store for the night – by themselves?” When I worked food service, it was a rule at our store that there HAD to be 2 people on property at all times, for safety reasons, if nothing else.

            If shift work is not OP’s daughter’s thing, then food service and culinary school might not be a good option for her, no matter how much she loves the idea of it. Even if you love cooking and love food, *working* in food is a whole different thing.
            There are going to be lots of long nights of standing for 10+ hours, lots of working nights and weekends, lots of getting yelled at by chefs, and lots of working through injuries – cuts, burns, etc.

            Food service is not for the faint of heart.

            1. Barefoot Librarian*

              This was my thought exactly. My younger sister also wanted to be a chef and she’s a great cook, but does not work well under pressure. Being a good cook/baker, doesn’t automatically mean you are going to thrive in food service. OPs daughter testing the waters now before she sinks a ton of time into a culinary degree is honestly a good move. The food service world is often more “The Bear” and less “Great British Bakeoff” in real life.

            2. Dust Bunny*

              This. I left early once at my first non-seasonal job out of college and 25+ years later I’m still mortified. And we had multiple other people closing, not just one!

              I also agree that loving food and cooking =/= being cut out for food service: Watch some “Kitchen Nightmares” and see how many lovers of food and cooking are terrible at cooking commercially or running a restaurant.

              Also, I don’t know if this applies here but if you’re over a certain age you may get responsibilities that younger employees don’t for legal reasons. I worked at a summer camp once and got looped into driving vans because I was one of the few employees who was over 21 and could legally drive a rental. (And, yes, if your availability is limited due to school, they will schedule you when you’re off because when else would they do it?)

            3. Ralph the Wonder Llama*

              Yeah leaving before closing almost certainly involves dumping the dirty work on coworkers. Not a good look.

          4. Antilles*

            Like “they schedule her for every Saturday night”….like, okay? If she’s not available during the day because she’s at school, yeah, they’ll schedule her for weekend and night shifts.
            Also, working regularly on Friday or Saturday nights is incredibly common simply because that’s when the largest volume of customers typically comes in. If she really wants to go to culinary school and work in the food industry, you’re going to need to get used to her working Friday and Saturday nights, holidays, etc because that’s just the way it works.

            1. 1LFTW*

              Exactly. I managed to avoid working food service, but I worked retail, and I never worked anywhere that didn’t have the expectation that we would work a full shift on Saturday or Sunday (preferably both). Those were the peak times and that’s where they needed coverage.

              1. Yadah*

                Same! Throughout my entire highschool career I worked retail and had maybe 2 saturdays off that weren’t time I had requested off.

                It’s just the nature of the service industry and if that’s a deal breaker then it’s time to look at a different line of work.

          5. Waffles*

            I was coming here to say all of Ferrina’s points which have already been written far better than I would have done, so I’ll just add my hearty +1 to Ferrina

          6. goddessoftransitory*

            Exactly this. Each individual complaint may have been legit, but they form a pattern in her manager’s eyes of “I have tons of medical conditions but also am healthy enough to wakeboard, then complain that I’m sore.”

            Actions don’t exist in a vacuum and they WILL color how the daughter is perceived by others.

            On a separate note: working Fridays/Saturdays in food service is a very standard thing and one I wish more people would grasp going in. We get tons of applications every summer from students who are horrified by the notion of having to work on/get up early for weekend shifts but would be thrilled to take Monday afternoon. Nah, see, that’s the SLOWEST day of the week, kids. We don’t need fifty people on Mondays. The bulk of scheduling is around the busiest times of the week.

        5. JennyEm56*

          Right! I have medical issues and it was clear by that age that my body wasn’t going to handle a job that was physical, or even standing for hours at a time. It stinks, but it is reality.

          As a manager, I’m willing to help someone with necessary accommodations, but this mom’s request falls outside of the “reasonable” requirement and into “this job is probably not appropriate for this person”. If you cannot finish a shift without something happening, that is a big issue that cannot be accommodated. The daughter needs to seek out diagnoses in order to ask for accommodations and needs to make sure they are on top of their own health, such as taking medicines.

        6. Artemesia*

          This. There are lots of beginner issues a restaurant can deal with but lack of reliability is a not one of them. She probably should rethink culinary school if she can’t even finish a shift at a restaurant reliably. She needs to be thinking about less demanding job environments.

          1. Yadah*

            And it’s not even a restaurant, it’s an ice cream shop. Don’t get me wrong, those can get pretty wild on hot summer days, (my first job was actually at an ice cream shop!), but it’s not at all the same level of complexity that a full restaurant offers.
            If an ice cream shop is overwhelming this poor woman then culinary school is absolutely not for her.

        7. What_the_What*

          Yeah I got some of that too…and they “why is MY daughter being singled out” kinda got me too. Like, ma’am you have no idea if other employees are also being cut. But, for me, the kicker is — this is FOOD SERVICE, something that involves stringent hygiene standards, and the daugher lost control of her bladder, at work. Whether at the counter, in the kitchen, in the dining room, whatever, that’s a huge hygiene issue for them. If I were a customer, and an employee suddenly let loose near me, I’d never come back. Maybe that’s harsh but *shrug* it’s how I’d feel. And there’s no way to ensure it doesn’t happen again. And, if they’re making something that the daughter responds to with nausea…how is she possibly going to work there with any reliable regularity? Mom needs to let this situation play out and hope daughter finds a better fit.

          1. MigraineMonth*

            I hope the daughter is looking into those issues medically, because either could be significant issues if she’s trying to become a chef.

        8. Beenthereandlearned*

          Agreed. Mom is doing her no favours supporting this. The one that got me is she left because she was tired and sore from wakeboarding earlier in the day. “I misjudged my fun earlier” is not a sufficient reason to leave. The narrative here seems to be “I can only be at my shift when things are exactly right”. I’d also be very concerned about the loss of body control as a manager to a new employee who has demonstrated all the rest. Mom, your daughter has been politely fired. Help her see where things didn’t go well and don’t blame it on the employer. She needs to learn that call outs/leaving early need to be the exception, not a once/week occurrence.

          1. goddessoftransitory*

            The wakeboarding thing was likely the nail in the coffin, honestly. Because as a manager my reaction would be “that’s really too bad. Take some Advil and get to work.”

            Adding on “owie, my wakeboard muscles!” to the more serious medical issues doesn’t make her more sympathetic. Her manager/coworkers are more likely to see it as malingering, frankly.

            1. Parakeet*

              I would agree more with a manager reacting this way to the wakeboarding if not for the fact that the manager apparently said the daughter could go home. If the manager wanted the daughter to stay at work, the manager should have been clear about that. That seems especially true when managing people who are pretty new to the workforce.

              1. Jennifer in FL*

                Sometimes it’s easier to deal with things on your own than to have to deal with a second person who isn’t pulling their weight at the moment.

                1. Yadah*

                  +10000 this

                  If my options are to deal with someone moaning while not adequately doing their work or to let them go and just do the work myself I’d rather just do it myself.

                  The emotional labour of dealing with an employee like that is absolutely a factor when deciding to let them stay or leave.

        9. Nica*

          Yeah, if she can’t handle an ice cream shop how is she going to handle a kitchen at a busy restaurant. Chaotic is probably a kind description of that.

      3. Elspeth McGillicuddy*

        Eh, fast food (my experience; I expect ice cream is similar) is fairly demanding, but a lot of it is also deliberately designed to be simple and easy to pick up. There is definitely a difference between ‘awesome’ and ‘adequate’ and it’s also very DEFINITELY possible to be lousy at it, but you can get from no experience to adequate in a short period of time. This is what makes it so great a first job, and what makes employers willing to hire first time workers.

        1. Irish Teacher.*

          I haven’t worked fast food or ice cream, but I think it might well be easier for neurotypical people to go from no experience to adequate in a short period of time than for people with ADHD or other neuroatypicalities.

          The actual things considered to be work may be easier to grasp than those of other careers but things like multitasking, dealing with difficult customers, remembering to greet people, paying attention to numerous things at once, etc aren’t really easy to go from struggling with to managing in a short period of time.

          If somebody has a natural ability for those things, then yeah, I can imagine that learning the rest wouldn’t take as much time as say learning the skills for an office job, but if somebody struggles with those things, as many neuroatypical people (and many neurotypical people too, but it is more common and sometimes more pronounced among those who are not neurotypical), then the learning curve is likely to be higher.

          I’ve heard ADHD described as the ability to excel at anything you put your mind to except the basics you need to live. I don’t have ADHD so can’t really say how accurate that is but it does seem to track with a couple of people I know who I suspect for other reasons have ADHD.

          If somebody struggles with multitasking or time management or distractability or with social skills, all of which are common struggles for people who are neuroatypical, then things like fast food may be much harder than jobs that have more prestige.

          1. What_the_What*

            But her issues don’t seem related to (mostly at least) any neuroatypicality; they are mostly physical, as per the Mom:
            She left early on one shift due to the smell of something […]that made her extremely nauseous.
            She left another time […]since she was struggling with sore muscles and an injured wrist after wakeboarding earlier in the day.
            She left early in her last shift due to inexplicable loss of bladder control
            On another day, she had failed to take her anxiety meds […] but has since not had any issues with that.
            So only one of those leavings had to do with her anxiety. She just doesn’t sound cut out for the work at that particular place.

            2. Irish Teacher.*

              Well, sensory issues are a large part of neuroatypicalities, so the smell thing could be related. And the failure to take her anxiety meds is quite likely ADHD related. Even the loss of bladder control could possibly be related to either anxiety or ADHD. Bladder control issues are apparently more common in ADHD.

              Neuroatypicality involves a lot more than just being easily distracted or fidgeting a lot or social issues. It could have played a part in most of her absences.

              That said, I don’t want to make any assumptions here, as some of the issues, particularly the loss of bladder control could also be caused by something undiagnosed, so I don’t want to just assume ADHD and anxiety explain everything.

              1. Blue Pen*

                Sure, but I don’t understand this immediate need to armchair diagnose someone (who isn’t even the writer of the letter) with medical conditions. Could the OP’s daughter be neurodivergent or have some other underlying health challenges? Of course.

                But (/and) she could also just be an inexperienced teenager who hasn’t quite yet mastered what it means to be a reliable, working adult. It honestly took me a while to find my stride in professional environments, too. There’s a lot of growing up that had to happen, and the realization that my needs don’t trump over everyone else’s.

            3. Sally Sue*

              And even the one having to do with anxiety was a direct result of her not taking her medication which as an adult, is 100% on her!

          2. Stacy*

            I have ADHD and excelled at food service jobs unmedicated. There is a lot of nuance in how neurodivergence presents and making blanket assumptions about what we can/cannot do isn’t helpful.

            1. Harrowhark*

              Thank you!

              My ex has ADHD and is on the extreme end of the spectrum (of ADHD). He did really well at picking up food service and bartending tasks. The instructions for what to do were spelled out in plain, easy-to-follow language, with pictures of the steps and what the finished product should look like.

              Where he had trouble was with showing up on time and keeping his emotions in check. His impaired executive functioning shows up as poor planning skills (i.e., knowing how early he has to get up to get stuff done to be out of the door by X in order to arrive at work by Y) and in a victim mentality where he’s low-key convinced that people actively try to sabotage him (when it’s actually his own mistakes and missteps getting in the way).

              Both of those reasons are why he eventually went to work for himself, doing window cleaning, pressure washing, and gutter cleanouts.

            2. Boof*

              Yeah my husband, who is pretty ADHD, did a lot of waiting tables. I’m not sure anyone really “loves” food service so of course he’s not doing now that he doesn’t have to, but he was good at it, because it basically involves being very physically active and lots of immediate demands on attention, which can be great fort he ADHD flavors that thrive on adrenaline and juggling lots of things and struggle at long term tedious planning.

              1. Blue Pen*

                Same. My husband has ADHD, too, and worked a few food service jobs—all of which he did well at. He’s very social, too, so he especially thrived in the customer service aspect of it.

            3. Christina*

              Exactly. I have ADHD and am second in command at a fast food store. I thrive in chaos. Most of my best employees have ADHD or some level of learning difficulty, and most of them don’t do well in traditional education but are doing great here. It’s a heavily structured environment with strict expectations, and the fast-paced nature keeps them focused. A lot of neurodivergent people would do great with that

            4. Shan*

              Yes, I knew a tonne of people with ADHD during my time in food service, and most of them were actually *really* good at it.

            5. Suzannah*

              Right, but overall, this isn’t about making blanket presumptions about what a person with ADHD can and cannot do (on and off meds). This is about whether an employee is reliable – and she’s clearly not.
              It was the LW who said one of the four times daughter left early was because she forgot to take her meds – so it seems that’s a necessary thing here.
              You can sympathize with someone who has health issues, but if it means that individual isn’t reliable – especially at a job where showing up on time and doing the whole shift is essential – then yeah, that person needs to be in another field.

          3. Bah bah bah*

            Respectfully, as someone with diagnosed ADHD, this kind of dialogue is actually unhelpful and armchair diagnosing people in your life is not super ideal.

          4. Emily of New Moon*

            I have ADHD and other neurological disabilities, and I agree with everything you said.

        2. Uranus Wars*

          I have done both ice cream and food service at a sit down. It really is something most people with no experience either pick up right away or struggle with. In my 12+ years of doing it I don’t know if I ever saw someone struggle for months and then just “get it”. It’s a hard biz but sometimes I REALLY miss the energy.

      4. r..*

        While food service can definitely be a hard and very demanding job, it also is an area where you can get from “zero” to “adequate for a lot of tasks” reasonably quickly in many areas.

        The upside of this is that it is one area of the economy that will give many people a go who would be excluded from other jobs as “too risky a hire”. The downside of this is that workers in those jobs fairly easily replacable, and the rest follows from there.

        Overall society does a bad job at recognizing the efforts made by this class of workers, but that is a different kettle of fish.

      5. CommanderBanana*

        Seriously. One of the most stressful jobs I ever worked was at a coffee shop, and I have worked in some pretty high-stakes professional positions.

      6. NotAnotherManager!*

        I don’t know anyone who thinks food service isn’t demanding. When vetting entry-level resumes, people who have food service or retail experience tend to rise to the top because, if they can deal with the general public and pace of food service, they will do fine in our fast-paced environment.

        Food service is, generally, low-skill, though. It’s designed to be routinized and easy to learn. It’s the speed, volume, and lack of down-time that gets challenging.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          I think when we’re talking about whether certain professions are/are not low-skill, what we’re actually arguing over is the difference between “easy to learn” and “easy to master”.

          I can learn how to be a food server in a couple of days. I will be terrible at it for quite a while, but I can do all the tasks at a basic level. I will probably never have the talent to be a great one, since it involves memorization and keeping track of numerous simultaneous tasks.

          However, I can’t learn how to be a doctor in a couple of days. Not even a terrible one.

          1. Sally Sue*

            Yes, and the level of responsibility and consequences of a poorly done job. If your waiter messes up your order, you are (hopefully!) not going to die. (Don’t come at me about allergies, I’m talking generally, here) but if my surgeon messes up, I just might die or experience long term repurcussions. Also, I worked retail and food services in my younger days and it was definitely hard, fast paced work that was physically demanding at times. But I would never categorize it as being more difficult than what I do now. I now have many people’s livliehoods in my hands. When I worked food service, no matter what happened during a shift, I could leave at the end of the day and never give another thought and start all over again the next day. Now, I take my job home with me, I take it to bed with me, I take it on vacation with me. And there is never a total reset, it keeps going and going. And yes, I’m very fairly compensated for this and it’s the trade off I’m willing to make for that compensation. But it’s all relative and I can’t understand the people here in the comments who are saying that they’ve never had a harder job than their college food service one.

            1. Kathy*

              idk I think the allergies thing, and also general food safety, make it such that food service workers *do* have significant responsibility. If they mess up with food safety everyone who comes to the restaurant that day might get badly sick.

              and I think most white-collar jobs actually don’t have as much responsibility as you’re claiming – in aggregate, over time, sure. but having one off day as a programmer or manager or a b2b salesperson will very rarely result in death, disease, loss of livelihood, or any other really major consequences, although it does occasionally happen.

              1. Sally Sue*

                I never claimed that if I take a day off that people are going to die. Nor did I claim that food service workers *don’t* have responsibility. You completely twisted what I said and in the process, missed the the point.

            2. MigraineMonth*

              From another perspective, I’m a non-management software developer, which is generally considered “skilled”. The level of consequence when a software developer messes up *can* be extreme (e.g. plane crashes), my mistakes generally result in some frustrated people and maybe lost revenue; I also leave the job in my home office at the end of the day. (Of course, the greatest responsibility I have is every time I get into the driver’s seat of the car and can literally kill a bunch of people from a moment’s inattention, but that’s off topic.)

              So yeah, I’m one of those people who would say that my high school waitstaff job was harder on me than my current job. Not because my current job isn’t challenging and demanding, but because I’m much better suited to a slow-paced job with long periods of concentrated work than to a time-pressure job with lots of tasks to keep track of simultaneously.

      7. Butterfly Counter*

        Oh yes.

        I tell people all the time that the hardest job I ever had was working at Taco Bell at age 16. I lasted 3 months and was having breakdowns at work from the stress after 2.

        From there, I moved to working in a hospital, where I did great in actual emergencies.

    2. Happy meal with extra happy*

      Yeah, and unfortunately, several of the reasons aren’t that justifiable (forgetting to take medicine, being nauseous by food items being prepared at a food stand those items are sold).

      1. JSPA*

        When you’re queasy, you’re queasy. But most of these items seem to fall in the overarching category of “self assessment.” And that, in turn, falls into, “take some time to figure out whether directed introspection will give you the insight, or whether further medical assessment or intervention is needed.” Life is about learning that you need to be aware of needing to pee (even if & when meds make that harder) before you pee yourself; not exhausting / straining yourself right before you’re scheduled to work a shift; and (barring an actual allergy that will do you harm) learning to notice that a smell icks you out, and breathing through your mouth / standing outside briefly / dabbing mint or carmex under your nose / sucking a mint / asking to turn up the vent fan. And yeah, taking your meds.

        Look, people mature on really disparate schedules. And that goes double for the “self awareness” pieces of the process. Food service needs people who are mature in that way, even more than most jobs.

        Many other jobs may be a better fit, now. Food service may become a better fit. And it’s actually fairly perceptive and kind for them to send her home to “work on herself” rather than firing her outright.

        1. Tiny Soprano*

          I kept wearing a mask at my last food service job after most people left off. Partly for the obvious reason, but also because we made a chilli hot chocolate and I could not deal with the powder. It was POTENT. The mask worked a treat though.

          1. ferrina*

            Masks are amazing at keeping irritants away! I love to use my cloth masks when I’m mowing the lawn to keep the grass pollen out of my nose.

          2. Dust Bunny*

            I work in archives and we had masks all the way through because a lot of our books and paper come in dusty or maybe-mildewed. Masks rule.

            1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

              I still wear masks during cedar season here if I have to be outside a lot. Always amused to see someone give me a dirty look for wearing it…and then sneeze.

        2. Aardvark*

          The needing to finish early because they were tired from wakeboarding struck me. There is a time to think about whether an activity would make you not fit for work. Given she only had a couple of shifts, doing it on a non-work day should have been considered.

          If the problems were only medically related, work might be willing to more accomodating. But when there are also reasons that are due to choices the employee makes, then the legitimacy of the medical excuses will start to be questioned. Particular in cross over issues such as not taken medications. It is part of standard expectations of employees that they will put a reasonable effort into making themselves ready for their work day.

          It seems OP’s daughter isn’t at that place yet. As they are relying on her to be one of the grown-ups who can close, if she is not being as reliable as some of the 15 or 16 year-olds then it will be even more obvious. In this the organisation’s recomendation to work on herself is actually a good suggestion. Some of that work may be to think about what physical demands she can reliably manage, and look for a job that fits that.

          1. TooTiredToThink*

            I completely agree about the wakeboarding! I also am apt to think that if I were the owner of a fast food place and my employee had an episode of incontinence, I would want them to get checked out before returning back to work. It’s body fluids. Which are a hazard in a food prep area. I definitely feel like, as a customer, I would want them checked out. And before anyone @s me about insurance. She’s 19. If this is in the USA, she’s on her parent’s insurance.

            1. EventPlannerGal*

              Yeah, upon reading through all the comments I think we are all (rightfully) extending a lot of grace because that must have been a truly mortifying experience for the poor girl… but at the same time I feel like it needs to be said clearly:

              1. It is not normal for a 19-year-old to experience sudden incontinence. It just isn’t. Maybe it’s down to a medication side-effect, maybe it’s an underlying health issue, but the LW’s tone is oddly… casual? I guess? about it, as though it can be lumped in with feeling nauseous or having a sore wrist, and it really isn’t.
              2. It is not compatible with food service. At all.
              3. It is part of a series of fairly memorable health-related incidents in a very short period that are undoubtedly going to stand out to the owners. Every hospo employer has dealt with flaky teen workers but it’s something else to have an employee who’s called in because they get nauseous around your own products, hurt their wrist wakeboarding, forgot their ADHD medication AND lost control of their bladder in a food prep area in the space of a couple of weeks.

              Under those circumstances, giving her a week or so to figure out what’s going on is pretty much the best possible response that you could get from any low-level food service job. This IS them being understanding about it. I’m sorry if that sounds unkind because it truly isn’t meant that way, but I feel like we are all understating how much of a WTF moment that is and why a food business would have a problem with it.

              1. Andi*

                I feel like that was kind of glossed over as well. Urinating on yourself at work is not normal. It was likely something that caused a lot of attention and concern at work. The letter writer doesn’t explain if it was because of a known medical condition but if it happened to me, I would be running to a doctor. I’m not sure the mother understands exactly how unusual and concerning that would be in a workplace. And a workspace where food is being prepared?

                1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

                  Assuming we’re not in 8 hours without a bathroom break land. Which there’s no reason to assume we are. But, it’s the only thing I can think of where someone who doesn’t have related health issues might have an episode.

              2. sofar*

                Yep. The fact that they didn’t fire her is actually pretty understanding in those jobs. I’ve worked at DQ, McD — and my husband ran a bakery for years. He often did the “take two weeks and think if this job is right for you and come back when you’re ready to try again” tactic. That way, reliable employees got more hours, and nobody had to scramble if the employee who always needed to leave early left early.

                Anyone who came back with an attitude of, “Yeah, my absences/leaving early weren’t acceptable, can I try again, I’m available 20 hours per week,” were always given another (final chance).

                LW is taking this as a grave insult toward her kid, but this is a small biz owner trying to do the right thing. The owner can’t rely on scheduling your daughter, in a job where it’s massively inconvenient when one person can’t do the work they need to do. The owner is giving your daughter that message. Your daughter should think it over, decide if the job is right and come back with a “give me another shot, I’ll be ready to work” attitude. And LW, you should let your daughter decide how/if to proceed.

          2. Cat Tree*

            I assumed that the forgotten medication was due to the ADHD. Which is a common problem even among mature adults. And that sucks but it’s not really the *employer’s* problem. A reasonable accommodation can’t really be that the employee never finds a solution and then just doesn’t work when they forget.

            I think she’s also imagining the wake boarding thing was medical because she had physical pain, but she really should have predicted that and planned better. We all have mistakes in judgment sometimes and if she had a history of being more reliable maybe a one-off would have been more Ok. But with everything else, yeah, it’s a lot.

            It stinks that work affects your life even outside of your shifts, but that’s true for school too and she seems to be managing that.

            1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

              If it was just the wakeboarding, it would be one thing. Teenagers, and a 19 year old is still a teenager, do stupid stuff. They think they can go the beach with friends all day and still work that night. Then find out they can’t.

              If it was just they forgot the ADHD meds one day, well it happens. Same with sudden queasiness to a smell. But it always one thing or another. Things just keep happening that keep this person unable to finish their shift. When they are relying on them to close. Sometimes, the complications of always dealing with that one worker who always has something going on is not worth it. Its food service, they can find someone almost immediately to replace her. If you are easily replaceable, the less drama you bring the better.

              1. Guacamole Bob*

                > Sometimes, the complications of always dealing with that one worker who always has something going on is not worth it.

                This. Each of these things felt like a reasonable excuse to OP’s daughter (and maybe to OP), but cumulatively they’ve given the employer the firm impression that she is one of those people who always has stuff going on. We’ve all worked with that person (and people have written in about them here) – one day it’s their car, the next their pet, the third they’re sick, the fourth they have some minor maintenance crisis at home. Each individual thing may seem reasonable on its own but it just never ends.

                Sometimes otherwise reliable people just have a run of those kind of things because life is like that – hopefully when they’ve been at a job for a bit and have built up a bit of capital and earned some flexibility. But some people are stuck in perpetual not having their life together. A short time into a part time job, the employer has no reason to think this isn’t the norm for this employee, and is understandably frustrated.

                1. Womanaround*

                  It’s also frustrating because many of us HAVE been that employee – sometimes when it rains it pours. But when you’re ALWAYS that employee, it’s different. There’s a clear difference between the person who has a month of hell that’s interfering with some of their office job two years in, and the person who is constantly dealing with issues for a continuous two years. And if the issues happen when you’re new at the job, there’s no way to tell which scenario fits.

                2. Anne Elliot*

                  This. The mother is quite reasonably looking at the issue from her daughter’s point of view, but from the employer’s point of view it doesn’t matter _why_ I can’t rely on you, if I can’t rely on you and I need reliable people. I also think this may be a good lesson for the daughter, if a hard one. When you’re in school, teachers and administration may really extend themselves to accommodate a lot of issues — even different, unrelated issues — because they want you to be in class and successful in the “job” of learning. But in the real world of employment, employers want the _business_ to be successful. So whether it is reasonable or deplorable, you may encounter less tolerance for “shit happens” kind of excuses/justifications.

                  Also, as a former food service worker, that industry is one where it is especially true that you are expected to work in spite of things if that is at all possible: Feel nauseated? Keep working. Wrist hurts? Keep working. Feeling anxious? Keep working. Unfortunately, some of this expectation is because a lot of people who work those jobs are not students or teens, they are people who need the paycheck to support themselves, and going home when you could stay is not an option for them. But wherever it arises, it unquestionably exists and so (as others have said) food service may not be for her. No shade to ice cream shops, but if she can’t hack it at the ice cream shop she’s probably not cut out for food service.

              2. bamcheeks*

                When I was 16, I turned up to work one morning at 8am having had three hours’ sleep. After an hour or two, I remember my manager (aged 22 or 23? All I really remember is that the bright blue mascara was really outdated for 1994) calling me to the back and saying, “what’s wrong? You look terrible and I”m really worried about you.” I took a deep breath and said, I’m really sorry, I was at a party last night and I didn’t get to sleep until half past three. And she just went, Oh, is that ALL? We’ve all done that. No worries, get back out there.

                I still remember it for being really touched by her concern, the fact that there was no real consequences BUT ALSO what a gentle way to learn that You Can’t Really Do That.

                1. Le Sigh*

                  Yeah I once worked a shift at a clothing store very hungover. It sucked, but I was functional enough to do the job — mercifully it was a shorter, 4-hour Sunday shift, but man was that a long 4 hours.

              3. Smithy*

                Yeah….I think this is one of those life lessons around those subtle differences in medical issues you can feel freely to tell your coworkers about, and ones where you know a little caution is warranted.

                This page is full of whether or not to disclose mental health diagnoses, doctor’s appointments, treatment, etc. – and if you need to disclose for an accommodation, how best to do so. But I think the reality is that it’s not the only kind of medical treatment where a bit more caution or privacy at the workplace is warranted. Telling your supervisor you have an OB/GYN for fibroids or an annual visit is something lots of people would feel comfortable sharing with a supervisor – however going because you need an STI test or as part of abortion care likely would include recommendations for more discretion.

                If you have a job that has physical demands and is coverage based – imo, those types of accidents just open you to potential judgement when you share that freely. Slipping on a wet spot in the bathroom, and spraining your wrist as you brace yourself – an accident that happens. Spraining your wrist because you’re wakeboarding before a shift or you were in a bar/club – you open yourselves to judgements that just may not be worth it.

                I really do think this is just an experience in the workplace on when it’s helpful to be more transparent and less. That’s going to fluctuate from job to job, industry to industry and even potentially time of year.

              4. CommanderBanana*

                Teenagers, and a 19 year old is still a teenager, do stupid stuff.

                The two early 20-something guys who worked at the coffee shop where I worked came in for a shift one day covered in road rash, cuts, and blood. They were taking turns tying their longboards to the back of a car and “surfing” after it and both had wiped out.

                They were absolutely hilarious to work with and really sweet-hearted kids, but they did so much dangerous stuff and were constantly getting injured. One had a cast on for most of the summer – and not the same cast or the same place, he just kept hurting himself!

              5. goddessoftransitory*

                This. Everybody has dealt with a “one damn thing after another” people–there’s always another crisis coming down the pike. And even if each incident in itself is legit, and anybody can have a run of terrible luck, that’s not what’s being seen by this young woman’s boss and coworkers.

                After a while your job cannot continue to cut you slack if it wants the work to get done.

                1. Nica*

                  At the end of the day, a business is a business and not a charity. They can only do so much “accommodating” before it negatively affects the bottom line.

            3. The Unionizer Bunny*

              I assumed that the forgotten medication was due to the ADHD. Which is a common problem even among mature adults. And that sucks but it’s not really the *employer’s* problem.

              Well . . . that’s the thing, though. Observation alone is adequate for an employer to become aware that their employee needs an accommodation due to a disability. It triggers an “interactive process”, and the government doesn’t call it that just for shits and giggles. It’s not the employee’s responsibility to think of every possible accommodation. An employer doesn’t get to say “well, YOU haven’t suggested anything that I think will work, so I can just fire you for not being able to do the job”. The employer has to participate in proposing possible solutions. If they don’t, it can lead to an EEOC investigation and civil penalties (to say nothing of the reputational impact on a business).

              So, yeah, ADA-covered disabilities are the employer’s problem. They can’t simply get rid of an employee because of difficulties caused by the disability, they have to take some affirmative steps of their own to help the disabled employee to get the work done.

              Incontinence? Adult diapers. (Or get into the habit of dancing in place, shuffling from side to side a lot; if it’s the duration of standing without moving, the best response might be to make sure she doesn’t remain still too long.) Sensitive to kitchen scents? Noseplugs. (Unless the ability to smell is an essential early-warning-system for workers there.)

              Anything that seems obvious (especially if previous court cases have established a precedent about what employers must consider, such as reassignment or light duty), if the employer didn’t consider it, can be held against them later in court.

              1. Jennifer Strange*

                In this case, though, the employee in question has medication to help her get the work done, she just didn’t take it. That’s on her.

              2. JSPA*

                It’s required that the employer ACCEPT reasonable accommodations. It is not at all required (and in fact an invasive overreach) for the employer to come up with the list of possible or required accommodations. Or even to say, “your problems seem connected to a disability, please see a doctor who can help you come up with a list of adequate accommodations.”

                The workplace has come extremely close to that line–as close as they reasonably and legally can–in telling her to take the time to “work on herself.” I’m fairly sure that’s employer speak for, “You can’t do the job in your current state and frame of mind; please find out if there’s a medical fix, and bring that solution to us, and we can start over.”

                1. The Unionizer Bunny*

                  It triggers an “interactive process”, and the government doesn’t call it that just for shits and giggles. It’s not the employee’s responsibility to think of every possible accommodation. An employer doesn’t get to say “well, YOU haven’t suggested anything that I think will work, so I can just fire you for not being able to do the job”. The employer has to participate in proposing possible solutions.

                  It is not at all required (and in fact an invasive overreach) for the employer to come up with the list of possible or required accommodations.

                  Well, not THE list, no. I wasn’t implying that it was the employer’s responsibility “to think of every possible accommodation”, though. Just that this burden doesn’t rest entirely on the employee.

              3. mimi*

                It doesn’t sound like the employee asked for accommodations– she simply said “I’m having trouble dealing with the stress of this job today”, which I think would make a lot of us nervous in the manager’s position. I can’t tell from what OP writes what that looked like– did the daughter need an extra break, did she seem stressed out in front of customers, was she crying at work, did she leave early? Alison assumes she left early as in the other circumstanced, but OP doesn’t say.

                Now, should disclosing your mental health status to your manager mean you lose your job? No. But as one person with clinical anxiety to another, I’d recommend that discretion is probably OP’s daughter’s friend unless she thinks it will help her materially to ask for an accommodation.

                And although it sounds understandable to be unable to finish her shift in any one of these situations, what’s not a reasonable accommodation from the employer’s point of view is an employee needing to leave early regularly from a coverage-dependent job. They need to know when you’re going to be there, with a reasonable degree of certainty.

                1. The Unionizer Bunny*

                  It doesn’t sound like the employee asked for accommodations– she simply said “I’m having trouble dealing with the stress of this job today”, which I think would make a lot of us nervous in the manager’s position. I can’t tell from what OP writes what that looked like–

                  Even if that was all she said, it would qualify as triggering the interactive process:

                  On another day, she had failed to take her anxiety meds and let the owner know she was struggling to cope appropriately with stress on that occasion, but has since not had any issues with that.

                  She has been honest with them about her anxiety and ADHD.

                  They know about the anxiety. If she refers to stress, she’s informing them of difficulty she’s encountering with the job. That’s all that’s necessary. Precedent in Cady v. Remington Arms Company, summarized here:

                  https://www.ocalaemploymentlawyer.com/when-does-an-employer-know-or-have-reason-to-know-that-an-employee-is-disabled/

              4. MigraineMonth*

                It’s my understanding that the ADA requires an interactive accommodation process *if the employee initiates it*, not if the employer thinks it might be necessary. (The exception is if the disability prevents the employee from knowing about or communicating the request for the accommodation.)

                From ADA National Network (adata.org):

                If the individual does not request an accommodation, the employer is not obligated to provide one except where an individual’s known disability impairs his/her ability to know of, or effectively communicate a need for, an accommodation that is obvious to the employer.

                Honestly, as someone who was given a lot of “help” in school for a learning disability in school, I’m glad my employer isn’t giving me random unwanted “accommodations”.

                1. The Unionizer Bunny*

                  It’s my understanding that the ADA requires an interactive accommodation process *if the employee initiates it*, not if the employer thinks it might be necessary. (The exception is if the disability prevents the employee from knowing about or communicating the request for the accommodation.)

                  If the employee simply requests an accommodation, the employer is not required to go through the interactive process before granting it. If the employer instead provides an accommodation that the employee did not request, the employee has the right to not accept that accommodation, and even if they try to work with it, the employer may be liable if it proves ineffective. (Employers should follow up to monitor whether their pet solution has been effective.)

                  As for when the employer has a duty to initiate, this is an area where guidance may be out of sync with common law. (Even official EEOC guidance has been rejected by the courts. The law is a moving target. Attorneys actively follow new developments, so they’re likely to have already heard of precedential cases and know what to look for when citing what’s at odds with published interpretations.) According to the law firm of McAfee & Taft,

                  Notice may also come in the form of objective proof, such as sudden or increasing inability to perform job functions or other physical manifestations of symptoms that are readily observable to others in the workplace. If the need to accommodate is obvious, an employer cannot simply wait for an employee to expressly request an accommodation.

                  and

                  Notice of an employee’s desire for an accommodation can take a variety of forms, including notice that the employee wants to remain employed (in some capacity). The standard of proof required here is low: when an employee continues to come to work, and continues to perform at least some of his or her essential duties, employers are encouraged to proceed with the interactive process.

                  EEOC’s official guidance is that an employee does not need to use the word “accommodation”, or even know of the ADA’s existence, to make the employer aware of their need for an accommodation in connection with a medical disability. If the employee states “I’ve been having trouble getting to work on time because my medication makes me oversleep”, that suffices. Not exactly the same as “I forgot to take my anxiety medication” (when the employer is aware of a disability that may cause that), but close enough that I wouldn’t bat an eye at hearing an attorney take that kind of case. Freund, Freeze & Arnold note that a supervisor who remarks “John seems to have a back problem, and he can barely lift 20 pounds without grimacing” may trigger the ADA – and I don’t see anything about “back problems” that implies “John cannot request an accommodation himself”.

                  It’s a bit different for federal agencies (and federal contractors) – Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act states that

                  As a matter of affirmative action, if an employee with a known disability is having significant difficulty performing his or her job and it is reasonable to conclude that the performance problem may be related to the known disability, the contractor shall confidentially notify the employee of the performance problem and inquire whether the problem is related to the employee’s disability. If the employee responds affirmatively, the contractor shall confidentially inquire whether the employee is in need of a reasonable accommodation.

          3. Thank someone I no longer work there*

            Speaking as a manager, the wakeboarding thing would have been a big problem for me! I was willing to cut people a lot of slack…even the peeing your pants thing due to medication can catch someone off guard once…but you know wakeboarding can be risky and to expect to do it and then go into work? Maybe at a job like relief reception at an assisted living (which a friend really enjoys as an easy 4 hours twice a week job) but a job like food service where you are expected to be active the entire time?

            1. ferrina*

              This.

              I mean, it’s a common occurrence- a young teenager decides to go out and have some fun, then realizes that they are sore and can’t work as well later. Goodness knows me and almost all of my friends did that at some point. But the difference was we knew it was our own fault and handled it. If it was something like sore muscles, we knew that we had done it to ourself and were dealing with the consequences of our choices. We didn’t expect other people to have to do extra work (like being short a staff member at closing time).
              Of course, it was different if someone needed medical attention or if working would make a difference in the long-term outcomes (we sent the person with a concussion home immediately). And we wouldn’t make the person with an injured wrist carry heavy things. But they would still be expected to do their share.

              1. Aerin*

                I remember reading the final Harry Potter book in one sitting, then having to work the next day on zero sleep. I was exhausted and definitely not at my best, but I got through my shift. I made the choice not to go to sleep, and part of that choice was being an autopilot zombie for 8 hours before I could sleep again.

                (I was also 19 and able-bodied. Now that I’m 38 and have chronic fatigue? lolnope if I get less than six hours of sleep I am going back to bed and I’ll see you after lunch. But I’ve got the tenure and the PTO to pull that off, and am in a job where things can run just fine without me.)

                1. Oryx*

                  I worked at a Barnes & Noble when the last HP book came out. Worked that midnight party, went home and read for a few hours, then got up bright and early for the opening shift. That also happened to be my last day as I was moving, and they let me leave when the next person came in. Went back to my apartment to finish the book and then sleep. I was mid-20s, couldn’t do that now in my 40s.

                2. I'm Not Phyllis*

                  I think that’s a big part of it too. There are things that you can get away with after 5, 10, 15+ years on the job that you just can’t get away with in your first few weeks. That’s part of what the first few weeks of a job are for – so they can get to know you (whether you’re reliable, what your abilities are, your strengths, etc.) and for you to get to know them (is this a place you can work, what are the norms of this workplace, etc.). Not every job is for everyone and that is 100% ok.

                  Personally I think they are being kind and I think your daughter should use this time wisely … get checked out medically and really think about if this is a job that she can do.

                3. Nicole Maria*

                  It doesn’t really matter but if you are 38 now you would have been 21 or 22 when the final harry potter book came out

                4. Laura*

                  I was in my early 20s when the last Lord of the Rings movie came out, and one of the theaters near me was showing the extended editions of the first two movies and then new release starting at midnight. I consumed a LOT of caffeine the next day at work, but I made it through, and it was totally worth pushing through a day of being exhausted.

                5. Lisa Simpson*

                  I also did this! It was my first job after college. I went to a midnight release party, read like crazy, then work the next morning. Then Saturday/Sunday I didn’t have time to read so I stayed up until 4 am Monday morning finishing the book when I had to be in at 9.

                  Then a miracle happened! I got to work at 9 and was told we were closed due to maintenance issues, so I turned around, went home, and went back to bed.

              2. Leaving academia*

                I also think a huge difference is if I did do something like that, my parents would absolutely have been on me about natural consequences. I was a pretty boring teenager, though, and my jobs were always working with my hobby/sport (still do sometimes), so I’ve always had an attitude of “I’m doing this to learn and help pay for things.” This mostly manifested as knowing the pros had longer hours and the worst (especially emotionally) parts of the job, 6 days a week, while I could work around school and competitions, and I would absolutely laugh off soreness as needing to get in shape. But as a teenager, I absolutely needed a talking to about the fact it was, you know, still a job where other people needed me to be focused on the job (even if it was mostly a lot of cleaning) and the difference between “working mode” and “ client mode”.

              3. Elbe*

                Yes. Part of the reason that “young people make mistakes” is taken in stride is because there’s an understanding that they’ll experience consequences for those mistakes, learn from them, and then do better later on. If you remove the consequences… that process falls apart.

                If the daughter is calling out when she makes poor choices, she’s effectively transferring those consequences on to other employees. While some of these incidents do seem genuinely beyond her control (such as the incontinence), others seem like they could have been avoided.

            2. The Unionizer Bunny*

              Speaking as a manager, the wakeboarding thing would have been a big problem for me! I was willing to cut people a lot of slack…even the peeing your pants thing due to medication can catch someone off guard once…but you know wakeboarding can be risky and to expect to do it and then go into work?

              Just to be cheeky,
              https://www.vblawgroup.com/blog/firm-news/why-does-the-u-s-have-high-car-crash-rates/
              “According to the CDC, there are around six million car crashes in the United States every year.”

              So what I’m hearing is, you KNEW that driving came with a risk of someone crashing into you (through no fault of your own), and you still expected to do it and come into work?

              1. JM60*

                I get that you’re beeing cheeky, but I want to point out that it matters:

                1) How likely taking the risk is to require your absence.

                2) How necessary the risk taking was.

                Wakeboarding is an unnecessary activity that has a high risk of requiring you to miss work later that day. Driving is an often necessary activity (especially if you’re in the US), and each trip has a very low likelihood in requiring you to miss work due to a crash.

                1. The Unionizer Bunny*

                  I want to point out that it matters:

                  1) How likely taking the risk is to require your absence.

                  2) How necessary the risk taking was.

                  Does it, though? At-will means an employer can fire you for any lawful reason or no reason at all, but if the claim is “I didn’t fire them for their protected medical-disability status, I fired them because their hobby was too risky and not something they NEEDED to do“, that’ll be even more fragile as a pretext – if it was just “I don’t like people who ‘shoot hoops’ on the weekend” (PayPal’s meritocracy), an attorney would be discovering whether anyone had ever mentioned “playing basketball” and not being fired for it, since that would be inconsistent practice implying racial/ethnic discrimination. But if an employer tried to invoke risk?

                  Since an actuary would be able to measure the risks, I looked at health insurance. This question has been asked for wakeboarding by hobbyists, and nobody had encountered a policy that wouldn’t cover it. I had trouble researching it in connection to health insurance, though, because risky hobbies come up in the context of life insurance. (Wakeboarding is not listed there, either. What is listed includes injuries – it’s not strictly fatalities – but seems primarily clustered around high-speed impacts with solid objects. Those are a bit difficult to find when wakeboarding.)

                  If an employer can’t show they consulted with an actuary to come up with risk scores, it’s going to look more like an excuse to conceal their personal biases. Are there any other employees with injuries who are actively working there? Has anyone else been fired in the past in a similar circumstance? Even in the absence of such sentiments as “I won’t have no damn cripple greeting customers! It’s a bad look!”, the appearance of “discrimination against medically-disabled employees” can gain substantial credibility.

                  As for the “employee responsibility” factor, I believe the common-law “duty of care” does not require employees to plan the rest of their lives around what would be best for an employer who only pays us for a few dozen hours per week. As for where the line should be drawn, that seems like an excellent candidate for further discussion . . . among a wider group of people. I will raise the question in this Friday’s open thread.

          4. KC*

            Right? My partner is a part time musician and learned the hard way why you buy precut vegetables when you have a big gig coming up. There are tons of jobs where you have to forgo fun activities to be functional for work later, and when you mess it up, you kind of have to suck up the discomfort and learn from your mistakes.

          5. Artemesia*

            I was shocked that the OP thought that being too tired from wakeboarding was a good reason to not be reliable on the job. Mom is too involved.

            1. Nina*

              I think you need to read the letter again.
              The daughter was injured from wakeboarding, and while yeah, working through minor injuries is something you have to do sometimes, if it’s your first job you might consider calling out sick for that.
              And LW doesn’t strike me as too involved – she literally says she is not inclined to get involved, and just wants a sanity check that her kid is not being discriminated against.

              1. JM60*

                Once the injury occurred, calling out sick may have been the right thing to do. However, it was probably unwise to go wakeboarding before work, especially if she already had issues with absences (I’m not sure of the order of the different absences).

          6. Sally Sue*

            Right? That’s like people who choose to go out drinking the night before having to work and then using being hungover as an excuse for not working or for not being in great shape at work. There’s a difference between being sick and being sick due to poor life choices.

          7. EmmaPoet*

            I work out in the morning before my evening work shifts, and there are times where I’ve had a migraine triggered or was unexpectedly sore afterwards. So, I pop some pain meds and get on with it. That’s why, when I have a genuine medical crisis, my boss is happy to tell me to stay home and rest, because she knows she can rely on me.

        3. Not on board*

          Agree with you. This is an opportunity for this young woman to figure things out for herself. She needs to figure out how to manage her life – taking meds regularly, being aware of what’s happening with her body, etc. This is also an opportunity to figure out if culinary school is the right track – after all, if she’s not able to handle two 4-hour shifts a week reliably, any kind of job in food services is probably not feasible for her. This is not an indictment of her – if you’re blind, you’re not going to be a graphic designer. The best thing mom can do is help her daughter navigate this stuff and push her to be independant.

          1. hypoglycemic rage*

            “This is also an opportunity to figure out if culinary school is the right track – after all, if she’s not able to handle two 4-hour shifts a week reliably, any kind of job in food services is probably not feasible for her.”

            oooh, this is a solid point.

          2. Rubber Ducky*

            Your comment made me chuckle. My husband is (was) a graphic designer and now he is legally blind. And he now identifies as a former graphic designer. So you are correct. And your assessment of OP’s daughter’s situation is also correct. Sometimes you have to take a completely different path than you intended due to circumstances that are not within your control. The earlier you have the information to make that decision, the easier the adjustment will be.

        4. FromCanada*

          One of my early jobs was in an ice cream place – turns out, even though I had worked in food service before it was a really, really bad fit. Why? Because I’m very allergic to eggs and the smell at the end of a 3 hour shift managed to make me nauseous. It took me a few shifts to put it together. My next job was also food service and it was at a Taco place which was fine.

          Many of us have things we have to figure out and work around. OP your daughter may need to try a different food service job or perhaps the industry isn’t for her but she has to figure that out on her own.

          1. MigraineMonth*

            My sister had to quit her job at Ben & Jerry’s due to a repetitive stress injury to her wrist from scooping the hard ice cream. Sometimes jobs just don’t work out!

      2. Chris too*

        During the summer I’m a vendor at farmers markets – a number of us, including me, have helpers who have anxiety and ADHD.

        I have no idea why – it wouldn’t be my first
        thought of a job that would suit people with these challenges – but it seems to work. Maybe because there are no corporate scripts to follow, we sort of bring our whole personalities to work, with more tolerance for differences, and shoppers are generally in a reasonably good mood. You see the same people a lot but not for a long time, and you kind of control the interaction a bit.

        I depend on my helper and he lives up to expectations. He always spots the cute dogs first.

        I think a culinary student looking for part-time work might find some interest and find the atmosphere easier than a more “normal” job, just by what I’ve seen.

        1. teapot community*

          Can confirm from experience that this one seems to be very good for neurodivergent folks. Maybe being outside takes away some of the taxing sensory aspects of places like ice cream shops. Some farmer’s market stands do vend pastries too which would allow her to work on her school material.

        2. Aerin*

          Working at the Mouse seems like it would be a nightmare for someone with AuDHD, but it was actually kind of perfect? Always something different to do, everything that comes up genuinely needs to be dealt with immediately, clear expectations of what you need to be doing, interactions are mostly scripted, no worries about coming on too strong with a stranger because you had the nametag that justified it. It also taught social skills and triage (nothing to help you calibrate not responding to everything like it’s a life-or-death emergency like experiencing an actual life-or-death emergency).

          It’s definitely worth looking into alternative environments, you never know which one might click.

      3. Elsa*

        If I were the manager, the nausea incident would be the biggest problem for me. How can a store retain an employee who gets so nauseated from *one of the store’s own products” that she needs to leave? There is no reasonable accommodation for that condition.

        1. Resume please*

          Yeah, and ice-cream shops aren’t super diverse in terms of food offerings. It’s just…sugar. Dairy, chocolate, sugary toppings, fruit. If she wants to go in the culinary field, she’s going to be around a lot more variety, with longer hours. I worked at an ice-cream place for two sunmers as a teen, and the grossest thing was probably filling the soft-serve machine. I think something else may be going on

          1. Happy*

            Yes, and most restaurants are going to be a lot less accommodating! And a lot more physically demanding.

          2. Mr McGregor's Gardener*

            My first thought was that it was one of the cleaning chemicals that was making her nauseous, especially if she’s working closing, when a lot of cleaning is done.

            1. The Prettiest Curse*

              The letter says it was something they were making, though. The smell of whatever they use to make waffle cones (very sugary waffles?) has always made me nauseous and food smells usually don’t bother me, so maybe it was something like that.

              1. Seeking Second Childhood*

                The zebra in the herd here is whether the shop has any sanitation issues.

                I’d be sympathetic to someone nauseous at smells of rotten milk in a never-cleaned drip tray for example–but I’d suggest she clean it herself and tell the boss she’d done it. And then judge by boss’s reaction whether or not this is a place I’d want to stay.

          3. Dust Bunny*

            I worked in a candy shop one summer and thank goodness the job ended when it did because I finally couldn’t stand the smell of sweets any more. (I did not leave the job early; it was a water park and they closed at the end of the summer, anyway.) But I learned that I don’t want to do that job again.

        2. MigraineMonth*

          Especially since she can’t identify it. If it’s a deep-cleaning chemical they use once a month, they could schedule around it. If it’s their toffee, that they make and serve daily, there’s no getting around it.

          If LW’s daughter cannot work around the nausea, she really needs to do some investigating to figure out what it is she’s reacting to or it could really affect her food service career prospects.

    3. Zebra Mom*

      I agree the daughter needs to manage the relationship with the employer, but daughter may need some significant help learning how to navigate her conditions in the real world. That’s not the sort of knowledge you acquire through the usual channels. As a mom to three chronically ill young adults, figuring out what kinds of jobs are even possible and then how to be successful in them is super challenging and, frankly, sometimes very discouraging. Also, at the risk of being out of my lane, based on LW1’s descriptions, I suspect daughter has some undiagnosed conditions beyond anxiety and ADHD (the reaction to smells and loss of bladder control are significant clues). Depending on exactly what’s going on, there are many condition-based support groups out there that can help young adults learn to navigate school and work issues, and therapists can be very helpful in supporting resilience through what can be a rather soul-crushing process. Anyway, the short version is it’s her job to manage the employer/employee relationship, but (ideally) it’s your job to support her in identifying and managing her health conditions and building a team of health professionals and other supports so she can make the most of whatever she’s been dealt.

      (Normally, I would not question someone’s medical situation, but my experience with my kids was that for years, much was blown off as ADHD and anxiety until some comments from an acquaintance caused me to question those assumptions and engage some more expert doctors. This is me trying to pass on that favor.)

      1. Ellis Bell*

        I mean, I definitely think exploring health issues is not the worst idea in the world when it’s affecting work, and the word ‘inexplicable’ is being used. If you have a neuro divergence means it can mask other things. I thought the shop were reasonable in suggesting she work on things.

      2. Ginny*

        I had a similar take on the daughter’s condition and appreciate the true kindness with which this comment is written.

      3. bamcheeks*

        That’s not the sort of knowledge you acquire through the usual channels

        I mean,asking your parents as a young adult IS the usual channels! It’s sufficiently normal for young adults to get reality checks and guidance from their parents that it’s explicitly recognised as one of the things that care-experienced and estranged young adults miss out on. LW shouldn’t be contacting her daughter’s employer, of course, or overriding her daughter if her daughter asks her NOT to give advice, but she can certainly explain why this decision makes sense *from the employer’s point of view*, remind her daughter that “this job didn’t work out” isn’t a long-term verdict on her employability, and maybe suggest she gets some of the medical stuff checked out. None of this is unreasonable or unhelpful interference unless LW’s daughter draws that boundary.

        1. Clearance Issues*

          “Sometimes a job does not work out, and that’s ok, not every job works out and it is not a reflection on you.” -To say as a mom when the compliment sandwich happens.

          I’ve now known and mentored 3 separate young people in first jobs and had to have the “some kinds of things are too much information, yes being too tired from being up all night doing a hobby/hungover and then telling your boss/me about it DOES reflect poorly on your ability to plan ahead” conversation multiple times. It is not a fun conversation to have as a mentor, and it’s a balancing act in overstepping vs “heads up, coworkers and employers are not your friends who need to know all details all the time.”

          It is ok if this one does not work out, there may be other good options that still keep her on her dream path… but encourage her to examine her behavior, her needs both physically, and in a job. Can they be worked around, accomodated? Or is this field just not right for her? I am not saying to tell her this field isn’t going to work out, but to think about if this is going to be recurring issues.

          (texting and emailing is definitely normal, food service nepotism is normal, and… yeah, it is time to look for a new job after being left off the schedule. Take the life lessons and go to the next.)

          1. GythaOgden*

            I’d say in small retail ‘nepotism’ is the only way to get people to work the sort of hours you need to manage a small business. No joke, but the grocery shop I worked in needed way more time spent out of hours to manage than anyone could be paid a wage to do it, and my boss and his wife therefore did it as a family business where they kept the money in the family. From reading the trade press (that my boss let me have his issues of because it was all second nature to him) it seems he and his family wasn’t unusual.

            There’s a reason they’re called ‘mom AND pop’ stores and that’s definitely because it’s a lifestyle for many people and needs the input of others with a clear stake in the business rather than just being a job.

            1. Clearance Issues*

              yeah I spent some time working in a mom + pop restaurant and I will do my best to never go back to food service since the expectation is to put THAT MUCH extra time and effort. It’s why they frequently level “We’re a family here” as a way to get folks to work harder/longer hours.

          2. sparkle emoji*

            Yeah, some of the issues seem like maturity issues the daughter will learn with experience(wakeboarding) and some seem like health problems that may make food service extra challenging if they aren’t a one off. Luckily, she’s 19. She has time to switch paths if she decides food service isn’t for her. There is some differences between an ice cream shop and the types of food service she’ll be doing with a culinary school degree, but it is still the same field and I think it’d be worth reflecting if she’s suited to the field.

        2. Minimal Pear*

          I mean, personally I’ve found that my parents are NOT the people I’d want to go to for advice on navigating the workplace while chronically ill.

          1. bamcheeks*

            Right, hence me saying that it’s OK *unless* LW’s daughter draws that boundary. But you don’t have to refrain from giving any work advice out of the belief that your kid just has to tough it out on their own even though they’re still seeking your support.

            1. Zebra Mom*

              I didn’t mean that Mom shouldn’t advise the daughter on workplace norms (though if she’s upset about things that are relatively commonplace in the industry, then maybe her advice might not be the most useful). I just meant that Mom shouldn’t jump in between the daughter and the employer. The daughter has to be the one to take any action. Also, if the root problem here is navigating disability in the workplace, Mom may not have the expertise to do that well.

        3. Insert Clever Name Here*

          I think Zebra Mom was responding to the “ugh, why is the mom even asking about this, let the daughter deal with it” tone of some of the comments.

        4. Zebra Mom*

          Sorry for being unclear–I meant that knowing how to navigate the workplace with disabilities is not knowledge acquired through the usual channels. People without disabilities often give…not so great advice on how to handle disabilities at work :)

      4. Florp*

        This is a good, nuanced take. My son had lots of accommodations right through college, but we made sure to explain to him that the types of accommodations you get in school might be very different from what a workplace is going to be willing to provide. He had a cozy resource room to go to where aides (angels!) helped him study or get organized or work through complex projects. He had extra time for tests, and he had alternate graduation requirements that reduced his foreign language requirements. Workplaces don’t have anything like that. As he was looking at colleges, we talked a lot about what he can do without handholding, and what kind of degrees / jobs will not put up with his inability to, say, write an essay. He loves loves loves history, but he’s never going to be a history professor.

        It can be a very difficult transition. There are plenty of physical, mental and emotional issues that can keep you from starting careers you might otherwise be really keen on. The trick is to find a niche that uses the skills and aptitudes you have. It’s the parent’s job to help the kid learn to manage themselves and advocate for themselves. It’s not the parent’s job to manage the workplace.

        Lots of employees have a disability or illness to deal with. Good managers see accommodations as a tool that helps a valuable employee do a job that they are otherwise qualified for; it’s an investment in your workforce. They are relying on the employee to tell them what they need, and it needs to be something that is not a burden on the business. No manager is going to have the training to put in place a specific plan for each employee without asking. There’s little incentive to do it for part time, seasonal, or low-skill work. Accommodations does not mean the employee is excused from meeting the requirements of the job. Unfortunately, the biggest requirement of service industry jobs is just being there for the full shift, physically doing the work. Being repeatedly unable to finish a shift is a burden on the employer and the colleagues who have to cover at short notice.

        1. Porscha*

          All of this yes! I’m a high school special education teacher and I definitely want to see my students excel in life. But it’s also having the students and parents understanding what the student is capable of. I can totally understand, too, the difficulty in transitioning from high school to college and life outside of high school. Students and parents have to understand that when the students turn 18, they have to start advocating for themselves. I am all about them getting the help they need though and having mentors and parents and various resources to help them transition into adulthood, but it still falls on the adult child to start navigating that. I’m for the LW wanting to help their daughter, but that would mean helping the daughter navigate expecations and helping her figure out to function while still having a job. I worked in fast food and retail for years, some good workplaces, some bad. I’ve worked through headaches and nausea and aches and pains and whatever else was going on in my life at the time. I definitely rememer partying and then going in to work the next day. Retail and fast food jobs are rough, and while I think somethings could get better in those jobs, they still need people who are going to be reliable. If just one of those things happened, it could be a fluke. But to have all those things happen right after starting a job, it doesn’t look good. I do think it’s a good lesson for the daughter to learn though, and it’s a good time for her to consider if she wants to stay in the food industry.

    4. Bag of Goods*

      Firstly, I see that the daughter is having a hard time, through no fault of her own – she is young and navigating a clash of access requirements with a first job, wow, it’s a big challenge for both mother and daughter. You’re both going through so much, so I would not underestimate the mental toll this could take on both. (And of course the mental toll can lead to physical ailments.)
      I agree with the comments about possible EDS/POTS/MCAS. Nicole Sachs – I believe – has a book coming out soon specifically written for teenagers about how to deal with these types of conditions, including anxiety. If she hasn’t released the book yet, her website and Instagram are excellent resource in general for learning to cope much better.
      Finally, I do think the OP here (mother) could do with resetting her expectations on what’s appropriate at work. The two shifts a week – including Saturday – is normal and fine, the manager-related-to-owner is normal and fine in this industry, and communicating by email and text is too. Could some of the mother’s understandable anxiety be influencing the daughter to be more anxious about her new job? I think both of you need care, self-compassion and support here.

      1. Bag of Goods*

        Ps. If you look up those medical conditions, you can find quite an intense world online and it can be intimidating to read about some more extreme manifestations of them. But as other commenters have said, if any of those conditions are even present here it would only be at a *mild* level!

      2. Sloanicota*

        I’m so confused as to why we’ve abandoned our usual rules about internet diagnosing today.

        1. MassMatt*

          This. Alison asks that we not do this, no one here is qualified to make a diagnosis based on a secondhand report in a letter, and it generally does not help those seeking advice.

        2. jasmine*

          In this case, the LW is writing in about her daughter and commentators are saying that these diagnoses *might* apply. I’d argue that’s not unhelpful. The problems with armchair diagnosing are usually certainty, irrelevance, and/or ableism. None of those apply here.

        3. Florence Reece*

          Because this isn’t diagnosing? This is saying “I’ve seen similar experiences with these conditions so maybe you can check them out.” I’m so confused as to why people aren’t realizing how difficult it is to identify chronic conditions if you have no starting point — doctors usually shrug off the sorts of things being discussed here as psychosomatic malingering, especially in young women. No one is saying she *definitely* has something medical going on, but I don’t know why there should be a problem offering that as a possible resource.

          1. Apex Mountain*

            I think it’s the same for the glasses letter also. IMO it should be ok to mention it without saying “you definitely have a vision problem”

        4. Anon for this*

          It’s not so much armchair diagnosing, as it is agreement that going to a doctor to get stuff checked out is a good idea, rather than saying “she’s inexplicably struggling!”

    5. CityMouse*

      Having worked the gamut of food service (fast food, dish washing, large scale social dinners, catering), I will say I do find it a red flag when someone goes to culinary school without having worked in a kitchen first. It can be a very physically demanding job, there’s a lot of bad behavior, a lot of drugs. You cut yourself, you’re expected to bandage glove up and keep working.

      Also, yeah LW1’s daughter likely doesn’t work there anymore. That’s what being taken off the schedule like that usually means. And after multiple instances of being unable to finish a shift in a short time, yes, that’s normal.

      1. Smithy*

        While I think this is a good call for a lot of professional tracks – get some experience to know the career is a fit and not the activity.

        When I was younger, I really loved creative writing – but by the time I got to high school, it became more and more apparent that a huge part of the academic and professional creative writing world I was not set for. Whether it was a feature of my anxiety or just my personality, I learned in high school that reading my work out loud to my peers and getting immediate feedback was painful. Now perhaps if my anxiety was better managed, this is something I could have gone through – but regardless, it was where I was.

        There are a lot of maxims out there around doing what you love, and while the flip side isn’t to do what you hate – pursuing what you love as a job, means being able to also thrive in the workplace realities. For all the people who’s dream it is to open a cafe, or bar or bed and breakfast – a lot of those fail when they’re run by people who don’t necessarily thrive on the small business side.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          I make money at what I’m good at, pays well, and I don’t hate. It makes me enough money that I can do what I love as a hobby, which is what lets me keep loving it.

      2. Heffalump*

        In Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain related that one night in his first kitchen job, he burned himself and asked for a bandage and burn cream. He was mocked mercilessly.

    6. DJ Abbott*

      BUT – and this is what I wish had been done for me – talk with her and guide her about what’s expected as an employee, how to get along with managers and colleagues, how to do her best in a job.
      My parents did nothing to help me get a good start, and I had to figure everything out as I went along.
      Wishing her good luck, and all the best!

    7. Mouse named Anon*

      She does need to think about whether Food Service is right for her. Restaurant jobs as a chef (or any position really) can be incredibly demanding. 60-80 hour weeks, hot kitchens, tough atmosphere. My FIL has worked in kitchens for 40 years. It was tough on him and the family. Its very hard on the body too. I wish her the best of luck.

      1. El l*

        Agree. All the well-intentioned “be kind” platitudes won’t change this being a famously tough industry. Always has been, it’s not for everyone, and it’s not going to change.

        She should do something else with her life, and be philosophical that at least she figured it before burning decades on it.

        1. Artemesia*

          This. A person who cannot finish a shift cannot possibly do the work of a chef. She needs to be thinking about what else she might do that plays to her strengths and doesn’t demand what she doesn’t have to give.

      2. Sloanicota*

        It’s also a field that’s heavily dependent on showing up in person no matter what. Would the daughter be happier in a field where working from home will be an option sometimes? I know I am. I also need to sit inside in the air conditioning on hot days, something I didn’t learn until I had a field season under my belt.

        1. ferrina*

          Yep. Daughter might want to think about whether food service is the career she wants to pursue. It’s notoriously stressful, coverage dependent, terrible hours and honestly this ice cream shop sounds like it might be on the easier end of food service.

          If daughter is having a tough time with this role, it’s time for her to think critically about what she needs from a job. Especially with health issues- she may need something with more flexibility. I’m ADHD, and I knew when I was a teenager that I would have a tough time with any job that required a lot of time filling out paperwork. Certain careers were just not going to be an option for me.

          1. Aerin*

            100% this. People have needs, but the employer has needs too. Health conditions that mean you might have to bounce at any time are not really compatible with a job with strict coverage requirements. And the vast majority of jobs in the culinary field are going to have those strict requirements: they need a certain amount of staffing in order to function and there’s not really any redundancy in that, because having extra people hanging around just in case causes different problems.

            Daughter may want to consider food to be a passion and look at other areas where she’d be reasonably satisfied for a day job. Personally, I’ve got a degree in English and a career in tech support, and it’s worked out pretty well for me. Or she might look at things that cross over with food but don’t have the same kind of rigorous schedule. Test kitchens? Office job in a restaurant’s corporate office? Production skills to work on a cooking show? Get creative, but be practical.

            1. Ali + Nino*

              This is great advice. She doesn’t have to “abandon” the culinary arts but rethink her involvement (which could be a job or a hobby). I think the suggestions you offered are a good start and she should really explore this.

            2. MigraineMonth*

              What’s baking like? I know the hours are crazy early and one would still have to show up every day, but it seems like it could be preplanned and wouldn’t be the same kind of unpredictable/chaotic as, say, a line cook or sous-chef.

              1. Joron Twiner*

                Baking is similar from what I’ve heard and read. Busy times are different times of day but it’s an insanely physical job. Certain ingredients have to be prepared at certain times in certain ways or else there’s no bread. Not a good fit with someone who struggles with physical fitness and timely resilience.

        2. goddessoftransitory*

          Exactly. This is a field where if you called in to tell your boss “My arm was just torn off!” they would think it normal to answer “well, the other one still works, right?”

          I exaggerate, but it’s really not a profession for people who physically can’t stand/make it through a shift.

          1. ferrina*

            You exaggerate, but I got four or five stitches in my hand and only called out for one shift (because I was in the urgent care getting stitches and couldn’t be in two places at once). The next day I came in with an inch-thick bandage on my whole hand, threw a glove on it, and worked my normal shifts.
            On the bright side, the bandage worked great as a mitt for handling hot stuff.

            1. StephChi*

              I was working in food service and got a shoulder injury on the job. I wasn’t even out for a day, they just gave me work to do which accommodated the injury (I did get therapy covered by workman’s comp). Another time I cut off part of the tip of a finger on a meat slicer I was cleaning at the end of the night. They just patched me up, and I was back to work the next day doing my usual job. I still can see where the injury happened, because that part of my finger is a lighter color than the rest of my finger. And I haven’t even mentioned the hot oil burns on my forearms that I got while cooking at that job, which I just threw bandages on and kept going. They gave me permanent discoloration. That was 20 years ago, and they’re still really visible.

              Another thing, is that those shifts were eight hours. We got a 30-minute lunch break and a 15 minute break, but were constantly busy otherwise. Needless to say, I never sat down unless I was on my break. I didn’t always get that amount of breaks for the waitressing jobs I had, maybe only 15-20 minutes, none if we were short-staffed.

              1. Catfish Mke*

                She skips out from wakeboarding. I worked the day after I broke my collarbone. She wouldn’t probably want to let the wakeboarding thing become public because in my experience she’d be ridden like a rodeo bull for that

    8. Sloanicota*

      Yes, there is a huge amount of learning going on in early jobs, and you can’t fix it for her OP – she has to muddle through and find out what works for her and what doesn’t. Particularly when you are a student, you are used to your teachers being there for your benefit and generally trying to serve *you* (even if it doesn’t always feel that way). When you enter the work world, you’re there to serve the role, and if you can’t, they’d often rather find someone who can. That’s a weird thing to encounter for the first time, but it’s how we grow.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        So true. I really wish someone had told me this before my first job. I really though my manager was there to support me, help me develop as a [job role] and launch my career.

        *shakes head at younger self*

    9. AnonInCanada*

      This. Sorry, mom, but your daughter is 19. She’s an adult, and she’ll need to understand that not every job will be suited for her needs. Especially since she needed to leave early four times in such a short span. Your involvement will only accelerate them either giving her fewer shifts or just letting her go. She’ll need to figure that out for herself. Sure, you can guide her, but that should be your motherly instinct. Not turning on the helicopter blades.

      1. Prof. Murph*

        Agree with the recommendations that parents allow their adult children handle their employment, bosses, etc. on their own. It makes my skin crawl every time a parent writes into Alison asking about their child’s work problems. I know this will come across as obnoxious, but as a college professor, I find any parent intervening on behalf of their child is doing more harm than good. As someone who teaches a careers class, I can tell you that we end up undoing half or more of what a student’s parents tell them – from how to write a resume, to networking, and especially when it’s in a field entirely different from their own experiences (e.g., how you network for computer science internships and jobs is entirely different that how you network for a costume design position, etc.). This is another example – the mother is unfamiliar with food service positions and thus has incorrect expectations about the job duties, which she is then incorrectly communicating to her child.

        1. Blue Pen*

          It’s impossible to know if the daughter independently recognizes her part in this and it’s the LW who is taking issue, or if both are flummoxed as to why this is happening. I suspect it’s the latter, and I think the concern here—even if mom isn’t directly contacting the shop owner to intervene—is that she is coddling her daughter in this situation.

    10. Chauncy Gardener*

      Agree that Mom should let her daughter handle this.
      Also, if daughter has a hard time physically finishing a shift, culinary school could be really brutal for her, as could the subsequent job as a chef. Chefs stand all day and for someone with anxiety, a kitchen can be a really stressful and sometimes abusive culture. Not sure what kind of cooking she wants to do as her end goal. Just maybe something to take into consideration.
      I wish her luck!

      2. TQB*

        I recently met a person who is the chef at an assisted living facility. They insisted on giving me a sample of their HOMEMADE BACON and baking up fresh cookies. This person clearly was trained as a chef and is passionate about food – I didn’t ask but my sense was that they had found a perfect place where they could do that but without the terror and anxiety of a fast-paced restaurant kitchen. And what a gift to the residents and their families! LW and her daughter should consider alternate food service careers – they are out there.

        1. Tiger Snake*

          I’m actually a little surprised that an assisted living facility wouldn’t be regarded as fast-paced? What I’ve been told (from people in similar roles, so I guess there’s a confirmation bias) is that assisted living usually means that every person your cooking for has very particular tastes and wants. Food aversions and pickiness to the point of people giving themselves scurvy because they just won’t eat sort of issues.

          So, there’s a lot of having to make lots of adjustments and being very creative so that everyone gets food that’s good for them and that they’ll actually eat. Lots of custom meals that all need to be cooked and ready at the same time.

          1. Catfish Mke*

            It’s likely they work in a lower rent type facility that basically has a cafeteria run by a dietician

      3. eater of hotdish*

        Yeah, I’ve spent enough time working in/around food service to realize that if you don’t start your culinary career with chronic pain, an anxiety disorder, and at least one dangerous addiction…don’t worry, they’ll train you.

        Commercial kitchens are not, generally speaking, happy and well-adjusted spaces. And I think it’s worth wondering, as a society, why that is, and if we can’t do better by the people who feed us. But in the short term, it doesn’t sound like an environment where LW1’s daughter stands a good chance of thriving.

    11. Tiger Snake*

      At the end of the day, #1’s daughter was a brand new employee who came up with a new reason to leave early for every one of her shifts. That’s a flag for any employer.

      It’s frustrating to mom’s perspective, but from an employer of a small business it actually does sound like it’s an attempt to be genuinely accommodating. That she’s given excuses and that there’s reasons for why it happened doesn’t change the impact, so action needs to be taken for it to stop.

      She’s had to leave early for almost every shift she’s had – so her needs to get herself in order for this to work because every message her employer has gotten is that she’s NOT right now. Meanwhile, all those absences mess with the scheduling and impact other employees, so giving her daughter shifts is now a risk to everyone.
      “Take a breather to get yourself in order and then we’ll give it one more go.” actually sounds like it could be genuine just as much as it could be a soft firing.

    12. e271828*

      Mom needs to back waaaay off. This is not her job, not her life, and daughter is going to need to be independent very soon!

  2. Daria grace*

    #5, just be as sure as possible that the layoffs will actually happen before you give warning. I had a job where they gave us a LOT of notice about impending layoffs. It was a difficult job but with a finish date in sight people tried to push on through the burnout and put off some personal plans until after the scheduled finish date. Close to when we were meant to be finishing up management decided they didn’t want to lay us off after all and pleaded with us to stay. Being burned out and frustrated most people decided to leave on their previously scheduled finish dates and management was obligated to pay out the severance packages they’d previously put in writing.

    2. A Significant Tree*

      From a different perspective – I was part of a WARN layoff, so we got 60 days’ notice that we would be laid off. It was possible that other roles in the company might be available, so you could use that time to find internal transfer options or do an external job hunt, including resume updating, interview classes, etc., which the company supported/doing and even offered these classes during work hours. While it was awkward being there for so long with an end date looming in the distance, it helped cushion the blow for the affected people. I’m sure I would have felt differently if we felt obligated to work hard up to the minute we left, but fortunately that was not an expectation.

  3. Nodramalama*

    Yeah I get that for lw1s daughter these all seem like reasonable excuses, but in an industry like food service where it’s mainly staffed with casual employees, it’s going to look like she’s flaky and not worth the trouble. Also, I think while not being able to work because of avoidable issues like wake boarding and forgetting to take medication, while in isolation may not be an issue, probabky isn’t going to fly when compounded with the idea that she’s new and it’s not the first time.

    1. Rooby*

      Yeah, it’s not that in a different workplace those wouldn’t be understandable problems. It’s just that for food services, they just don’t care. They will always prefer a 5/10 worker who shows up and stays like clockwork to a 9/10 worker who has to dip frequently, even for good reasons. They’re just not going to be that invested.

      1. Banana Pyjamas*

        Yep. The only way you can dip frequently is if you arrange coverage every single time. Also leaving at close is leaving early in food service. There’s sidework after close.

        1. goddessoftransitory*

          Yes; the one thing you don’t want in food service is a rep for conveniently “having” to leave right before nightly breakdown/cleanup.

        2. Commenter 505*

          Yep, and she’s leaving all of the closing work for the only other person there, at least some of the time. Regardless of reason, it’s an imposition the first time and a dirty deal times 2-4.

          Will she ask to be dismissed next time she doesn’t like the smell? The next time she’s sore or forgets to take her meds? That’s 100% on her. She should be carrying a little pill case with an extra dose at all times. And one would be hard-pressed to find someone working in food service without an injury or sore muscles. It’s really, really hard work.

    2. GammaGirl1908*

      “ not being able to work because of avoidable issues like wake boarding and forgetting to take medication”

      I agree with this. However you slice it, Daughter has been flaky, and sometimes for avoidable reasons. Most workplaces, especially volume-based ones like food service, don’t really care why you can’t show up. They need enough warm bodies to get the work done, not people who can’t be there for even excellent-to-them reasons. The family is rationalizing and giving reasons and quibbling about side issues, but she needs to be there. It doesn’t matter if the manager is the owner’s cousin. The shift doesn’t end at closing time. Et cetera.

      Present and just-okay is better than absent but excellent. I mean, my food is wrong at Wendy’s more than it’s right, but somebody has to be there to hand me the bag out of the drive-through window.

    3. Cat Tree*

      Yeah, I don’t think missing work due to poor planning around a hobby goes well in any job. I’m a manager in a white-collar office job and I wouldn’t find that a good reason. I would be sympathetic to someone forgetting medication due to ADHD but as part of a larger pattern it wouldn’t look good.

      1. Seeking Second Childhood*

        As an aside, it would be equally problematic if she skipped after to overtaxing her muscles at another job.

        1. Antilles*

          It would still be problematic to completely skip, yes, but in many other jobs, you could just work through it. If my legs are completely dead due to a hobby (never skip leg day!), it doesn’t impact my ability to do my chair-based office job at all…but food service where you’re on your feet for 8 straight hours is a different animal.

          2. Orange You Glad*

            Yea, when I was LW’s daughter’s age, I worked in a grocery store in a beach town. I went waterskiing for the first time that summer, not realizing how much that would affect my arm muscles. I was miserable at work the next day, but I just worked through it. It never would have occurred to me to say something or ask to leave.

      2. JTP*

        RE: “I don’t think missing work due to poor planning around a hobby goes well in any job”
        Seriously? Nobody would ever try anything new if that were the case. Having to take a PTO day because of unexpected pain after pursuing a hobby would not be frowned upon in my office job.

        1. Jennifer Strange*

          This was the same day, though. Presumably one wouldn’t partake in a physically-demanding hobby the same day they have to work their physically-demanding job. Also, there is nothing to indicate that this is a new hobby, so she likely knew what the physical toll would be.

        2. Cat Tree*

          …This is a really odd take. It’s extremely reasonable for people to predict that a new activity that is quite physical might affect them in a way that will make their active job unpleasant, and to plan around it.

        3. mimi*

          Well, you wouldn’t say “I can’t come to work today because my wrist is sore from my knitting lesson yesterday” to your boss, presumably, unless you have built a close and open relationship over a long time. You’d just say “I’m not feeling well and will take PTO today.”

          And at a lot of jobs you’re discouraged from doing that in the first few weeks– sick time may not come in that soon, plus you’re just making your reputation. I know I’m a lot more casual about my sick time use than I was early in my career, when I had less PTO to use and less reputation to demonstrate I’m responsible with my commitment to my employer.

          And in food service that goes double. It’s a physical job that requires shifts be covered in person in order for the place to function.

    4. Person from the Resume*

      Also how much complaining and talking about the soreness and injury was the daughter doing? To be let out of the closing tasks leaving the manager to do it all himself probably means the daughter was complaining a lot or being very dramatic about it.

      Mistake 1 was admitting it was her fun day and personal choice prevented her from working well. She didn’t really have to share how she got hurt. Mistake 2 was just not trying to power through. Frankly either call in sick or show up intending to do the best you can while suffering in silence. I’m betting she showed up and made a big deal about it.

      This is an entry level job. This is where the daughter gets to learn job skills including if you’re not reliable you won’t be viewed as a good worker and get the good shifts. And if you’re not reliable, they may fire you. She’s on a two person shift it sounds like; when she leaves early that’s a 50% shortage of workers versus her being one person on a large shift.

        1. Person from the Resume*

          What exactly is unkind? There is agreement in these comments that the daughter has been an unreliable employee. There’s also agreement that also doesn’t fly well at entry level service positions.

          1. Salty Caramel*

            The assumption about the complaining, making the daughter look worse than what we know from Mom. Person from the resume isn’t arguing that the daughter is unreliable.

        2. rebelwithmouseyhair*

          Not at all unkind. The daughter has been really flaky, she needs to learn. It’s a cruel world, retail! But in an office they’d be thinking the same too, four times having to go home early in just the first couple of weeks is really too much.

          1. goddessoftransitory*

            If there’s one important lesson to be learned in the work world in general, it’s this: your coworkers WILL notice if you keep vanishing, and a lot sooner than you think.

            It doesn’t matter if you’re mopping floors or Zooming on international conference calls. The person who can’t be relied on to show up is, 100% of the time, noted by their colleagues.

        3. Sneaky Squirrel*

          I think there’s validity to the question. The employer views the daughter as flaky because she’s constantly leaving her shifts early in a short period of time. It’s a fair question to also ask how she is portraying herself mid-shift. If, say, she’s spending half of her shift complaining about her wakeboarding injury or complaining about the smells prior to her stepping out early, she could be fueling the perceptions of her being difficult to work with.

        4. sparkle emoji*

          Maybe it’s unkind, but I think the underlying message is a reasonable one, and something the daughter needs to grasp if she wants a career in food service or a similar coverage based industry. It’s a big deal to leave before close when you’re scheduled to close. It takes a lot to get a manager or another coworker to agree to close alone so you can go home. If the reason they agreed on the wakeboarding day was because she was complaining about her soreness, that’s not a good thing. I have had coworkers in coverage jobs who did this and they didn’t last long.

    5. Someone stole my croissant*

      At my job, you’re allowed 2 callouts per quarter. Anything beyond that is a write up. I can definitely see why your manger is concerned, even if you have actual legitimate concerns. The other thing (I speak from experience) is that fast food workers are extremely judgmental. We don’t care if you’re in massive pain, have an issue with your immune system, or have mental health problems. If you can’t get your job done and done moderately well, then we are gonna talk crud about you behind your back.(even thought that’s not okay, and very toxic)
      Food service is very demanding. I don’t know if tou can salvage this with your boss. You gotta be more dependable. I know that things come up, but the more things that do, the more it looks like you are being flaky.

      1. Butterfly Counter*

        A lot of the reason coworkers “don’t care” is that they’re going through many of the same things themselves. Most will probably have some sort of issue, whether physical or mental, and they’re getting through their shifts. If a coworker has chronic fatigue and they see someone go home because they are sore from wakeboarding, it could seem incredibly galling.

    6. MigraineMonth*

      I’m also curious how the daughter framed these issues when excusing herself, because “I’m so sorry this happened, these are the steps I’m taking to make sure it never happens again” is much easier to work with than “I’m so sorry it happened”.

      With these particular issues… it seems like a lot of them *will* happen again. The daughter really needs to get to the root of what caused the incontinence and the nausea to something the ice cream place produces before she can even potentially be a reliable worker. She also needs to come up with systems to make sure that she always takes her medication and doesn’t do activities that have a high potential of injury that will prevent her from working. The job at the ice cream place is coverage-based and she needs to be consistently working her entire shift; if she comes back with ways to avoid these issues repeating, she’ll have a much better chance of getting re-hired.

      Alternately, the daughter would have to commit to the job, take preventative measures where possible (Depends underwear and an N-95 mask, for example), and push through the discomforts and anxiety. I don’t know whether that’s feasible or a good idea for the daughter’s long-term health, but at some point it’s probably going to be necessary if she wants to keep this type of coverage-based job.

  4. Zombeyonce*

    I feel bad for everyone in the first letter. LW is having a hard time because her daughter isn’t successful at her job, the daughter is having a hard time because her medical issues are making her unreliable, and the employer is having a hard time because they have an unreliable employee, and it’s easier to get someone to cover a shift an employee can’t make than bring someone in for a partial shift when you’re unexpectedly shorthanded.

    There are so many types of jobs that I think LW’s daughter should look for work that’s not in food service or shifts, and remote work might be ideal. My own college-aged family members do online tutoring through a local school, social media work for companies, and all sorts of odd jobs that are remote so they can fit them around their studies. There are so many more options for remote work than there were when I was that age; I think the daughter just needs to be more creative in her job search and be really honest with herself about her needs and how much flexibility she needs.

    1. Nodramalama*

      I mean one of the issues is that if shes in culinary school she probably wants/needs experience in food service right?

      1. Zombeyonce*

        I’m having a hard time imagining her being able to be a chef if she is this unreliable. It sounded like half was due to mental health issues and the other half because of other issues, but put together it’s not looking like a great career choice for her.

        She also has anxiety, and kitchens are notoriously stressful to work in, even for people without anxiety (The Bear is pretty accurate on that front!). I wonder if she’s really thought through her career plans.

        1. Ellis Bell*

          It’s the nausea around smells that would have me wondering if this is the job/career for her. The only people I know who get ill from scent sensitivity could never work in a kitchen. Maybe OP knows that this was truly a one off, but a new boss would be likely thinking this isn’t the right path for them. A professional chef doesn’t just cook things they personally like the smell of.

        2. Earlk*

          Anxiety isn’t a straight swap for stress though. I do really well in fast-paced environments because you’re just basically following a list of tasks at speed (never worked in a high end kitchen though) so working in a kitchen is much less stressful for me than planning a long term project in a different type of job.

          1. Fluffy Fish*

            Agree but also think it’s worth OP’s daughter evaluating as she’s overall evaluating how and why this job isn’t the right fit. For whatever reason she’s not doing well performing at a basic level of food service – she should consider whether more advanced work in the field would be different/better or no.

            Sometimes what we (think) we want to do doesn’t end up working out. That’s ok, its not failing, its merely learning more about ourselves so we can find our path.

          2. biobotb*

            OK, but the daughter left a shift because she was too anxious, so it does seem like she should do some deep thinking about whether this is the right career path for her. Life happens, and she will likely forget her meds again at some point, so it would be a good idea to think about career paths where that wouldn’t prevent her from doing her job or wouldn’t put her at risk of getting fired.

        3. CityMouse*

          I’m also hesitant to bring this up but a lot of culinary schools are super expensive and kind of scammy and any culinary school that takes someone in with no restaurant experience isn’t likely to be a decent school.

          1. RagingADHD*

            This is not accurate. There are many local, very good programs designed for high school students and recent graduates, or through community colleges. For example, my local public high school has a whole career-training track for students who want to graduate with specific job certifications, like an EMT certificate, an LPN, various types of engineering / construction / electrical qualifications, or a culinary certificate.

            Programs aren’t famous, but they are very high quality and have excellent reputations / job placement relationships in their local communities.

            1. CityMouse*

              Community college programs are very different from dedicated Culinary schools. But frankly no one should be spending money on culinary school without working in the field.

            2. Dandylions*

              Same experience here. Lots of local culinary schools are great. You can be successful in any of the local restaurants (like high end tourists places, casinos, etc.) with h an education there but you wouldn’t be competitive for say, working at Gordan Ramesy’s restaurants.

              Most require no prior experience.

    2. Jacqueline*

      She’s also gotta just learn to work through anxiety, sore muscles, and nausea. You cannot take time off every time you feel less than perfect when you work in food serivce.

      I wonder if the LW mother has ever worked in a restaurant, because it seems that her sense of what is reasonable is not calibrated to the realities of the workplace.

      I also wonder whether these so-called anxiety meds are benzos and if so, whether they are responsible for some of these medical issues. Is she working with a doctor who is aware of the side effects of benzos (which include incontinence!) and is helping her wean off the drugs?

      1. Blue Pen*

        >> You cannot take time off every time you feel less than perfect when you work in food serivce.

        Or anywhere, to be honest. Listen, I’m the biggest believer in work not encroaching on your personal life as the next guy. But it doesn’t seem like the OP’s daughter (or the OP?) has figured out what tenacity looks like in the workplace yet. I’m not at all saying that people should suffer just to get the job done, especially for what I’m assuming is little pay at an ice cream shop, but there’s something to be said for learning how to be reliable, pushing yourself, and being a team player. Life is not sunshine and rainbows; for the majority of us, we’re in the shits together. And when you prove yourself to be a reliable team player, it’s an important life lesson to learn.

        1. Blue Pen*

          ETA: when you face challenging circumstances or individuals, you grow as a person. When you go out wakeboarding and are sore from it, you learn that some choices have consequences and there’s a cost to pay. In this case, assuming she wasn’t in stabbing pain from wakeboarding, the cost to pay is feeling more sore during the workday than usual.

        2. jasmine*

          I wonder if this isn’t an issue of tenacity but of medical issues.

          OP’s daughter still has a lot to learn about workplace norms (completely normal, she’s 19). But I’ve also been the person who doesn’t have the same level “tenacity” others do, and no amount of pushing or saying to myself “well other people can do XYZ even if it’s hard, why can’t you?” ever helped. I don’t have a diagnosis or anything. Every test I’ve taken comes back as normal, though in the last couple of years I’ve also developed minor disabilities which no one can really explain.

          From the specific incidents described, I do wonder if maybe LW’s daughter’s body just isn’t built to push through things like most folks. Unfortunately, the only way to know that is through experience trying to do the hard stuff. But once she has that knowledge, it’ll be very valuable in deciding what she wants for her career.

          1. Blue Pen*

            Of course that’s possible. I don’t discount that at all. Based on my own physical inabilities, I know there are positions/industries out there that I would not be well-suited for, either. Generally speaking, though, my point (that I think others have made better than I have here) is that you’re never going to have a set of ideal conditions always in the workplace. Growth as a person comes from when you can rise above those situations—to the best of your ability. This ice cream shop is just responding to the outputs they’re seeing.

            I think it’s important to make the point you are that, yes, this could actually be a result of medical issues. But I think it’s also just as valid to say that the OP’s daughter—likely new to the workforce—hasn’t quite figured out workplace norms, expectations, etc., yet.

    3. Vique*

      Agreed. Also, it seems that the daughter can’t finish a 4-hour shift on multiple occasions. I just can’t wrap my head around how she plans to work in a professional kitchen where shift are often 12+ hours long.

      1. Allonge*

        As this is a first job, I am also wondering how much of this is the reality of what a work shift means.

        In school and in just about every activity for kids, there are much more frequent breaks than at work (by design of course).

        It can be quite a shock to go from that to a work situation – but that has to be managed too. And as you say, four hours is definitely not the longest she will come across.

        1. londonedit*

          I definitely think a lot of young people in their first jobs do struggle with the reality of ‘yes you must turn up every time and you must work your whole shift’. I think they objectively grasp the concept, but then when they start working it can be hard to get your head around ‘yes, you have to do this every Saturday until further notice, and your shift will be six hours, and you can’t leave until your shift ends’. And that is difficult. I remember being a teenager and signing up to do things like volunteering, or going to swimming lessons, and then thinking a few weeks in ‘ugh this is so boring, I wish I’d never signed up to do this’ and wondering how I could get out of it. Jobs are the same, especially if they’re on Saturdays when everyone else is doing something else.

          Also I don’t know how things are in the US, but certainly in the UK if you’re at university then it’s your choice and your responsibility whether or not you attend every lecture – you obviously can’t skip swathes of lectures without it having an impact, but you can definitely wake up and think ‘not feeling it today, can’t be arsed, will go next week’. Especially now all the notes (and probably a video of the lecture) are online. It’s easy to transfer that sort of ‘not really feeling it today, I’ll leave it until my next shift’ mindset to a job, especially if it’s part-time or it’s ‘just’ a summer job or whatever.

          1. CityMouse*

            I guess by 19 I was probably in my fifth food service job but I do question someone struggling to keep up with 8 hours a week. I don’t want to be hard on this kid but I also think she really needs to learn some work norms or it’s going to be very hard for her.

          2. Humble Schoolmarm*

            At least in my part of North American Education, being punitive for arriving late or missing deadlines is really frowned upon and “taking a break” is a hugely common adaptation for both ADHD and anxiety. While proponents (ie the people in charge) say it’s to make schools accommodating and inclusive for kids like OP1’s daughter, a lot of front line teachers are worried that we’re not doing them much good in a landscape where their first few jobs are likely to care very much about arriving promptly and working consistently for the whole shift. The ideal answer is to do more about teaching executive functioning without being punitive, but not a lot of places are there yet.

            1. MassMatt*

              I don’t know what you are referring to by “North American Education”, whether that’s a specific organization or simply refers to education on the continent in general.

              But if your organization discourages treating repeated tardiness and failure to show up as serious issues, IMO the organization is doing a real disservice to their students. Most employers very much care about their employees showing up and will have little if any tolerance for taking breaks due to ADHD etc.

              1. Irish Teacher.*

                I took her comment to mean that schools are often discouraged from treating lateness as a serious issue because it is often outside students’ control. There are kids who are regularly late for school because they depend on their parents or an older sibling to drive them and that person is disorganised. Or they come by bus and the bus was late. Or they are parentified and are responsible for bringing their younger sibling to school or daycare and they can’t drop that sibling off before a certain time so it is not possible for them to get to school on time.

                It is a tricky one because yes, it is important for students to learn the importance of time-keeping and the situations above are not true of every student who is late. It really isn’t fair to punish the kid who was ready on time but who couldn’t wake their parent to drive them in or whose parent was too drunk to drive them in so they had to phone around for a lift. But yeah, it is also a problem to keep enabling the student who is consistently late because they are disorganised or messing around.

                And schools don’t necessarily have information as to which kid is which. So there isn’t an easy answer here.

                1. Humble Schoolmarm*

                  Exactly what I meant! I used the term North American because expectations around p-12 education varies a lot by culture and I wasn’t sure if other countries had a similar shift in expectations. Sounds like my experiences are very much in line with Irish Teacher, though.

              2. kt*

                My kid’s kindergarten teacher had a saying, “There’s no such thing as late when it comes to getting to school!”

                She’d worked in an environment where many kids had significant challenges from unstable housing and family situations.

                My kid did not have unstable housing or family configuration. It was a struggle to get it across: “Hon, your teacher wants kids who are homeless to feel good about making the effort to get to school from the shelter across town, even if they’re late — and so do I. YOU though have no excuses: eat that toast in three minutes and put your shoes on and stop telling us you have time for a puzzle. Being on time is important.”

              3. N C Kiddle*

                You can treat something as a serious issue without having a punitive approach to it though.

            2. LilBlaster*

              I wouldn’t rule out the idea that some of those kids are late because they’re already working jobs for which they know the norms, and doing it to pay for your class. at least, that was the case for me when I put myself through school in the 2000s. No job, no class.

            3. OP #5*

              As a mom. . .YES.
              I hate to sound cantankerous but yes many schools and even colleges these days are creating young employees who expect to be catered to.
              My daughter is learning reliability, tenacity, etc much more in her demanding extracurricular (dance) than in school.
              I get why maybe it has to be that way, but it’s unfortunate.
              Pro tip for anyone hiring entry level young folks: Some of the best young employees I’ve ever had, were previously serious dancers btw! I imagine similar for other athletes.

        2. Irish Teacher.*

          Yes and as I mentioned below, school is also focused on a student’s needs, so if a student has medical issues that mean they have to leave early on a regularish basis, then so long as the student is genuinely trying, the school will usually work with them, for example by giving them work to take home or giving them extentions on assignments or whatever.

          In school, it often matters a lot whether you are genuinely unable to attend or skiving, not just because the latter is likely to be punished but also because those who are genuinely unable to attend will often study themselves at home or will take extra tuition later to catch up or whatever. Whereas in a summer job in an ice cream shop, whether you are unable to work or just not bothering to work doesn’t really matter as much. Either way, you aren’t there when they need you and it isn’t a job that can be done from home or where they are particularly concerned about your know-how or other skills. What they need most is your physical presence.

      2. CityMouse*

        Food service Jobs are often physically uncomfortable too. You’re usually way too hot you have to stand long stretches, you carry a lot of heavy things. Ypu get injured. I never personally intended to stay in it but my brother had some success (even was a successful pitmaster for a while) but he quit and went back to school in his mid 30s because his back pain became too much.

        1. MsSolo (UK)*

          My BiL has done stints in michelin starred kitchens (usually six months on, then a couple of months to recharge, see family and spend the money he couldn’t because he was working 80 hour weeks, before jumping in to another kitchen to expand his repertoire) and now he’s nearing forty and wants to start a family he’s looking at alternatives to working in any restaurants, because the physical impact on his health is too much.

          1. Judge Judy and Executioner*

            I just read on the interwebs about a Michelin starred chef who quit to be a private chef for a wealthy family. The family wasn’t famous, so no NDAs or things like that, but he only worked 25-40 hours a week and took home 240k USD a year.

              1. Judge Judy and Executioner*

                Fair point! But even a quarter to half of that would be a decent living if 40 hours weren’t required every week.

                1. CityMouse*

                  Unfortunately that’s not happening. The only reason he commanded that much is because of his prior experience. Most private chefs serve multiple families and would be pulling 80 hour weeks.

                2. Pierrot*

                  There are definitely roles for chefs who don’t want to work at a restaurant, but typically a private chef (especially one that makes that much money) will have some experience in a restaurant or catering at minimum.
                  I have known chefs who did not work at restaurants- they worked at assisted living homes, or school cafeterias, etc. That work still involves reliability and stamina though.

        2. SheLooksFamiliar*

          I was laid off during Desert Storm, and worked at a local bar and restaurant on evenings and weekends while working a part-time job in my field. It was a lot of fun, but I was in great pain from being on my feet for hours. Lower back, knees, ankles…ugh. I was in my 30s, healthy, and thin, but the job took its toll.

          Also got a couple of cuts serious enough to need stitches, and I was back for my next shift even though my hand throbbed and hurt. Keeping a roof over my head inspired me, I guess.

        3. Alpacas Are Not Dairy Animals*

          Why on earth do we accept this as the price of convenience food? It’d be one thing if it was for the sake of getting life-saving surgery done in a timely manner but I know more than one person with permanent scars (grease burns, knife accidents) acquired in their teenage years so that someone else could make money off of still yet other people needing quick food because they’re overworked and exhausted in turn… and everyone is like oh, that’s normal, learn to work through it?

        4. MigraineMonth*

          For an on-point example, my sister got a carpal tunnel wrist injury from scooping ice cream at an ice cream parlor. Fortunately she quit rather than let it get worse, but even part-time summer jobs at ice cream shops can be physically demanding and painful.

    4. ItsHitFan*

      This may sound glib, but perhaps LW and her daughter should watch a few episodes of The Bear and see if this is what they envisioned the food industry to be like. It IS very close to reality (minus the poss. dysfunctional actual family working together, and real chefs show in last episode –which they wouldn’t if it didn’t rep their industry). It is hard for me to see this as a good fit for someone who has trouble with the issues noted above. Best to find that out now and make adjustments.

      1. Antilles*

        perhaps LW and her daughter should watch a few episodes of The Bear and see if this is what they envisioned the food industry to be like.
        The other thing along these lines that’s commonly recommended is reading the book Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. It’s now ~20 years old so some of the specific work practices have shifted with new technology, but the overall basics of the job in terms of what it demands from employees are still the same as they’ve always been.

        1. FloralWraith*

          Also, “I Hear She’s a Real Bitch” by Jen Agg is a memoir of a top female chef in Toronto, that feels apt for this situation.

        2. Frank Doyle*

          I was going to say the same thing, that they should read Kitchen Confidential. A person with “fragile self esteem” is not going to make it in the restaurant business, sorry to say.

      2. dogwoodblossom*

        I love The Bear but I’ve seen restaurant people criticize it for being too romanticized actually. Which I think is particularly hilarious when everyone is screaming all the time, they all have ptsd from abusive work environments, the business is constantly on the verge of closure, etc. Restaurants are rough, ya’ll.

    5. dogwoodblossom*

      I had the same thought about it being more frustrating to the employer for her to show up and leave early than to just call out entirely. Like neither is great but I think it looks worse to show up for the easy parts of the job and then leave the scut work to whoever she’s supposed to be closing with. Closing work that now keeps that other person there twice as long.

    6. Annie E. Mouse*

      Agree that the daughter isn’t cut out for food service, but I’m not sure that these really solve her problems either. You can’t just skip out on online tutoring every time you’re not feeling it and expect to keep getting jobs. The daughter needs to figure out how to be reliable somehow or other.

  5. Former food manager*

    LW1, rarely do I get to go into this previous life.

    Your daughter is a closer 2 nights a week, without knowing how long she’s been there, 4 absences in a short while, as a closer is just not tenable. Leaving early means that the other closer has to stay late and they’re paying over time.

    Someone can give me all the great reasons in the world, but the fact remains I have a closer calling out and I have my other closer working later and potentially in a less safe environment (insurance used to mean if trash was going out at end of the night, they had to do it in pairs.) or potentially, I have to close early (wasn’t uncommon to have 1 adult (over 18) on shift, with a teenager) and I can’t have a teenager doing cash out or by themselves.

    I would talk to her about accommodations and job responsibility because sometimes some jobs are just not possible to accommodate due to their nature. Food service depends on reliability, and calling out as often as she has, adds a strain to the team, that I would also take her off the schedule.

    1. TheBunny*

      Agreed.

      I worked retail as a manager in college and for a couple of years after I graduated and, while they might be great, if the closing team isn’t reliable, it just isn’t going to work.

      You have an angry other employee stuck closing alone, which you mentioned. But you also have the opening team annoyed because restocking wasn’t done the night before because they were down a store. Or only part of the store was put back together and ready for open because closing was short staffed.

      You’re 100% correct it’s just not going to be OK more than occasionally.

    2. GammaGirl1908*

      This reminds me of the letter a while back — early pandemic — about a person who was giving online trainings for volunteers under challenging conditions (at home, mediocre equipment, shared workspace with other people) where the volunteers could not hear what the trainer was saying. The LW explained that there were reasons why they were inaudible, and so thought the training participants were being unreasonable.

      The commentariat pointed out that it really didn’t matter. The participants need to be able to hear, full stop. Instead of shrugging about the circumstances, that LW needed to put some effort into getting a headset and finding a decent space, or else get someone else to do the training.

      This … feels similar. The shop doesn’t care that there are *reasons* why Daughter is unreliable.

        1. Hlao-roo*

          I think GammaGirl1908 is referring to the “coworkers can’t hear me on calls from home because it’s loud here” letter from July 28, 2021. I’ll put a link in a separate reply to your comment.

    3. BlueberryGirl*

      One of the hardest lessons to learn, take it from someone else with chronic health issues, is that sometimes the “why” is not relevant. Food service is the sort of job where reliability is largely what you are being paid for. Part of the daughters job is to learn how to assess what she is being paid for (because there will always be something that is critical in very job) and how to make sure that she can do that piece of the job (whatever it is), because regardless of anxiety and ADHD, her employers are always going to expect the job to get done. Accommodations exist, but there’s always going to be a make or break job expectation. In food service, that job expectation is reliability.

      1. Ozzac*

        Exactly. The loss of bladder control and the nausea while smelling food make me wonder is culinary school is the right career for her, since both are serious issues anywhere, but expecially when you are handling food.

      2. Snow Globe*

        Also – asking for accommodations generally means asking for something specific that the organization can agree to, with the understanding that if accommodations are provided they can rely on the employee to do the job. So, just telling the boss that you have a medical condition, like anxiety, really doesn’t tell the boss exactly what they are supposed to do about that or what that means about the employee’s ability to do the job. I think there was confusion here, when the daughter heard “tells us about your needs” and thought that meant just telling the boss about her anxiety, and the boss would be understanding no matter what the impact to the business.

        1. Ana Gram*

          I think this is a great point. It sounds like the daughter is still in that transition from school (which exists for the student) to the workplace (which exists for the employer). It was a surprise to me, for sure, to realize that my boss wasn’t there to guide and support me. They were there to work and if they could help me out while doing so, great. But it wasn’t their main goal.

          1. MigraineMonth*

            I want to go back and smack my first-job-out-of-university self with a clue-by-four. I somehow thought my manager’s goal was to guide my development, rather than to make sure the work got done.

          2. Parakeet*

            It sounds too like the manager told the new employees during orientation that the shop would work with their needs, and the daughter has not interpreted what this does and doesn’t mean correctly (i.e. what constitutes a “need” in this context). Which, if that’s an accurate characterization of what she was told, why would she? She doesn’t have a past job to compare it to. We see letters on here all the time about managers who need to be clearer about what they mean.

        2. ferrina*

          Exactly. The manager isn’t trained on how to manage your particular health condition (and even if they were, it would generally be unethical to care for their employee’s conditions).

          Accommodations aren’t just “you need to generally go easy on me.” They are defined obligations AND they are agreed upon by both parties. Accommodations cannot cause undue hardship to the business, and having a coverage-based role regularly calling out/leaving early with little or no notice is going to cause undue hardship.

        3. Nonanon*

          For what it’s worth, I do think there aren’t any intrinsic issues in how any party is handling this case; daughter is young and learning about the “real world,” OP is seeing all this happening and getting frustrated, employer isn’t getting their needs met. Nothing inherently wrong, and the most likely thing is the job is a poor fit for the daughter, OR it’s the reality check she needs for her next one.

          All that being said, daughter still needs to learn how to do her job with accommodations. The accommodation for “I have class Mondays and Wednesdays at 9am” may be scheduling her Tuesdays/Thursdays; the accommodation for “I have anxiety” may be “You can close, which tends not to be customer facing.” That means she still has to stay for the full shift. If the cleaning chemicals make her nauseous (I get it, I HATED having to clean a culture room when I worked in a lab because bleach gave me migraines) and she can’t finish a shift, and she needs reduced customer hours, she needs to find a different job.

        4. Sparkles McFadden*

          This is an excellent point. Accommodations are the boss giving each individual the tools needed to do the job. It doesn’t mean that people don’t have to do the parts of the job that are difficult for them.

          1. MigraineMonth*

            One of my coworkers has an obvious accommodation where they are out for 3-4 hours in the middle of the day, and I was amazed at how much they still got done. It wasn’t until the time they mentioned they’d been working since 5am that I realized the accommodation *wasn’t* shorter hours, it was just very different hours than I worked.

            Accommodations don’t generally make the job easier, they just make the job possible.

        5. The Unionizer Bunny*

          So, just telling the boss that you have a medical condition, like anxiety, really doesn’t tell the boss exactly what they are supposed to do about that or what that means about the employee’s ability to do the job.

          If the medical condition is ADHD, the employer can “connect the dots” whenever observing that an employee is easily distracted. Even if there aren’t several instances of distraction (which can form a pattern even without the ADHD factor, leading to a talk with that employee about an area that needs to be addressed), a single major problem can be seen in the context of that ADHD, and the employer then has a duty to take that into account, as well as the legal right to ask the employee disability-related questions in that context (vs how, normally, they couldn’t raise those questions). Disclosing in advance this way is a good method to admitting “I don’t know exactly how this disability might affect me in the workplace” – an appropriate step when the person is new to their disability or to the workforce!

          But if the employee has difficulties that are not related to disclosed disabilities, the boss can still handle those as they normally would. It’s not “you have a medical condition, any medical condition, so the employer has to forgive everything that happens”. Unfortunately, there are bosses who find an interactive process so out of their comfort zone that they perceive (and describe) the ADA process as more of a union thing – “they don’t do the work and you can’t fire them”. In both cases, we actually want to do the work – it’s bosses who want to be dictators that get in our way.

          Solidarity with oppressed workers everywhere!

          1. ferrina*

            IME, this leads to stigma. I’m ADHD, and I’m very, very careful who I disclose to. I’ve found that if I/one of my coworkers say that we’re ADHD, suddenly the standards shift. Instead of things needing to be done on time, we need to do it early or the boss worries if we’ll get it done (regardless if we have a track record). If we have a normal typo, Boss worries about our “attention to detail”. It doesn’t matter if I have the highest accuracy in the department, Boss assumes that since I have ADHD, it’s just a matter of time until, I don’t know, I guess go feral and start making typos everywhere?

            Most people don’t know a lot about ADHD, and ADHD is a highly variable condition. Symptoms can vary wildly from person to person and even from day to day. ADHD symptoms are also often the same symptoms that can happen from stress, sleep deprivation, certain medications, depression….there’s a lot. The average manager doesn’t have the knowledge to be able to evaluate what is/isn’t and ADHD symptom and advise on symptom management. This is probably why the ADA outlaws making assumptions on people’s health conditions.

            I’m not saying that ADHD people who are struggling at work don’t benefit from ADHD-aware coaching. I’m saying that most managers aren’t equipped to provide ADHD coaching.

            1. Lana Kane*

              “I’m not saying that ADHD people who are struggling at work don’t benefit from ADHD-aware coaching. I’m saying that most managers aren’t equipped to provide ADHD coaching.”

              Right – and this is why an accomodations process invloves several parties, including the employee’s medical provider. A manager can’t be expected to know how to handle accomodations for medical issues. Connecting the dots is just too vague and too general, as even within a particular diagnosis different approaches can exist depending on the individual. ADHS is a good example because there are a couple of different types (innatentive vs hyperactive, or a combo of both)

              1. The Unionizer Bunny*

                Right – and this is why an accomodations process invloves several parties, including the employee’s medical provider. A manager can’t be expected to know how to handle accomodations for medical issues.

                A manager is best-equipped to know the essential job duties. Doctors may identify limits (“John cannot lift over 10 pounds”), but are not required to suggest accommodations. If the employee cannot think of any, but the employer doesn’t provide any alternatives, the employer should reach out to other third parties (not provided by the employee) such as AskJAN.

                Employers are not expected to personally come up with accommodations, but they do have some responsibility to look for solutions.

                Connecting the dots is just too vague and too general, as even within a particular diagnosis different approaches can exist depending on the individual. ADHS is a good example because there are a couple of different types (innatentive vs hyperactive, or a combo of both)

                Then an employer may have to keep an eye out for both patterns, just as with a bipolar employee. You’re right that it’s too complex for brightline “common sense”, but this also means that agency guidance won’t spell it all out – expectations will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, by the courts (judge and/or jury).

            2. 1LFTW*

              I also have ADHD, and I’ve had similar experiences. It’s usually not worth sharing.

              1. MigraineMonth*

                I was diagnosed with a learning “difference” in 8th grade, and a bunch of teachers and aids who knew a lot about the diagnosis gave me a lot of help. Unfortunately, they didn’t take any time to learn about me; they ignored the things I asked for help with (because that wasn’t part of my diagnosis, so I was just being lazy) and “helped” me with things I didn’t have problems with (including throwing out my organizational system as “inefficient”). One of the private tutors outright bullied me. It hit my self-esteem so hard I went from straight-A student to skipping school.

                The next year I started high school and never told another teacher about that diagnosis. So yeah, disclosure is risky, even when they’re *really* dedicated to giving you all the help you need.

                (Ironically, I was also diagnosed with another mental health issue in 8th grade, and that diagnosis got me the treatment that made my life worth living for the last 20+ years.)

                1. Fíriel*

                  I was a ‘gifted’ student in middle school (smart but problematic), which meant they assigned a random teacher to be in charge of me who would ask me to do inane tasks throughout the year and cared very little about my actual development. It was frustrating and definitely made me less passionate about some of the stuff I was pushed at doing in that way, like science. I did exactly what you did – got to high school, went to the guidance counsellor and made them remove it from my file, and never let slip to another teacher that it had been there. What a relief!

                2. 1LFTW*

                  It’s so frustrating when the people whose job it is to know better wind up making everything worse.

                  The thing about throwing out organizational systems reminded me of the ADHD coach I worked with for a very brief time who insisted that my organizational system be a three-ring binder, so I could shuffle around the stuff I wrote out longhand, and then use some kind of numbering system.

                  Thing is, I also have motor dysgraphia and dyscalculia, so I’d been using digital tools as an adaptive technology for *years*, and using numbers is the opposite of helpful. She told me I wouldn’t get anywhere if I insisted on being “stubborn”.

                  Fortunately, I was no longer a little kid who had tolerate abusive bullshit from mean teachers, so I fired her.

          2. Irish Teacher.*

            I think that while this makes sense in theory, in reality, the odds of the managers of an ice cream shop recognising symptoms of ADHD is…pretty low, unless they have ADHD themselves or a family member with it. I am a teacher and I know a number of my colleagues are not familiar with the symptoms beyond the well-known ones like distractability and hyperactivity.

            The LW’s daughter would have to be very lucky to have a manager who is aware that sensory issues can be a symptom of ADHD and therefore, the LW’s daughter might have the issue with smells that she did or that time blindness is a symptom.

            Expecting somebody who may know nothing about ADHD beyond “it has something to do with kids being hyper, doesn’t it?” to “connect the dots” is probably optimistic. Most people simply don’t have that much knowledge about stuff like ADHD.

          3. MigraineMonth*

            Unless the employee is for some reason unable to request an accommodation due to their disability, the employer does *not* have a obligation to start an interactive accommodation process, according to the ADA National Network (https://adata.org/faq/when-employer-required-make-reasonable-accommodation)

            I would argue that this is a good thing, since most managers are not knowledgeable enough to handle that well. I would be *pissed* if mine started armchair-diagnosing me with mental health problems. Even if I disclosed, I wouldn’t want them suggesting accommodations before I’d asked for any; I would find that patronizing.

            1. The Unionizer Bunny*

              Unless the employee is for some reason unable to request an accommodation due to their disability, the employer does *not* have a obligation to start an interactive accommodation process,

              I’ve addressed that interpretation (of the law) above; search this page for “July 16, 2024 at 11:30 am”.

              Even if I disclosed, I wouldn’t want them suggesting accommodations before I’d asked for any; I would find that patronizing.

              Some employers will merely ask “Is there anything we can do to help you overcome the difficulties you’re having?” without referring to any disabilities. This works for employees who are having trouble that is not connected to a disability, as well as giving employees who are affected by a disability the opportunity to initiate an interactive process.

    4. M*

      Also, to add to all these very reasonable points: if what this food service industry job has told LW’s daughter after all of this is “take a week off to sort out your health, and work out if you can reliably work here”, they’re being unusually generous for that industry. Plenty would have let her go several early-departures ago.

      1. MsM*

        It sounds like they’re sympathetic to the fact she’s inexperienced and well-intentioned. As everyone else has said, though, she and LW need to not confuse that for endlessly patient and able to absorb multiple types of unpredictable absences from the same employee.

  6. nnn*

    Another consideration for #3 is it might be their monitor, it might be their monitor settings, it might be their video settings, etc. If you’re working in the same office, when you’re at the “look at them side by side and see if they can tell the difference” stage, you might look at it on their computer and have them look at it on your computer and see if that can narrow it down.

    (As a personal anecdote, I recently thought my video settings were less crisp than they should be, when what was really happening was the dongle that connects my monitor to my computer was at the end of its life.)

    1. JSPA*

      Given the possibility of cataracts, macular issues etc (which is to say, stuff that either requires an operation or that is progressive and in some cases incurable) the LW and the report could (together) make a reference sheet of image snippets enlarged 100X, and agree on the cutoff point. Use something like “edge of building” or “face in foreground.” A range from somewhat blurry to OK to excellent. And draw a line or lines demarcating the cutoff for specific purposes (thumbnail? Internal publication? Webpage? Poster?) whatever you regularly use.

      “Please check each image at 100X against this style guide” is independent of presumptions of the sort of problem (and also handles simple carelessness / good-enough-ism).

      Telling them to check the dimensions is not good enough (and they may already be doing that) as the internet is full of low-res pictures with a lot of duplicate pixels.

      That’s said if you are working from a
      set of purchased images or non proprietary images, they should probably specify resolution???

      I had a friend who, as an employee, was directed to incorporate images from people’s web pages (i.e. use stolen materials). Her choices were to either spend absolute hours, finding a nonproprietary close version to swap in, or to manipulate and blur the images to the point where the final product could (at least theoretically, at that time, before the Warhol ruling) come under fair use, if not used directly for profit (or at least that’s how she understood it).

      LW, unlikely though it is, if you’re putting your employee in that position… the problem isn’t her eyes. Nor any other part of her.

      1. HardNo*

        it would be incredibly obnoxious and totally inappropriate for someone who isn’t a medical professional I’m seeing for an evaluation to do this to me. If you tried I’d probably walk out and go directly to HR to report you.

        You do not get to armchair diagnose or even evaluate someone at work, at least not without the explicit and complete buy-in from the person getting diagnosed/evaluated, and you better be pretty certain they’ll say yes before you even suggest the possibility of doing anything like this.

        1. singular yike*

          I think you might have misunderstood–JSPA isn’t talking about doing this as a vision test, but as part of a standards creation process so they can collaboratively come up with a very clear and measurable way to show whether an image in question is “too pixelated” or “clear” for their purposes. It’s not at all to test anyone’s vision but to create a set of standards they can check for reference when deciding if a specific image is suitable.

    2. General von Klinkerhoffen*

      Yes – I once worked on a trade mark application where the colour was being claimed. The logo was green on my boss’s screen and yellow on mine. We had to go back to the client for a Pantone reference or equivalent.

    3. Angstrom*

      I use a laptop with a large monitor. The monitor gets visibly sharper when I close the laptop because the laptop screen settings are the default.

    4. No Longer Working*

      Former digital retoucher here – It could be less an eyesight problem and more an image resolution problem. I don’t know if this is for print or web, but there should be standards in your workplace for minimum or appropriate resolution for your output and the employee should be creating the image to those standards.

      1. Allonge*

        This may be the issue in general but for this specific case, why is it only an issue recently?

        OP writes that it’s been 3-4 times, lately, which to me indicates that something changed and at least for me it’s unlikely that the graphic designer forgot about image resolution.

        1. No Longer Working*

          Could be any number of reasons why only recently. If they were supplied and not checked for resolution, or not swapped out for the higher res images like they were supposed to, or they were just lucky with the previous images, or they were high res but placed at too high an enlargement, or a new/different workflow was implemented, or the employee got lazy/had a bad day/forgot to check.

    5. Florp*

      Yes, this! Make sure you give them clear technical specifications and that their equipment and software is up to date.

      I find I usually have to give people some training in resolution vs image size vs file size, the difference between cropping and resizing, testing different views, etc. And all over again when we’re talking about print vs web. I’ve found I can’t assume even terminally online younguns know this stuff.

      I have written documentation (resolution for dummies style), samples of correct work, samples of incorrect work annotated with why it’s wrong, and I recorded videos demonstrating the way I want it done to get a crisp but fast loading image.

    6. Pizza Rat*

      This is why Allison’s script works, I think. The assumption that it’s tools vs eyesight absolutely should be investigated.

    7. Hamster Manager*

      Yes! This is likely it, I ran into this at a job once where everyone had been upgraded to an HD screen except me! My work looked fine to me (I was a newly Lasik’d 20-something) but was pixellated to everyone else.

      Ask them to export their graphics at 2x and see if the problem is solved. If so, it’s a screen resolution issue. If not, I don’t think asking them about their eyes is appropriate, just keep naming the problem as an ongoing one and require them to fix it each time.

  7. MassMatt*

    #3 I can’t think of a good reason to tell an employer what other employer made an offer. Most likely it’s just them being nosey, but there’s a chance it can bite you if they decide to interfere with the offer. We’ve definitely seen letters about crazy employers that would do just that.

    It is a gauche question as it’s none of their business and it’s hard to deflect without seeming rude.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Agree, I wouldn’t tell them because I’d worry about them sabotaging the other offer, or just wasting my time by trying to convince me it’s not that good, rather than improving their own offer.

      They may be asking because they want to be sure there really is another offer, but reassuring them would not be my priority and it’s an indication that they would be an employer that doesn’t respect my privacy.

    2. Jules the First*

      I ask because the business I’m hiring for is in a tightly networked profession and I’ve been around a long time, which means I probably know the manager you’d be working under and if I think you’ll be a better fit on that team than on mine, I’ll say so.

      But I *always* explain that when I ask and make it clear that you are free to say you’d prefer not to say.

      1. Lab Boss*

        Which is useful and specific context. I think a lot of hard and fast rules in the employment sphere have exceptions, the key is making sure that everyone involved understands why this specific case is different than the norm.

      2. MassMatt*

        Yours is a notable exception but bear in mind if I’m just meeting your for an interview I have very little ability to know whether answering your question will help me, or whether you are the type of person that regards someone even considering work elsewhere as a betrayal that must be punished.

        All things considered, unless we had a really unusual connection in the interview, I would not tell you who made an offer.

      3. rebelwithmouseyhair*

        You sound like you’re probably a huge exception to the rule! I would assume the worst… because my assumptions have so often proved right. And if you told me I’d be a better fit with the other offer, I’d assume you meant you didn’t think I’d fit in right with you.

    3. Sneaky Squirrel*

      I ask for a letter when the company plans to attempt to counteroffer to see if we can get the full picture. It helps me to understand if an offer is apples to apples or if it’s a change, such as a promotion job, a consulting job, or a job in a completely different field. It’s another data point to understand if our salary benchmarks are in line with what the market is paying. It also sometimes gives us additional insights about the employee’s reason for leaving (e.g., what does the employee mean by better responsibilities).

      Some employees are willing to share it and some do not and that’s okay. I can understand that many employers have nefarious intent and employees are smart to question it.

    4. RagingADHD*

      I volunteered this information without being asked in my most recent job change, because my boss at that last job really liked me and wanted to keep me, but I knew Corporate would never ever approve matching the salary and they had no hope of matching the benefits.

      Rather than throw numbers around I just said I got an offer I couldn’t refuse from (well known local power player) and he was like, “Oh, I get it. Good for you.”

  8. Starbuck*

    LW1, I wonder what you think management should be doing differently here? Calls instead of text is just way less practical esp with 25 employees, and it’s generous of them to even give her a pause rather than just outright firing her after issues during 4 shifts very early into the job. Do you know for sure other employees with similar reliability issues aren’t facing the same thing as your daughter?

    Probably her best option is to quit, take some time, and try starting over elsewhere in a different sort of food service role if possible. Hope the culinary school goes well. Good on you for supporting your daughter, but providing her the opportunity to fail (with a soft landing) then bounce back on the next thing is going to be far more helpful to her than trying to intervene somehow with management at this place.

      1. Lab Boss*

        Right, how many times here do we see some version of “put it in writing?” From the employer’s point of view they’re dealing with an employee with apparent health issues that are related to her performance, and any half-smart employer knows that’s a reason to tread extremely carefully and document your steps.

    2. Art of the Spiel*

      Technically I’m a boomer (3 mo shy of being GenX) but I absolutely hate it when people insist that “phone calls are better.”

      When I hear that, what I really hear is “I plan to try to manipulate you, and I don’t want any record of what conversation transpired.”

      1. CommanderBanana*

        ^^ THIS. Our horrible HR director at my last (also horrible org) was NOTORIOUS for never communicating over email and teams. She would insist on “stopping by your office” so she could then later lie about what had happened.

        I would always send her an email that would recap what had happened during our conversation, which she hated.

      2. mlem*

        I’m GenX and no fan of phone calls, but I’ve had specific situations in which they were preferable to text. (One recent one was a shopping trip — the clearance rack had cupcakes and my friend was interested, but we were talking past each other with texting and photos, so I just called her and we settled the issue.) My manager has asked me tech questions over chat that we’ve had to turn to video meetings to sort out.

        I’ve also had video meetings in which I’ve asked my colleagues to bear with me (they’re all fine with this) as I type out my thoughts in a shared document simply because I think through and convey complex topics better that way.

        I wouldn’t agree that communication X or Y or Z is always better. I think it always depends on the people involved and the situation.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          I’ve been in meetings that should have been an email. I’ve also been in 40+ email chains that should have been a meeting.

          I think for brief, asynchronous messages that can be referred back to later (e.g. “Scheduled for Tues 1pm-close”), texts are ideal. I think for difficult conversations like “You aren’t meeting our standards for reliability and I think you should take a few weeks and decide if this is the right job for you,” a meeting would generally be best (as long as the person didn’t have to, like, drive 3 hours to hear it), but getting let go is common enough in food service/retail that they probably skip a lot of the niceties.

      3. Hroethvitnir*

        I’m an old millennial and I think calls have specific situations where they’re better. Very quick things that need confirmation immediately and very nuanced/complicated things.

        I love text based media deeply, but there’s a time and place for each. I personally think video calling loses the tone and clarity of phone calls without truly gaining the benefit of body language like in person but that’s neither here nor there.

        I’m pretty sure people who always want to call feel unmoored without tone. And/or find typing tiresome. In some cases it is indeed for manipulative reasons, but I wouldn’t think it’s the majority.

    3. Florp*

      My spouse is a partner in a seasonal, summer vacation type service business that is heavily customer facing. His employees are mostly in the 16 to 22 year old range. They make full use of group messaging. There is one group for all employees, with general announcements from management, warnings about busy days / VIPs, etc. The kids primarily use it to try to swap shifts with each other. There is another group just for managers, where they discuss maintenance, scheduling, and other management stuff. It’s just the best way to keep the maximum number of people up-to-date with the most information as efficiently as possible. Actual discipline or personnel issues are handled face-to-face, but starting a serious conversation almost always begins with a direct text message to schedule a meeting.

      If you’re going to be in a service industry with lots of young employees doing shift work, the communication methods are just going to be different from, say, a 30 year old with a college degree working 9 to 5 in an office. The reality is that high school and college kids just don’t check email that often or even answer their phones. There are too many to contact them individually about every schedule change, and frankly, the kids rely on being able to go back through a text thread to remember what was said.

    4. Christina*

      Exactly, in the food service company I’m a manager in, all levels of employees use mostly or exclusively text to communicate. I’m in a group chat with all general managers and assistant general managers in our small department, another group chat with all managers in my store, and have every one of my 70 employees in my contacts. I text HR at 11pm when an employee has a question. If I needed to contact the person 3 levels up from me I would text him. It’s a 24-hour industry, we’re always on the go, and we don’t have time to sit down at the computer in the back and craft a nice email. Sure, it means I wake up to 50+ texts most days and I’d love to be able to disconnect more, but the convenience can’t be overstated

    5. chewingle*

      The other thing about texting is that, in good service and retail (and sometimes other shift-based jobs), people tend to ignore your calls because they’re afraid they’re being called in. Texting is more reliable.

  9. LAS5447*

    LW1: I’m going to offer a slightly different perspective here. If your daughter doesn’t need this job (financially speaking), then she should give her notice. The only issue I have with anything you mentioned is the sore muscles/wrist issue from wakeboarding – because that is something that could have been scheduled for a day off.

    Overall, I am hearing that your daughter is struggling AND that this job is not the right food service job for her. There are many other types of food service jobs that aren’t necessarily in the “fast food” sector. It would make much more sense that she look for a job where there are lower stakes, lower stress, and maybe not customer-facing – like a dishwasher or food prep staff. If she is behind-the-scenes, she doesn’t have to be “on” as much and can also work at a more manageable pace for her needs.

    Quitting this position would also allow them to hire someone else who can reliably be there to close. I suspect that she is scheduled with the “relative” manager because that person is expected to *always* be there, unless there’s a true emergency. That way if there is an issue with your daughter working her full shift, they aren’t scrambling to find someone to work.

    She’s only 19 and it sounds like she missed out on the experience of having a summer job in high-school. It also sounds like she is not in a place to put her full effort and potential into a job right now. I think your focus should be on helping her get to a better mental/emotional place vs interfering. Once she is ready to look for a new job, I think you can coach her on what things mean realistically in a work environment and how to handle certain situations, including how honest to be. Just keep in mind that the dynamics of many jobs are very different now vs when you were her age, so you will want to be sure you also have realistic expectations and a good pulse on how things actually work nowadays.

    Best of luck to both of you – I completely understand the frustration everyone is dealing with in this scenario.

    1. Zombeyonce*

      A small note in case LW is using this for ideas: while being a dishwasher isn’t customer-facing, it can be very stressful. During rush you can have so many dishes coming in and an urgent need to get dishes out that it can really take a toll on mental health. It’s a hard position in the kitchen because it’s both one of the most vital and least respected roles, and you can end up with people breathing down your neck and yelling. She already has anxiety, so I wouldn’t wish that role on her.

      1. CityMouse*

        This. Dishwasher is NOT less stressful than ice cream. The non customer facing roles also tend to be very physically demanding. I had a job once where I just made bread rolls for instance and it involved a ton of heavy lifting.

        Food service is a stressful field.

      2. ferrina*

        My dad was a short-order cook, and every time they got a new dishwasher, it would always end in tears. Most of the dishwashers were new to food service and weren’t expecting the volume or the relentlessness of the dishes. It’s a true Sisyphean task.

      3. hypoglycemic rage*

        I was a dishwasher for a year and some change, at a relatively small cafe. I would not say it’s a lower stress job at all. the lunch rush…. I still get anxiety from that, and I even didn’t work it every day. so many dishes, so little time.

        management would also frequently yell at me to do a dining room check, which meant more dishes…. or to take the trash out…. I was supposed to go out and check the restaurant area every now and then, but it was sometimes really hard to balance that with the dishes – from both back and front of house.

        also if you worked a closing shift, it would only be a small amount of staff, and if the dishwasher bailed early for whatever reason, other staff would have to pick up the slack, and that would not go over well, especially for multiple callouts.

        I don’t think anyone who hadn’t worked in that dishwasher position realized just how hard it actually was.

        1. MotherofaPickle*

          This makes me want to try my hand at dishwashing for my next job. Once I develop a System, I am extremely efficient and this sounds like a challenge. A potentially soul-breaking challenge, but a challenge all the same.

          Yes, I’m a bit of a masochist.

      4. Heffalump*

        I must have washed dishes at the only two restaurants on the planet where dishwashing wasn’t horrendous.

    2. Bethany*

      I like your comment about missing the experience of having a summer job in high school. I think this is so important to develop these basic workplace norms, like showing up, being on time, and taking directions from a boss.

      I work in a STEM area and I often talk to students through my alumni organisation. They give me resumes which show that they’ve been the treasurer of the maths club, because they feel their job at a supermarket on the weekend is not applicable to a STEM field. I always tell them to include paid work as more of a priority – I want to see that you have worked in a role where you have to show up, take direction, give notice for sick days/leave, and understand professional norms. University clubs are great but they don’t have that ‘work’ aspect of the experience.

      1. BlueberryGirl*

        That is great advice to give them, because you’re right. Grocery stores, food service, retail, all of these jobs show that students have the basic understanding of “work” and how it works.

        1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

          Upvote and cosign.

          It doesn’t matter what the job is (within reason). It matters that you show up as expected and do what you’re told when you get there. This is a good thing for every job you will ever have.

          If you can additionally get on well with coworkers, bosses, customers, etc then fantastic.

        2. Pescadero*

          Food service and retail give you an idea of how food service and retail work… the rest of the working world is not really anything like those two.

          1. Amy*

            I work in B2B corporate sales and while I value having received a liberal arts education, I’d credit 90% of what I need to be successful in sales as starting during my years of working in food service. It’s hugely applicable for anything customer-facing.

          2. blu*

            That’s not true. When I’m hiring entry level roles candidates who come from retail and food service tend to have some experience (therefore are stronger) at customer service, adhering to a schedule, understanding hierarchy, demonstrating resilience, and prioritization. In fact, the young people who missed those experience due to covid are struggling mightily in these entry roles in big part to this being the first time they are really learning workplace norms.

          3. New Jack Karyn*

            I disagree. It’s a lesson in being responsible for yourself. You have to call out if you’re sick–not your parent. Other people rely on you doing your job decently, and you will hear about it if you aren’t hitting the mark. It’s different from school, in ways that are relevant to other kinds of jobs.

      2. AcademiaNut*

        I’ve come to realize one of the bit advantages of having a part time job in high school is the experience of exchanging work for money. Often it’s the student’s first experience of an environment that isn’t designed for their benefit, as school and most extracurriculars are there specifically for the participants. Internships tend to be a borderline case, as ethical internships are still primarily for the benefit of the participant, rather than the workplace.

      3. Cat Tree*

        I’m also in a STEM field and I value customer service jobs on resumes, especially for entry-level roles. We work with many different departments and while none of them are our customers, they often have different perspectives and requirements that influence our work. We need people who don’t feel personally attacked, or get so invested in “winning” that they refuse to consider the other person’s input. We need people who, frankly, aren’t condescending asses. Customer-facing jobs don’t guarantee good qualities and lack of these doesn’t guarantee that they’ll be bad. It’s only one factor, but it’s good if they have it.

      4. ferrina*

        I work in consulting, and I consider customer-facing food service a major plus. If you can handle the stress of the lunch rush, I’m not worried about you facing down our client deadlines. If you’ve handled awful restaurant customers, our clients will be a relief.

      5. ScruffyInternHerder*

        An aside, from what I’ve seen locally (to me):

        Not even the fast food places around me, who are all screaming that they need to hire people and “nobody wants to work” will even look at a 15-16 year old part timer. Several of my friends and I have children in this range – and the kids average 15-20 resumes (resumes!) before getting a call for an interview at all. Its a little on the disappointing side. We parents want them to have this experience, the teens want the job, the employers claim that they’re hiring for hours that the teens want….but good luck getting hired as a teenager.

        1. ScruffyInternHerder*

          (And its really just a point of frustration today as ScruffKidtheOldest submitted yet another round of resumes….)

          1. Someone stole my croissant*

            Eh, child labor laws. As a 16 year old, I can relate to scruffy kid the oldest. I’ve already graduated high school, so according to child labor laws I can work adult hours now, but if I dare touch the dough sheeter while Im still a minor… The sad thing is, these kids who are coming in early are great workers, but there are So Many restrictions on them, they don’t look good on paper. I have been told I’m more dependable and knowledgeable by multiple coworkers(including the manager), and have been mistaken for shift lead by some of the new workers. I know those laws are there to protect teens, but gosh, they aren’t convenient for me!
            I blame the millennials lol

            1. goddessoftransitory*

              Don’t forget alcohol as a factor. Not drinking it–serving it. We have very draconian laws in my state about who’s even allowed to be in the same room as an open bottle of wine, much less delivering beer/wine for orders. You MUST have a server’s permit, even if you’re just bringing it as part of a delivery to someone’s door, and it’s very difficult for teenagers to get those licenses.

            2. Happy*

              I’m really curious here – why do you blame the millennials? Is it because of things they are doing now or when they were teenagers?

        2. Excel Gardener*

          Working summer jobs is now not the norm for this reason (and also college admissions becoming more competitive). Only a minority of high schoolers work summer jobs these days.

        3. Plain Jane*

          I’ve got 2 teenagers and we’re seeing the same thing here. my 17-year old got a job once he had a license and a car to use; the 15-16 year olds with neither are not getting hired most places. It sucks, I’d like my youngest to have a job but he isn’t old enough for a driver’s license yet.

        4. Bethany*

          I’m in Australia, and here we have a different minimum wage for under 21s so there’s a lot of incentive for companies to employ young people. It scales up every year so you get a pay rise on your birthday until you’re 21.

      6. STEM Admin*

        I interviewed a lab manager as an internal candidate for an admin role. We didn’t have the best experiences in our interactions prior, but the interview made clear that 1) the candidate was way younger than we thought (relevant because we tend to have different professional expectations of people in their 30s vs 20s) and 2) had zero work experience prior to working in the lab in tandem with graduate school. That explained so much of the concerns we’d had in our previous interactions. While we hired a more experienced person, later interactions went much more smoothly because we reset our expectations with the new knowledge. One might say that we should approach everyone with that attitude, but we are already trying to do too much with too few staff. Pushing back against people who are just incompetent is a separate issue from giving some grace to young people who are still learning professional norms.

    3. Michigander*

      I think one thing that is important for the LW to remember and to maybe talk to her daughter about: She’s still so young! She has so many jobs and so many years of working ahead of her. Literally her entire career is ahead of her still. It’s so incredibly normal for a job to not be the right fit, or to not last for as long as you wanted. It feels horrible right now because it’s happening right now, but some day it’ll just be a job she had for a little while that didn’t work out and hopefully taught her more about what kind of work she needs/wants. She has so many work cultural norms to learn, and while her experience might be different because of her medical issues, it’s not that unusual for a 19 year old to not do that spectacularly on their first job. I can’t say I have any stories of being fired as a teenager myself, but I do know plenty of them from my sisters and friends.

      1. Jasmi*

        This is a really good point. If I’d been in LW1’s daughter’s situation at her age, it probably would have seemed like a huge deal and a crappy situation to be in, whereas if I was looking back on the same situation years later, I’d probably see it with a bit more perspective. I didn’t do brilliantly at my first couple of jobs in my early 20s which I had during uni, particularly in one job where I got a lot of less than stellar feedback. This isn’t going to be LW1’s daughter’s full time career, and while it might be an idea to review if her intended career path is the right fit, this particular job not working out isn’t the end of the world, even if it feels like it right now.

        1. Parakeet*

          Yeah, based on what I internalized growing up – that being fired from a job was a disaster and carried a lasting stigma – if I were in LW1’s daughter’s situation at that age I might well have believed that I was going to be unemployable because of this. In fact, when I got fired from an extremely sketchy (some wage theft and workplace safety issues, among other things, going on) door-to-door canvasser job around the same age, I was borderline hysterical. I was afraid that I might not be able to get a job after college because of it. I thought my parents were going to be so angry with and disappointed in me (to my surprise, they actually weren’t, but I initially lied and said that I quit, because I was that upset and terrified).

          I didn’t know that it wasn’t a career-killer to have something like that happen!

      2. melissa*

        Yes I was a waitress for one day when I was 19 haha. In the scheme of my life and career, it meant nothing!

        1. Michigander*

          My sister was a waitress for maybe two days and then got fired. I think she’d probably have made a pretty great waitress once she got used to it, actually, but they were busy and she wasn’t picking it up quick enough and that was that.

      3. thelettermegan*

        This is so true! When she finds her steady career in food and nutrition, she can look back on her short stint at the little mom-and-pop ice cream shop and laugh.

        She might find that the whole experience will more compassionate to her clients and employee’s needs. Could she take a health-and-wellness track at the culinary school? She might find a stronger fit in something that lets her consider her own experiences as data and insight rather than embarrasments and obstacles.

      4. Excel Gardener*

        This is true. I worked a food delivery job in college and quit after 6 weeks. It was a poor fit. I was socially anxious, so any bad customer interaction would ruin my day, and I was a poor navigator (I didn’t have a smartphone at the time) and so got lost on multiple occasions.

    4. chewingle*

      The wakeboarding is what would have done it for me, from a management perspective. If you’re going to choose to do this

      1. chewingle*

        Stupid phone….

        If you’re going to choose to do those activities on a work day, then you have to suck it up and deal with any soreness that comes with it. That is probably what cinched the deal for deeming her unreliable.

  10. Airy*

    I think OP1 is looking too hard for unfairness to her daughter (implying there’s something sus about the shifts she’s given, or that there’s nepotism afoot?) and needs to take a step back from the situation.

    It’s not mentioned, but the daughter’s going to see a doctor about the incontinence, right? I surely hope so (if she’s medicated that suggests access to healthcare which I know can’t be taken for granted) because that’s such an unusual and troubling thing to happen. If I were an employer whose employee suddenly and unexpectedly urinated while working I would feel sympathy for whatever might be wrong but I would also have serious reservations about keeping them on.

    2. Brain the Brian*

      Same. Especially in food service, where maintaining a sanitary environment is paramount.

    3. EventPlannerGal*

      Yep. I’m saying this with all the sympathy in the world, but that is a very major issue that needs to be investigated (both from a career perspective and just for her general well-being).

    4. Hyaline*

      This was what had me scratching my head—a 19 year old losing bladder control is so Not Normal that I would think that the first priority would be figuring out what’s going on. Screw the job, it’s part time at a food joint and there will be plenty of others—take care of the body you hopefully will be hauling around for another 60+ years. As an employer I wouldn’t necessarily have concerns about keeping them on from a staffing perspective—I’d have concerns about their health and if this job was jeopardizing it in any way!

      1. Pyjamas*

        Eh, as someone with ADHD, I took it as OP1’s daughter getting distracted and failing to schedule a bathroom break, though a medical check is warranted

        As for OP1 herself, mom needs to rein her emotions in. “That’s the real world sweetie, dry your tears and let’s make a checklist so this doesn’t happen again.” Rinse & repeat, possibly including talking with an ADHD therapist / coach about skills and strategies.

    5. Nikko82*

      I cannot figure out what the nepotism angle is supposed to be here… considering that the ‘nepo baby’ (in an ICE CREAM SHOP) of all places actually shows up and does their job sometimes by themselves on top of that.

      1. Cleary*

        The nepo baby part felt like The Discourse bursting through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man. It really doesn’t make sense here, but I did chuckle at its sudden appearance.

      2. Irish Teacher.*

        I actually read that comment a bit differently from everybody else. I took it as “we think she is related to the owner so there’s no doubt about whether the owner would have told her about what my kid disclosed” rather than “we think she is related to the owner so she doesn’t deserve her job.”

    6. Nonanon*

      Yeahhhh especially since she had mentioned being sore/hurt from wakeboarding (spinal injuries are no joke, y’all). Sudden, unexpected incontinence is NOT a good thing and should be brought up to a medical professional as soon as possible (with the caveat that if you’re in America, this may or may not be feasible, but since OP mentioned ADHD medication, I’m assuming they do have some form of insurance and can pay)

    7. sparkle emoji*

      Yeah, in my first job I was scheduled for both Saturdays and Sundays 8 hours each day and I was happy for that because it worked with my school schedule. Consistency, like being scheduled every Saturday night, is something that’s pretty desirable in a coverage role because you can plan around it. Constantly being scheduled outside your availability is much worse IMO, and very common. If the Saturday scheduling rankles LW and her daughter, the daughter needs to change her availability instead of just being annoyed.

  11. Prefer pets*

    For the vision issues, I would also make sure you guys are looking at it on the same computer.
    I was complaining for months about how bad the resolution was in one of our software programs after they installed the latest version. Some people agreed with me, some people said they didn’t notice anything at all. Turns out the new version does weird pixelated/blurring things on certain older monitors no matter what you adjust in the settings. So we did some swapping around of monitors so everyone has at least one that displays crisply for the new program. But it could just as easily be monitors that are simply getting old, or a setting that needs to be changed, or whatever.

    1. NerdBoss*

      I completely agree! I had a similar situation with someone filling out a PDF on a tablet (the text looked fine) but the text looked extremely small when I viewed the PDF on a desktop computer.

  12. Oink*

    LW1: I’ve managed employees who think if their absence (including lateness/early leaving) is legitimate, the company should just allow it without any consequences. The reality is that any frequent absence has the same impact on operations and other employees whether someone’s off from blinding migraines or shirking off with a minor hangover. I’ve sadly had to dismiss a worker after a knee injury meant they were totally off work and unable to return for months on end and even after that could only perform light duties. Due to various reasons this wasn’t something we could accommodate without putting other people’s health and safety at risk. It sucks but sometimes even the most well intentioned and diligent people just aren’t suitable for certain jobs due to their restrictions or situations.

    As a mother of a special needs kid I feel your pain. I’m sorry your daughter is in this situation.

    1. ThatOtherClare*

      This is unfortunate but true. Some people just don’t have the physical capabilities to do some jobs. Is it fair, heck no! But life’s not fair. A full quadriplegic can’t be a life guard. A person with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome can’t be a professional wrestler. Some types of epilepsy preclude employment as a bus driver.

      Whether or not she actually would be able to close consistently from now on, her workplace is under the impression that she’s a risk. These things happen.

      Luckily, it’s her first job! She can leave now and leave it off her resume forevermore and nobody will know or care. She’s not bad or broken for having done poorly in her first food service job, in fact, more people mess up in their first job than those who don’t! There’s absolutely nothing wrong with standing up, brushing herself off, thinking “Oof, that was a painful lesson”, and moving on to her next terrible teenage retail job with dignity and self-respect intact. Just so long as she doesn’t resign via cod, of course: https://www.askamanager.org/2017/10/resigning-via-cod-a-glorious-out-of-office-message-and-other-quitting-stories.html

      1. Michigander*

        That’s what I thought too. She has literally her entire working life ahead of her still. Not getting a job right on the first try is very normally, even if you don’t have additional medical issues.

    2. londonedit*

      I think it’s unfortunate but I think even an office-based employer is going to have pause for thought over a brand-new employee who has had to leave early on several occasions. Things happen, of course, but employers need reliable staff, and I know if we hired someone who then went home early four times in their first few weeks, my boss would be wondering what was going on. In our case the first step would be a meeting with HR to see whether there are any accommodations that would help, but fundamentally if you’re contracted to work 35 hours a week then that’s what you need to be able to do (barring occasional sickness/emergencies etc), and someone leaving work early that many times would definitely make me question that. And it’s the same here – OP’s daughter has agreed to work certain shifts and a certain number of hours a week, and her employer is relying on her to do that. So far, for whatever reason, she isn’t proving that she can reliably do that.

      1. Grits McGee*

        So true! I posted on the Friday open thread about an issue I’m having with a coworker who is constantly out for legit reasons (illness! death! house fire! jury duty!), and the negative impacts it’s having on everyone this person works with. Daughter’s call outs don’t just affect management, they affect her coworkers as well.

      2. But maybe not*

        I’ve supervised a number of interns over the past 15 years and I did have to let someone go once because of call outs. They came the first day, left early, then called the next day to ask if they could work from home the rest of the week (this was 2010 before remote work was common; our employer only allowed it in extreme situations). It did not improve and the next week we parted ways. I’m sure they felt their request was reasonable *for them*, but it simply didn’t make sense for the position with our organization.

      3. Rincewind*

        And she went home early 4 times in her first few weeks/months while only working 2 shifts a week! If she’s working 2 shifts a week and has been there 3 months, she left early for a THIRD of her shifts so far. I’d be looking to fire her too, no matter the legitimacy of the early leaving.

    3. goddessoftransitory*

      Where I work we’ve managed to hang onto long term, valuable food service employees after they were injured because we have the phone center that takes orders (where I work) so they can stay on and get their insurance covered, then go back to their original job once they’re healed up. But that’s a definite exception in the food service world.

  13. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

    OP1 (daughter calling out with various issues) – this company has been much more accommodating than most would be; many places would just fire someone who had this many unrelated incidents in a short time.

    I don’t want to speculate here, but the nausea and bladder issue do make me wonder if they are linked in some way. I think medical investigation is warranted here. The other incidents are just poor planning really – a sport likely to cause injury on the day of a shift, and forgetting to take anxiety medication (which I have also done, so I keep a spare set of about 3 tablets in my work bag in case I ever forget to take it before I leave the house).

    I do think if she comes back at the end of the month and continues to have issues like this, that’s when they will be less accepting (and likely fire her at that point). It isn’t a “punishment” being taken off the schedule as OP seems to think (in some cases it can be, but not here) but really does seem like their ideal outcome is she can get it together and continue to work there more reliably.

    1. Justin*

      Yes, I keep an extra few of my antidepressants in my work travel bag (as well as my glaucoma eye drops).

    2. EmmaPoet*

      I’ve been carrying backup meds since I was in my early teens in a small medical bottle. Bailing because you forgot to take your meds and choose not to carry them is not a great look.

  14. RCB*

    I’m going to say something that I already know is going to make some people mad, because hard truths are hard to hear, and I promise I am not saying this to be mean, I’m saying it because I think it needs to be said, so here it goes:

    LW #1, as I was reading your question I kept saying “No, oh no, oh no no no” not only because what your daughter was doing was clearly a problem, but so were your attempts to justify it. This 19-year-old doesn’t seem to understand commitments, and consequences for breaking those commitments, and we can definitely see that in this example the parent is certainly not holding her to those commitments and is helping to justify her lackluster performance. Now, sure it’s possible that this one situation is completely abnormal for LW#1 and this isn’t how they normally treat their kid (that is, with kid gloves, pun sort of intended), but I think it would be beneficial for LW#1 to take a step back and take a very long, hard look and see if they can at all see what I (and likely others) saw in this letter, and if so, if maybe that’s causing issues in various parts of their kids life. The good news is that if you do recognize issues your kid is 19, there is so much time for them to learn different behaviors and whatnot, and you’ve already shown your willingness to seek out advice from others, so I don’t think this is a death knell for anyone, it’s something that can totally be corrected going forward if a problem is correctly identified.

    1. doreen*

      I have to agree – I don’t think the LW complaints about the schedule and the nepotism are really because the LW has never noticed that the staff/managers in relatively small businesses tend to be the owners” family or has never heard of FF and retail workers who would love working every Saturday if it meant they had every Friday night off ( and part-timers will almost always be scheduled at least one of Fri/Sat/Sun unless significant tips are involved). I think it’s justification and while I understand it since I definitely wanted to make excuses for my kids , I also understood it’s not helpful , which is why I stifled my impulses.

      1. TPS Reporter*

        imagine the owner’s kid writing in and saying- I’m forced to work at my family business out of obligation, I never get the shift I want or am able to leave early. Other non related employees are given several chances and it’s not fair.

        I have no idea if this is the case here but I’m saying that parenting style cuts both ways- some parents can be too accommodating and some not enough.

    2. ferrina*

      This is a really good point.
      OP, you are doing a disservice to your daughter by trying to defend her in everything. While you are trying to shield her from unfair treatment, you are also shielding her from taking responsibility.

      She is looking to you to help her calibrate what is normal and what isn’t, and you aren’t helping her. You seem to think that anything that is a hardship is unfair. That’s not how it works. It’s normal to be work weekends when you aren’t available most weekdays. It’s normal to be expected to show up for work able to do the job (being injured from wakeboarding was an easily foreseeable result, and she made a bad decision there). But it’s not normal to be suddenly incontinent- has she seen a doctor about that?

      I’ll add that this is an extra hard balance when you are dealing with mental health conditions, like ADHD/anxiety (I’m ADHD). But this is also where it is extra important. You can’t choose your ADHD/anxiety symptoms, but you can make choices in how you manage them. She needs to understand the needs of the business so she can understand the impact of what she is asking for. Different accommodations have different levels of hardship for a business, and a business is not required to provide accommodations that have undue hardship for the business. Leaving a coverage-based role without completing a shift is a big deal. OP may be minimizing it since ‘it’s just an ice cream shop’, but it’s a physical job and it’s a real job that needs to be seen to completion. You wouldn’t hand a product to a client that was only 80% done and say “well, I did most of it”; you don’t leave partway into your shift unless it is truly unavoidable. Your daughter needs help learning what is truly unavoidable absence (incontinence), what she needs to tough through (sore from wakeboarding) and what is grey area (nausea). She also needs to understand what to do with that grey area- tough through it if you can, leave if you need to, but also make sure that you are reliable and have enough goodwill built up that they know you would only leave if you truly needed to. She needs to learn that people only know what they see, and they can’t see inside your mind. It’s not fair to ask other people to see what’s inside her mind. And yes, that can mean that she’s in a tough situation when she’s trying to manage her anxiety symptoms and work priorities. I have absolutely been there, and it’s tough and it’s not fair, but it’s the hand that life has dealt and she needs to know how to play that hand as well as possible.

      1. Blue Pen*

        >> OP, you are doing a disservice to your daughter by trying to defend her in everything. While you are trying to shield her from unfair treatment, you are also shielding her from taking responsibility. <<

        Extremely well-said, and I completely agree. If the OP's daughter has medical hardships to endure, that's OK. Many, many people in the workforce do. But she has to learn how to balance those hardships within the context of taking responsibility for herself and the work she has committed to doing.

    3. jasmine*

      LW1 does lack perspective, but I sympathize. I’m sure it’s hard seeing your daughter with low self-esteem go through adult hardships that you might have been hoping would actually build her up instead. Especially when she has mental health issues going on. Combined with a lack of experience with how the food service industry works, the letter doesn’t seem that strange.

      > This 19-year-old doesn’t seem to understand commitments, and consequences for breaking those commitments

      Perhaps but nothing here is that unusual for a 19 year old

      1. biobotb*

        Not unusual for a 19 year old, but this could be a learning opportunity, but the LW and her daughter both appear to be missing the lesson.

      2. Elbe*

        Perhaps but nothing here is that unusual for a 19 year old

        I don’t think what you’re saying is inaccurate, but I do think that it’s a problem. I get the sense that parents/schools/society is really falling down on preparing young people to become functional adults. I don’t think it’s good that so many of them are struggling with really basic concepts and can’t see things from the perspective of their employers and fellow employees.

        1. Catfish Mke*

          As compared to what? The nineteen year old boomers were turning on and dropping out man…there’s jut as many slackers as there have been since the time of Socrates in fact Oxford he cuneiform translations complaining about the irresponsibility of the young people of Sumer.

    4. Double A*

      I’m a teacher and my thought was definitely this is the point where the helicopter is hitting the runway for a bumpy landing. The excuses that have worked throughout school are not going to cut it in the realm world. I promise they didn’t really work in the school realm, either, but you can’t get fired from school so you don’t always notice those lessons.

    5. Hell in a Handbasket*

      Agreed. And I think she’s also likely amping up her daughter’s anxiety by getting so upset about this stuff. Far better to sympathize a bit (“oh, that sounds like a tough day”) and then let her daughter handle it. Treat it as no big deal, because the stakes are pretty low here.

  15. Jessica*

    One of the big changes in transitioning from school to work is that in school, it’s really about you. The work assignments you’re given are all for the purpose of helping you learn. Everybody around you is there for you. What’s expected of you is scaled to your capabilities. And it’s expected that every kid should get to learn, and if you have any kind of special needs or challenges, it’s up to the institution to figure out how to deal with them so you still get to learn.

    In the world of work, you’re there for the work; it’s not there for you. You’re assigned work tasks not for your enlightenment but because the enterprise needs them done. And what needs to be done doesn’t change relative to your ability to do it. Other people in the enterprise aren’t there for you; they’re also there to get the work done. If you have problems, hopefully the enterprise will try to accommodate you before discarding you, but especially in a coverage-based, show-must-go-on type of job like food service, the focus will be on whether you can get the job done. At work you’re judged by the quality of your work product, not the quality of your excuses. This is a big transition from school and it kind of sounds like neither daughter nor mother has completely made the shift.

    1. WS*

      +1, yes, this is a learning situation. It’s really common for students to have trouble with their first job (or first few jobs!) and that’s how you learn what is normal in a workplace, what kinds of work interests you and how to negotiate and plan around work.

      The workplace not rostering her for a month while she works out if and how she wants to return is extremely reasonable. Her mother having outrage and accusing people of nepotism is not going to help; her mother giving her some guidance on how to deal with disappointment and what the work world’s expectations are might.

    2. Ellis Bell*

      Even in terms of accommodations, the bar at work is higher. The work expectation is not “Ok you get a pass – that’s your accommodation” but rather “The work needs to get done at all costs – you can use an accommodation to get it done, but it still needs doing”. At school they will support you and certainly won’t exclude you when you don’t meet that bar.

      1. Samwise*

        Even with accommodations, students are still expected to get the work done.

        Accommodations don’t mean “do less work” or “turn work in late or whenever”. If there’s group work, it doesn’t mean “the rest of the group has to pick up your slack”.

        1. Ellis Bell*

          Yes, but the push comes from staff and it’s rare to get rid of them entirely if it’s not self directed.

    3. Lab Boss*

      “What needs to be done doesn’t change relative to your ability to do it” is a fantastic phrase, and I plan to shamelessly steal it from you for work I do with college students (to be used kindly in helping them navigate situations like OP’s daughter, not to be cruel). One of the hardest but most valuable lessons for young people is the concept that sometimes, in the end, things just have to get done.

    4. The Prettiest Curse*

      I do not have kids, so feel free to ignore this advice on that basis – but in a previous job, I did work with parents of kids with disabilities. Just as this OP’s daughter will need to make the transition from college to employment, OP needs to make the mental transition from parenting a kid with disabilities to parenting an adult with disabilities.
      Many parents of kids with disabilities get into the mindset of bulldozing through any obstacle in their way – in most cases, this is (unfortunately) necessary to get their kid the diagnosis/diagnoses, health care and education they need. (I should add that parents of kids who have severe enough health conditions that the child can’t live independently may need to permanently have this mindset.)

      Unfortunately, this is not the most useful mindset to have if you want your kid to develop the ability to independently problem-solve, advocate for themselves, develop good judgment and build their independence. So you need to learn to figure out when to hold back on the bulldozing and when it’s necessary. A support group for parents of young adults with the same diagnoses as your daughter may help you on this front.

      1. sparkle emoji*

        Also not a parent, but as a former kid with disabilities I think you’re spot on. My parents started having me get involved in self advocacy tasks like enforcing my 504 with teachers when I was in high school. I would have to speak with the teacher/email first and then they would step in if needed. It wasn’t always comfortable but it made me capable of advocating for myself once I got to college and beyond and no longer could fall back on their help.

      2. Taketombo*

        When we got my kid into a dedicated special needs school the whole perspective changed – instead of fighting to get and retain a 1:1 aide it was “How fast can we get him to the standard of 1:2? (because one day he’ll be 22 and the state supported staff ratios are way lower than that)”

        It became outcome based – “How do we best teach him this self care skill?” Because the framework at the school was set. It was eye opening. I’d spent years at the previous school, with a lawyer, fighting for staff, because it seemed like lack of staff and attention was the problem, when I should have been (and what ultimately got us the placement) was lack of outcome. Even at 1:1 – or especially at 1:1 since the kiddo effectively had a personal babysitter — they could not teach him.

        Special Education ends – but hopefully at that point the new adult will have enough skills and supports in place to live their fullest life. OP, you can’t fight every battle for your daughter and this is one you shouldn’t. Help her assess if this job is a good fit – if any direct food service is a good fit. Maybe she would be better in catering or BOH for hospital food service.

        Do help her sort through her medical issues.

    5. Rosyglasses*

      I’m literally screenshotting this comment — I think it’s something that really is clear in many of the younger folks in the workforce that I bump up against in my work and I think the way you laid this out is so very clear and direct. It is such a hard transition, and I think that there are societal norms (via social media primarily) that are making this even more challenging. The POV reels about having ADHD or working to live instead of living to work — which as someone mid-career, I can see and laugh at or say – oh wow, that’s so true of me and the way my brain works — but I still understand that there may be times where I run into a work environment that is not a match for me — not that all workplaces need to shape themselves to support me and my goals.

    6. Blue Pen*

      Yes, completely. I truly don’t mean this in an unkind way, but the OP needs to realize that no one at work is going to care for her daughter to the extent she has here. They’re just not. They will want her to do well, of course, and most people are compassionate individuals who would never intentionally make anyone suffer. But they are not there specifically to create an ideal set of circumstances every day just for the OP’s daughter.

      And like others have said earlier, this is a shift from school to work! It’s a big one. So, it’s OK that your daughter hasn’t learned that yet. But sooner or later, if she wants to do well in the workforce, she’s going to have to learn that her needs don’t supersede everyone else’s.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        This. And realizing that’s a frankly healthy attitude for the employer to have (as opposed to a person who would literally treat your daughter like their own child, which is far, far more creepy and problematic!)

        They can be kind, willing to work with them up to an extent, and want them to do a good job, but that has to be in service to the job, not to her. That is THEIR job.

        1. Elbe*

          Agreed. The level of accommodation that the LW seems to expect (her daughter keeps the job even though she calls out frequently, leaving other employees in a lurch) is actually very unhealthy. It may seem reasonable to the LW when it’s her daughter, but I don’t think that she would want that standard to apply everyone, even the employees that her daughter works with. That would create a very bad work environment for everyone.

          As painful as this is now, it is not a huge deal for a 19-year-old to lose a part time job at Scoops Ahoy. At some point or another, almost everyone ends up in a job that is not a good fit for them. They learn from it, they adjust, and they find something better. Rather than putting pressure on the employer to make unreasonable accommodations, the LW should focus on guiding her daughter to a satisfying career that aligns with her abilities. As a parent, it’s the LW’s job to provide long-term perspective to someone too young to have that type of perspective.

          If the daughter wants to be a chef, I understand how failing at food service may seem like crushing her dreams. But the reality is that most 19-year-olds don’t have the self-awareness or awareness of the job market to pick a Forever Career. At 19, I didn’t even know that my current job existed, let alone that I would enjoy it and be good at it. The daughter has plenty of time to course-correct and find a really good career match that will make her happy in the long run.

    7. Elbe*

      This is a great comment and I hope the LW sees it.

      And what needs to be done doesn’t change relative to your ability to do it… This is a big transition from school and it kind of sounds like neither daughter nor mother has completely made the shift.
      Yes! This is not a situation where the daughter gets to choose her career path and then all of her employers have to make that work for her. It’s the other way around. She has to evaluate what she is good at, what she can do reliably, and then pick a career path with that in mind. It seems like the daughter (and the LW) need to start thinking about this situation in a different way.

  16. fantail*

    LW1 with the daughter: the job isn’t about her. It’s not fair because it’s not about her. You sound upset enough about this that honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if your (not normal at all in this industry) sense of outrage is part of why she’s struggling/down! She’s got no chance of calibrating for what work looks like if you’re behind her expecting employers to put her first.

    I have some really, really intense medical issues. I’ve had to have mortifying conversations with my employers about them; I’ve had to, for the sake of my job and my health, demonstrate that I’ve taken immediate action on things much less severe than sudden incontinence. Have you got that underway? What are you doing to build resilience in your daughter?

    I’m very sympathetic to her situation — I’m ADHD-autistic, and have an adult sibling who has struggled with all manner of adult social situations where there are expectations placed on them. This struggle was partly due to parenting that simply wasn’t proactive enough in picking up the places where neurodivergent people need more help to gain resilience, competence and confidence before they develop debilitating anxiety that further impairs their ability to learn to recover after mistakes and adjust to these stressful new situations. I suspect similar is happening here (and I don’t think you didn’t try your best, I just think that you were not equipped to do what would have been enough).

    My advice: if she doesn’t need to work — if you can support her, pay her an allowance, etc — she shouldn’t be working right now. She should however be doing the kind of focused work someone in her position needs to do to be ready for any kind of culinary job — therapy, potentially both an executive function coach and someone who specialises in DBT and distress tolerance for neurodivergent people. Volunteering or other social situations which will require her to regularly attend several-hour sessions with adults of all ages and all communication styles.

    Weirdly, if you think she’s not ready for volunteering yet either, D&D is quite good for this. It’s helped my sibling a lot to learn to commit to 4 hours an evening of talking to a variety of adults and working together, and if you’re lucky there’s D&D leagues near you which specialise in helping mentally ill and/or disabled new players too.)

    Either way: she is not cut out for this job. Your reaction is not helping. What are you actually doing to prepare your daughter for the working world, or at the very least for being an adult who is capable of regulating her emotions? Resilience is a skill that’s harder to build yet more crucial for people in her situation, and it’s okay if it takes her time to be ready. If you really want to support her, that comes in the form of accepting that she might need concerted effort now to develop basic personal (distress tolerance), social (communicating by text) and workplace (reliability, including communicating well around a disability) skills, starting with interoception that works well enough that she’s not reacting to nausea or incontinence too late.

    1. Elbe*

      She’s got no chance of calibrating for what work looks like if you’re behind her expecting employers to put her first.
      Agreed. The daughter needs a solid understanding of the work world so that she can determine where would be a good fit for her. It will not help her self-esteem to constantly be in situations where she can’t meet expectations.

      I’m sympathetic to everyone here. This isn’t an easy situation. But there seems to be a real lack in expectations for the daughter to manage her own issues to the point where she could be a dependable, reliable employee. That should be the #1 priority. Companies can’t (and shouldn’t!) make accommodations for employees that are not able to complete the basic tasks of the job. Doing that wouldn’t be a kindness – it would be putting an unreasonable burden on other employees.

  17. Someday We Won't Remember This*

    Dishwashing’s probably not a great fit for someone with nausea issues, either. Those food scraps get gross.

    1. Someday We Won't Remember This*

      Threading fail, sorry. That was supposed to be a reply to Zombeyonce.

    2. Warrior Princess Xena*

      By far one of the most vile things I’ve ever smelled in my life was a pot with burned gunk on it that was being soaked. Something about getting it wet and soapy compounded the burnt food smell into a nauseating miasma. I still commend the dish crew in that college cafeteria for dealing with those on a daily basis.

      1. CommanderBanana*

        Our dishwasher’s drain trap! It wasn’t being emptied and oh my god, when I lifted it out, I started gagging and heaving. Worst thing I’ve ever smelled, and I’ve changed diapers, and dealt with toddler and dog vomit.

        1. goddessoftransitory*

          Cleaning the fridge out is another nominee for “this is what Hell smells like.” I’ll never forget doing so at my job, then recruiting one of my managers to help take everything to the compost/trash. He gagged and dry heaved three separate times just taking those bags outside.

    3. CityMouse*

      i did like some aspects of a dishwasher rotation because you generally just got left alone to work, but you definitely have to hustle.l and like everything else, it’s hot work. Depending in the day you may be asked to prep and no one gets out of cleaning on a close shift.

    4. RabbitRabbit*

      Not just the food scraps. You’re just relentlessly getting wet, which messes with your skin. So many dishie complaints of foot and hand problems from hours of dish water and soaps and sanitizer.

  18. judyjudyjudy*

    LW1, I’m going to take a different tack. I agree with Allison’s take, and the other comments so far — nothing is weird, let her find her own way, and maybe encourage her to see a doctor.

    However, one other thing for your daughter to think about: what does she want to do, once she finishes culinary school? It might be good for her to talk to some people who hold the kids of positions she’s interested in. The two chefs I know (one at a restaurant, the other as a private chef on a yacht) work crazy hours under a lot of pressure during busy services, including staying up well into the early hours. If she’s struggling with closing two-ish nights a week, certain types of culinary jobs might not suit her.

    Does anyone in the comment section who went to culinary school have some additional insight?

    1. Not like a regular teacher*

      My sibling went to culinary school and worked for awhile as a pastry chef. This area of food service involves no customer interaction and minimal interaction with coworkers, but it requires a high level of independence and reliability. Oh and the hours are bonkers. Overnights, morning shifts starting at 3am, etc. No closing shifts but still the expectation is that you really can’t call out unless it is truly an emergency because literally no one is callable at 2am to come in to cover – if you call out that most likely just means the business doesn’t have any croissants or what have you to sell that day. Once in a blue moon when you’re a known quantity, sure, but if you’re a person who is going to be calling out even monthly this simply isn’t the job for you.

    2. bamcheeks*

      worst part of The Devil Wears Prada was having a boyfriend who is a literal CHEF and seemed to think it was bizarre that Andi worked long and unexpected hours and sometimes missed special occasions with no notice. Every single thing he complained about was normal for food service!

      1. Lab Boss*

        Having not read/seen that in particular, one of my biggest pet peeves in fiction is when a character is given a job because the author likes the way it sounds, but it’s clear they don’t know the first thing about what that job actually is like to do (or to be close to someone who does).

  19. DeskApple*

    #2, never specified what kind of managing or coaching they did as part of “talking to the employee” and emphasized they were very hands off. In my mind, HR might have picked up on that too. This of course doesn’t negate days without work, but I would think after a single day or two with no response on work impacting other employees a manager might check in then and ask if the employee was okay, in the hospital, etc?

    1. Rebecca*

      I had the same question. LW2 spent however many weeks talking to the employee at biweekly meetings, but what were they talking about? If the problem is attendance, then yes, you need to coach your employee about attendance, even if you feel that you should not have to.

      The shoulds will get you everytime.

  20. K-Chai*

    LW1- I hire and supervise college students who work at a customer service desk. Something we run into is because these are all people who have little (to no) job experience, they don’t always understand how much we rely on them being reliable. If someone calls out, that might be covered by another person already scheduled, but there’s a few things each shift that require a full-time person (whose job is something other than customer service) to help cover tasks that always require two people. Students often see it as “well there’s another person so things will get done if I call out,” but it interrupts other jobs *and* causes more work without warning. (This is not your daughter’s case, but the number of times I’ve had to explain that no, having to study for a test is not an acceptable reason to no-show is…too many.)

    Everyone calls out at some point, but when it becomes a pattern, it’s a problem. We had a student last year who, in their first semester of working for us, seemed to call out every single week. And when it’s like that, we can’t afford to have that unpredictability for a position and work that we need done; if it was *always* expendable, we wouldn’t have hired for it. (That student, incidentally, was not rehired the following semester.)

    This is not to say your daughter is taking a laissez-faire attitude, but to explain likely *why* the shop, like Alison said, doesn’t think it can rely on her. And to compound it, because she’s had a lot of things in a relatively short period of time, that makes her look worse *and* subjects her to extra scrutiny: it becomes an image problem, which means they will be paying more attention to what she does and won’t mentally gloss over one thing here or there in the same way they might for other people who don’t have that reputation.

    (I have a student worker like that now, incidentally. They seem to be improving and also have legitimate excuses for some things, but there was a period of time where it seems like every other week or so they’d have to be spoken to about an issue, and now they have a reputation in the eyes of my boss who is advocating for not rehiring because it’s exhausting not being able to trust that they’ll show up and do their job correctly.)

    And all that said, there is value in your daughter having work experience, but does it need to be this place, or food service at all? Something like cashiering or retail might be a better fit in that those are often first jobs but would be less likely to involve food smells.

    1. hypoglycemic rage*

      “it becomes an image problem, which means they will be paying more attention to what she does and won’t mentally gloss over one thing here or there in the same way they might for other people who don’t have that reputation.”

      I used to work in adult services at public libraries – sitting at the desk for hours at a time. I had one job where someone specific often called out last-minute. so either I had to stay late or the desk would remain empty for four hours until we closed, which was not ideal.

      then – as a result of enough people calling out last-minute – this library changed their call-out procedures (can’t remember what they changed to, but I remember they were Controversial among staff), and I was talking about it with my boss. I was someone who almost never called out, and she flat-out said that if I did, she would work with me to find a solution because I am someone who is reliable (I also was part-time and didn’t have pto, so it was mostly that I am reliable but also if I didn’t work I didn’t get paid).

  21. Roland*

    > I know she is not the only employee with issues and concerns. Why does it feel like she is being singled out for not being an easy employee?

    You don’t actually know what conversations are had with other employees.

    1. AnneCordelia*

      Right. Also, it’s like they say about the three most important factors in real estate being Location, Location, and Location. In a food service or retail job, it’s Coverage, Coverage, Coverage. They need those warm bodies. Other employees may have “issues” too, but they may be issues that aren’t as problematic, from management’s point of view. An employee being rude or sloppy or X or Y or Z may be bad, but it’s not as bad as an employee who is not there.

    2. Elbe*

      I think that the LW misses the likelihood that the other employees with issues are managing them on their own. On any given day, other people may have, for example, sore muscles, but they probably don’t call out because of that.

      1. 1LFTW*

        Or they’ve have already been let go. When I worked retail, every hiring cycle meant a bunch of new people, and a significant number of those people would flake out by the end of the first month. It’s the nature of service jobs.

        1. Elbe*

          Right. It’s a bit concerning that the LW sees this as her daughter being “singled out” when, in reality, the owners seem like they’ve been very accommodating so far. It seems like they’re doing as much as they can without further burdening other employees.

  22. Happy*

    Calling out due to being sore from wake boarding is…something…

    Honestly, this sounds like a good learning experience for your daughter, LW1.

    1. londonedit*

      Yeah…it’s a tough transition when you first start working and you have to learn that work often means missing out on other things. It’s like when you get your first full-time job and you have to get used to not having two months off in summer and three weeks at Christmas. Nope, you’ve got to be there 9-5 five days a week unless you book time off. I know the OP’s daughter has some health issues, but with the best will in the world the manager of an ice-cream shop can’t take everyone’s health issues into account all the time – they just need people who will reliably turn up and work their hours and do a decent job. If the daughter is too sore to work after wakeboarding then she’s going to have to realise wakeboarding isn’t something she can do if she’s got a shift coming up.

      1. Bethany*

        Yep, even having a part-time job while at school helps you realise this – sometimes you can’t go to a party on a Friday night because you have work at 8am on Sunday, or you might miss out on a family Sunday lunch because you have a shift. You just learn to accept that and manage your time and priorities appropriately.

        1. The Prettiest Curse*

          This reminded me of my job at university cleaning the student union. Being young and having a lot more energy then than I do now, I’d sometimes go out partying till 1am and show up to work at 6am. I think I was only late once or twice in the 2 years I worked there, so I’m retrospectively impressed with myself for always showing up, even though I was sometimes a bit hungover – which fortunately matters much less in cleaning than it would in many other jobs.

          1. Lab Boss*

            Which is really the other half of the lesson. The “right” answer is that sometimes you skip the fun because it will interfere with work, but it’s also really important to learn that if you DO decide to go wakeboarding, or go to the party, or have the extra shot (or three), you shake it off and do what needs doing the next day.

      2. Snoodence Pruter*

        Yes, this. It is rough getting used to it. (I’ve just gone back to full-time work after being very flexible part-time for a while, and I’ve done this plenty of times before but I’m still a little devastated at the sudden lack of brunch opportunities!) But you have to prioritise being there for work even when it sucks. You call out for emergencies, and for illness that genuinely leaves you stuck in bed or that would risk infecting everyone else. But if you can function through some mild to moderate discomfort, you still turn up. You plan to be fit for work at work time. Was she actually going to vomit from that smell, or was it just uncomfortable? Would closing up with sore muscles and wrist have been impossible, or just unpleasant? Does missing anxiety meds truly leave her unable to function? (I’m not necessarily doubting that – it very well might! I’ve had some that left me throwing up if I forgot them, but also others that just leave me facing a slightly unpleasant day. Which of those is the case here?)

        Of course I don’t think anyone should be expected to work after experiencing sudden incontinence, and you can’t be around food if you’re actually going to puke, but this is a lot of absences in a short time period and a couple were fairly self-inflicted. Sometimes we all do things like forgetting our meds, but when it’s our own mistake, we take the consequences on ourselves as much as possible because that’s what responsibility means.

        I was like that in my first job or two, calling out when I definitely wasn’t feeling great but I still could have got through the day. I got pulled up on my attendance and eventually figured out what was truly call-out worthy and what was just a less-than-delightful day that I could suck up for the sake of keeping my job.

        1. Snoodence Pruter*

          (Actually I’ve re-read and I’m not sure if the anxiety meds situation caused a missed shift or if she ended up telling her manager about it because she went to work and struggled visibly.)

          1. londonedit*

            I don’t think that was a missed shift, but I think it was another example of the pattern that’s led the manager to conclude that the daughter is ‘not a team player’ and isn’t reliable enough for the job. Any one of the things in the letter you could chalk up to bad luck or a one-off, but when you put together having to leave early because of a toilet mishap, having to leave early because a smell made her feel sick, having to leave dead on closing time (which I assume means again leaving early for her shift, as I imagine she’d be required to stay past the shop’s actual closing time to clean and tidy up, etc) because she was saying she’s sore from wakeboarding, and then having a day where she says she’s forgotten her medication and she’s struggling with anxiety…from the manager’s point of view, when you look at it like that, it’s a lot. Of course there may be underlying issues, but on the face of it, it looks like there’s always some issue or another affecting her ability to work the shifts she’s agreed to work, and to do a good job. She’s also not being a team player in the sense that when she leaves early, her colleagues will probably have to pick up where she left off.

      3. goddessoftransitory*

        My family had a much harder time than I did adjusting to holiday schedules–they couldn’t fathom why I couldn’t just take off for two weeks for Christmas and come visit across the country. I was like, well, see, you have to request those dates in July or it’s too late, and they don’t just close like school does.

    2. Lexi Vipond*

      I have occasionally done things which made me much more sore than I was expecting (I can’t remember now what once made me too sore to use a stapler, but it was something that seemed less active than things I was doing regularly!), and you can’t just stop doing anything in case you get injured and can’t work – but it does seem like unforunate timing at least.

  23. Sharon*

    “The employees were apparently told by the owner the first week of training to be open and honest and they would work to accommodate needs.”

    As is so often the case, that is clearly a lie. Being open about the anxiety has only resulted in punishment, and no communication about any attempt to provide even the most basic accommodation for it. If she chooses to try to continue with this job, the best thing for her to realize is that openness and honesty are not safe to engage in, and that accommodations are off the table; this will help calibrate expectations to be closer to what the business actually is instead of what it tries to portray itself as.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      I disagree.
      Accommodations don’t normally allow an employee to omit core duties, which typically for the culinary industry is being reliably present for all the allocated shifts.

      Not being open or honest would not have changed things, in fact probably would have reduced any limited tolerance for absences.

      The absences are the problem and it’s not like the owner didn’t realise the daughter is absent unless she told her about her problems.

    2. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      The owner was likely thinking about accommodations such as non-uniform shoes, no makeup etc!

      1. Lily Potter*

        The owner’s thoughts of “accommodating needs” were things like “If running the register is overwhelming, we’ll have you wash dishes instead”. They did not mean “we can accommodate you coming and going whenever you need to”. The latter wouldn’t work in the vast majority of job out there, not just food service.

        I’ve posted this before but it seems that it would work in this situation too. My very first undergrad class (small college, class of 40 or so) the Prof explained that because a large part of what we would learn took place in class, she’d be taking attendance. We got three no-questions-asked absences, then your grade was automatically docked. Funerals and hospitalizations would be exempt with proper documentation. Otherwise, she didn’t want to know if you were sick (or hungover), if your car died, you injured your wrist skiing, your dog died, you forgot to take your meds, or you overslept. The workplace doesn’t make constant allowances for those kinds things and she wasn’t going to put up with it either. Bravo, Dr. P!

      2. Nonanon*

        Agreeing; while I do think it’s possible the manager was treating her differently because of anxiety/ADHD/etc, we don’t have anything in the letter to really suggest that. “Be open and honest and we’ll accommodate” could mean:
        *You won’t get scheduled for a time you’re in class
        *You don’t have to prep ingredients you’re allergic too
        *We’ll get you a silicone mat since you’ll be standing a long time
        *You can use a belt or other support aid when transporting heavy loads
        *You can have an extra unpaid break to have a snack so your blood sugar won’t drop to imminent hospitalization levels

        It DOES NOT mean
        *You forgot to tell me you had an exam and didn’t find coverage
        *You’re allergic to dairy and can’t handle anything at the ice cream shop
        *You ran a marathon the previous day and the silicone mat just isn’t cutting it
        *You have a broken leg and can’t transport anything
        *You can leave your shift early for a longer meal break

    3. Nodramalama*

      I don’t think it was a lie. Some things can be accomodated and some can’t. They’ve already accomodated her four times in a very short amount of time. Accommodations doesn’t mean they don’t need to respond to their own business needs. They need to be able to keep their shop staffed and LWs daughter so far has not been shown to be reliable to do that.

    4. londonedit*

      I don’t think it’s a lie. Accommodations mean things that will help you to do your job as agreed – that doesn’t mean being able to leave early if you’re scheduled to work a full shift. From the employer’s point of view, the OP’s daughter isn’t reliable and can’t be relied upon to finish her shift – that’s not what you want in an employee.

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        This is something a lot of people misunderstand even with regard to school. I’ve come across a number of Irish parents posting in educational forums and stuff online, along the lines of “my son was in hospital/had a severe trauma this year. What accommodations are available for the Leaving Cert. (our equivalent of A-levels) to make up for the time he missed of his education?” and the answer is none. The accommodations are to help students do the exam, eg, if a student has poor literacy, they might get a reader so that they can understand what they are being asked. If they have broken their arm, they might get a scribe or be allowed to record their answers. That sort of thing.

        If a student does not know the information, it really doesn’t matter whether they don’t know it because of their ability level or because they have made no effort or because they have learning disabilities that prevent them from understanding the information or because they were seriously ill and missed two years of school. The exams aren’t trying to test how smart students are or how much effort they’ve made. They are trying to test whether or not students know this specific information and the accommodations are to ensure that students who do know the information aren’t hampered from showing their knowledge due to other issues, like poor literacy, lack of proficiency in English, being unable to write, needing breaks to take medication, etc. They aren’t there to “make it up” to students who don’t know the information for reasons beyond their control.

        And I think the same distinction is true here. There is a difference between an accommodation that helps you to do what needs to be done and an accommodation that exempts you from doing what needs to be done.

        1. Ms. Eleanous*

          wait, you can have someone read an A Level exam to you if you have “poor literacy?

          Isn’t testing literacy part of what the exam is for?

        2. TakingTestsCold*

          Well, you can still take the exams if you think you can pass them without the class time.

          I had a major illness in 8th grade and I got dragged into school for a half day a week for 3+ months to take exams so I didn’t have to repeat the grade. The deal we made was if I got As on the exams I got As in the classes. If I didn’t, I would have to repeat the grade. Thankfully the coursework was so easy for me I got my As despite sometimes being so sick I had trouble sitting upright and I barely knew what was going on. I sometimes had to have someone read the tests to me, sometimes multiple times, then record my answers because I couldn’t focus well enough to read. I only had to do this for core classes – math, English, history, and science – all of which I knew cold or it wouldn’t have worked.

          1. TakingTestsCold*

            A more analogous example would be when my parents moved the summer I dropped out of high school to go to college. Had they not moved, my school would have been legally obligated to give me a high school diploma after I finished a year of college, but because I was no longer a resident by virtue of the move they didn’t have to do it. I could have gotten a diploma from the high school where my parents moved but I would have had to take something like 30 regents exams that other students start taking in 7th grade. I decided it wasn’t worth it and to this day I’m officially a high school dropout (with a graduate degree from an Ivy League school), but I had the option and almost certainly would have passed all the tests if I’d thought it was worth the aggravation.

    5. bamcheeks*

      Genuinely, how do you think this would have gone if LW’s daughter hadn’t been “open and honest”? She would still have called in or had to leave early multiple times in a short space of time– do you think if she hadn’t been honest about her anxiety, the employer would have handled this differently?

      I have definitely come across situations where people have been honest about medical issues and it’s resulted in very small problems getting blown up and employers seeing a “pattern” of unreliability, mistakes etc which wouldn’t have been seen as patterns without the disclosure. That absolutely happens, and it’s absolutely why disabled people with invisible or otherwise concealable conditions to be wary of disclosing. I just don’t think this is the case here.

      1. doreen*

        I think if she hadn’t disclosed medical issues she would have been fired after the second incident. The daughter seems to work two shifts a week and has left early four times – and the job is described as a “new job” so she’s probably been working no more than a month or two. If so, she’s left early 25%-50& of her scheduled shifts – it’s not like these four incidents happened over the course of a year.

        1. MsM*

          Yeah, if it had just been the anxiety, I suspect they would have tried to work with her unless it became regularly recurring to the point that it would be a kindness to her to check whether this was really the right environment for her. It’s the failure to properly manage her anxiety in a way she knows she needs to manage it, plus being grossed out by something that’s apparently a regular part of the job, plus sustaining a totally avoidable injury through poor planning.

        2. Elarra Harper*

          These numbers were my concern as well. Even in my non-service profession, I am just not going to be able to accommodate an employee who is unable to fulfill their job duties 25% or more of their shifts.

    6. Justin*

      Being open about the anxiety is not why she’s getting docked. Frankly being open about it and then telling them she forgot to take her meds (if I understand this correctly) is a “oh, so you made a mistake that made it so you were unable to work when needed.”

      The wakeboarding injury is also “hmm, maybe don’t do that before work.”

      She’s young, but some of this just doesn’t work when absolutely needed for shift work.

    7. Nancy*

      Being accommodating doesn’t mean an employee can be unreliable by calling out because they went wakeboarding, or that a business has to keep an employee who gets nausea from making the products they sell. The owner was very polite and understanding here, but they need to think about their business and other employees as well.

    8. RabbitRabbit*

      Beyond the anxiety/ADHD disclosure and the wakeboarding injury, she also experienced nausea from smelling product while working in an ice cream shop, and urinated. The latter are not really related to the disclosure that we can tell, and the nausea issue definitely makes her a bad fit for the shop.

    9. Cthulhu's Librarian*

      You’re wrong here, because you’re attributing malicious or ableist reasons to what is happening. Teaching the daughter to think she was persecuted due to her disclosure will not be helpful or productive immediately, or in the long term.

      The daughter is not being punished for her anxiety or other issues. I’d hesitate to say she is being punished at all, really. She’s experiencing natural consequences of events. While some of those events were outside of her control, others were firmly in it. Life is like that. Things happen. Sometimes you get to be in control of why they happen and the outcomes, and sometimes you don’t.

      The employer needs a body to do a job for the full scheduled shifts. The daughter has a track record of not being able to do that. She is not the body they need. It is not a punishment for them to realize that, any more than it would be if she didn’t have reliable transportation, was nice drinking, or the shifts conflicted with her class schedule.

    10. ecnaseener*

      I don’t think it was an outright lie or that (from the details in the letter) she’s being punished for disclosing anxiety and ADHD — but I do agree with you that disclosing conditions like these is usually not worth the downsides, even if management encourages you to.

      If LW’s daughter asks for advice on this angle of it, I’d point her to some of the previous posts on this site to read more, but the main factors to consider are 1) do you have a specific, concrete accommodation to request [that can’t be requested without disclosing the condition], and 2) how sure are you that management can be trusted with this information and won’t think you less competent because of it.

    11. Irish Teacher.*

      I think it’s possible that it was less a lie and more a misunderstanding. It is possible that by “be open and honest,” the owner/employer/boss did not mean “tell me your health issues and I’ll make whatever allowances are necessary” but rather “let me know if you have specific work needs, such as ‘I can’t work Thursdays because I have tutoring on that day’ or ‘I need to finish early on Tuesdays for a therapy appointment’ or ‘I have auditory processing issues so can I get a written list of my duties?’ or ‘I need to take a couple of minutes break every two hours to take meds for x condition.'”

      And I don’t think there is any evidence openness and honesty harmed her here. Had she not mentioned her anxiety and ADHD but taken the same amount of time off, I’d guess the reaction would probably have been the same.

    12. Cat Tree*

      It can be helpful to think about which accommodations the employer should be giving here. What could they do to enable her to perform the job? Fewer hours overall? Since she’s already at 8 hours a week, that takes her to basically nothing, which is exactly what the employer did. Maybe a switch to only one 4-hour shift a week could work but is that really worth it for either of them?

    13. rebelwithmouseyhair*

      They shouldn’t have to accommodate for the daughter forgetting her meds! Nor for the daughter getting sore from a fun sport earlier in the day. She’s not behaving responsibly enough to make sure she’s in a fit state to get through her shift. This may be hard for her because of her medical issues, but when push comes to shove, the manager needs someone she can count on to be there and stay there till the job’s done.

    14. Cheap ass rolling with it*

      This is a food restaurant. If someone has incontinence, they create a health hazard, and can potentially shut the whole place down. Accommodation doesn’t mean putting the whole business at risk..

    15. Ellis Bell*

      Nah, sorry. Reasonable accommodations are things like swapping tasks with a colleague or using headphones to do something out the back if noise out front is overwhelming you. Going home early isn’t an accommodation that helps you cope with work… it’s just going home early because you can’t do the work. If you can’t reliably do the work then you will still get fired whether or not you give the background or diagnosis to explain why you’re going home early.

    16. CommanderBanana*

      Yeaaaaaaah I’ve become very cynical as someone who has been in the workforce with a (diagnosed, medicated and managed) mental illness who is also neurodivergent, but as soon as I hear an employer talking about being “open and honest” and “bringing your whole self to work” I immediately know never to tell them anything because it’ll be weaponized against me. I wish that wasn’t the case, but once bitten…

      1. ThisIsNotADuplicateComment*

        Genuine question: Do you think that’s what’s happening here though? Do you think if LW1’s daughter had still left 4 shifts early but not told her boss about her diagnosis they would still be putting her on the schedule?
        There are lots of places that will weaponize every thing you tell them, but I struggle to see how that could be the case here.

    17. Esmae*

      There’s no indication that the daughter has actually asked for any accommodations. I sympathize with her, but it’s not on her employers to hear that she has anxiety and start making suggestions for how they could potentially make her job easier, and it’s definitely not on them to hear that she has anxiety and just start excusing absences.

    18. fhqwhgads*

      No employer is going to consider “show up late or cancel last second for a coverage based job 4 times in a very short span” a reasonable accommodation. Because of the “reasonable” part.

      They didn’t need to lie with what they said. They perhaps did need to explain more clearly what “accommodate” means in a work context, as there seems to be confusion on both OP and the employee’s part about the difference between work accommodations vs general plain English “we’ll accommodate you”. The employer meant the former but the letter suggests OP+ daughter interpreted as the latter.

    19. EC*

      Accommodation means that the employer can make reasonable modifications, not that an employee can skip out on work whenever they want. Things like being sore because she chose to go wakeboarding or flaking out on taking necessary medication aren’t valid excuses for not fulfilling her responsibilities.

  24. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

    #1 The daughter knows she has physical/mental issues that can affect her job, so she urgently needs to concentrate on reducing avoidable issues that are under her control, such as organising her life not exhausting herself before even starting a shift, or not taking her meds.
    Paid work does not make the kind of allowances for employees that a school does for students, because the focus is on the work tasks, not the student.

    The OP should concentrate on helping with organisational skills, rather than blaming the manager.

    The manager’s expectations are the norm for the culinary idustry, so the daughter will probably struggle in this field wherever she works, even after qualifying – such jobs usually have long hours, high stress and very low tolerance for absences.
    It will be challenging to find a field where frequent absences are OK at entry level, but it is much easier at higher levels.

  25. pcake*

    LW3, I think you mean well, but your thinking seems to me to be a bit ageist. I had a BF years ago in his 20s who messed up more than one job because his vision got worse, and he refused to get updated glasses. I’ve worn glasses since I was 9, and my eyes usually are a bit worse with each eye exam – even before I turned 18; my point is that vision can get worse at any age.

    And the issue may not be vision-related. Some people stop caring about their work or think their bosses or the company has stopped caring about their work. Or may think it doesn’t really matter.

    Why not courteously ask them to please submit sharper, clearer images with their work?

    1. londonedit*

      I don’t think the OP is being ageist; I think they’re worried about their employee thinking they’re being ageist. People can be sensitive about things like their vision and hearing, and I think you do need a delicate approach rather than ‘You keep submitting blurry images; you should get your eyes checked’.

      I agree that the first step should be sitting down with them and saying you’ve noticed some of the images they’re submitting aren’t as clear as they could be – maybe frame it as ‘can we look at these on your screen?’ or ‘can you see what I mean about the pixellation here?’ or whatever. And see whether you can figure out what the problem is – is it their screen, is it that they’re just not paying attention, is it that they need glasses, etc.

      1. Brain the Brian*

        Frankly, it would be ageist to let underperformance continue unaddressed until it becomes impossible to keep the employee. It’s not ageist to address a performance concern with a 60-year-old the same way you would with a 25-year-old. In either case, you should do it kindly.

    2. amoeba*

      Eh. Sure, people can have bad eyesight at any age but there is definitely the very common presbyopia, or age-related far-sightedness, that basically hits almost anybody at some point (I believe somewhere around mid 40s?) That’s why the majority of people that age onward wear reading glasses. As far as google tells me, that happens basically to everybody, as the eye gets less flexible with age. So, suggesting that possible declining eyesight has absolutely nothing to do with age is just… not really realistic!

    3. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

      Fwiw, you got new glasses a lot as a kid because your skull was growing and the smaller frames wouldn’t fit you anymore. And you got new prescriptions a lot as a kid because your eyes were still growing, so the prescription that you needed wasn’t stable until you stopped growing. (I know this because I also started wearing glasses when I was 9, and I am and always have been like the elephant’s child in terms of curiosity and asking a lot of questions.)

      And I remember that when I was a poor early-20’s, I didn’t realize that my prescription might still be changing, and I wore the same glasses for many years, until they were too scratched up to live with anymore. And then, like Amoeba mentions, *everyone* starts needing reading glasses at about age 45 – that’s when you start hearing jokes about people’s arms not being long enough (because for awhile, you can hold things further away from your face to let your eyes focus on them. At that point, those of us who have always had to wear glasses have an advantage in that we’re used to it).

  26. CityMouse*

    18 month PIP screams to me of an organization that’s so terrified to fire anyone they just try to slowly make them quit. This is miserable fir everyone involved and makes the manager’s job unworkable. Properly supervising a PIP is a lot of work. Drawing it out like that makes no sense.

    1. Brain the Brian*

      Yep, that jumped out to me as a manage-out tactic, too. It’s not working, of course.

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        Yeah.

        It’s weird that it is so stymying: “This person wasn’t doing the work, so we put them on a PIP, and they continue to not do the work but still get paid as before. It sure is puzzling why they think we would pay them to not work!” When this system is obviously working for the employee in question.

        I think humans spend a lot of time trying to understand complex systems so we can fit ourselves into them. When the system is “Don’t do work, and if you can tolerate some expressions of disappointment from management you can receive a paycheck for years” then hey, they figured out that system.

        1. Brain the Brian*

          Yep. Some organizations will actually reduce someone’s workload in the hopes that they get bored and quit. But that tactic assumes that the person wants to be busy all the time, and a lot of people just don’t. They’d be fine with doing nothing all day!

    2. Lab Boss*

      An 18 month PIP reminds me of a quote from last football season that compared a team slowly dragging out games over less-skilled teams to watching someone drown a ferret: It’s messy, miserable, painful for everyone involved, and basically the worst and slowest way to get to the outcome that was always going to happen.

    3. MsM*

      I feel like at a certain point, if HR refuses to let a manager fire a problem employee, they need to take that person out of the manager’s chain of command and let it be entirely their problem going forward.

    4. TPS Reporter*

      I’ve been up against similar stonewalling from HR and had to escalate through my boss, HR leadership, and general counsel. There have to be other people in the org who understand that the risk of keeping this person on is much greater than firing them.

        1. TPS Reporter*

          exactly! sometimes it feels like HR doesn’t care if everyone around the bad apple quits or also starts performing poorly due to burnout. the business tanks then we’re all out of a job.

  27. Anon for this*

    OP5 – so as a counterpoint to the “you must not give any notice of layoffs” thing. Important note: I’m not in the US.

    My company had major layoffs last year (like… half my coworkers, actually). The timeline went something like this:
    – we were warned that our owning company had made a decision that affected us very negatively in April or May, and that the company would either have to close or massively restructure
    – in July, the new company plan was in place, individuals were informed whether they were part of the layoff plan and HR offered job searching support for people who were going to be redundant (including trying to help them find positions in our owning company, which sadly mostly didn’t work out).
    – in September, people who hadn’t found a new job were offered the deal of voluntarily resigning in exchange for three months of garden leave
    – end of September, anyone who hadn’t taken that deal was officially laid off with the legally required three months notice. At this point the company didn’t have to offer garden leave, but generally eventually did anyway
    – end of December, all laid-off employees officially end their employment with the company

    Now, obviously, I am in a country with a very different culture around notice periods and the end of employment. But it does go to show that… you do not have to treat your employees like they’re going to sabotage your systems the instant it’s clear the employment relationship is coming to an end. A lot of this is based around reciprocity, and if you employ reasonable people and make it obvious that you’re trying to treat them fairly and help them as much as you can given the business situation you’re in, the likelihood of one of them going on some wild revenge spree strikes me as really low. My company screwed up a couple of things in the process, but I still have a ton of respect for how transparent they were throughout and how they did really expend a lot of resources and effort to try to help the redundant employees find new jobs. If they’d just sprung the restructure on us like I’ve heard about here before, I’d probably have been job-searching the next day despite not being in the layoff group.

    1. londonedit*

      Yeah, where I am it’s standard practice to notify employees of the need to make redundancies; usually they first give people the option to take voluntary redundancy if they want to, and then if further cuts are needed they’ll be announced to the staff and a consultation period will begin. Then later on (maybe 2-3 months) the final redundancies will be announced.

      1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

        “where I am it’s standard practice to notify employees of the need to make redundancies”

        I’m pretty sure it’s a legal requirement. If you don’t follow the exact steps then it doesn’t count as redundancy and that means expensive legal battles.

        1. londonedit*

          I thought so, but didn’t want to quote false information! Certainly when I’ve been involved with redundancies at work it’s all followed a very strict pattern, which I’ve always assumed has been legally mandated.

          1. #5 OP*

            Thank you! Yes, my strong personal instinct is to handle it with as much transparency and support as possible, but I just wanted to check in with this site to get other perspectives!

        2. Media Monkey*

          i was about to say that – although i think it only counts if you are laying off more than a certain no of employees, although most companies will follow those rules for any number of employees being laid off.

  28. Snoozing not schmoozing*

    Mom, I know you’re worried about the unexpected urination problem and want the employer to be understanding, but urine in a food service kitchen is a huge public health violation and in no way acceptable.

    1. Gen Z moneytree*

      Also I’m kind of surprised the daughter wanted to go back after peeing her pants. as the mom said, I’m sure it was mortifying… Unless I loved the job beyond words at 19 I almost certainly would’ve just quit. Not saying it would be the right thing to do if there were no other performance issues- I just know it’s probably what I would have done!
      And, it could be an emotional blessing to be able to put this job far behind her now that they are asking her to take a step back.
      I mean, it seems like a really, really tough journey to stay at a job and always be the employee who peed in the kitchen.
      New job, fresh start, Id say consider office work to start with? Maybe work up to the reliability/physical demands of food service.

  29. Put the Blame on Edamame*

    I really feel for the manager with the 18 month PIP issue, it sounds so demoralising. I work in an org with a similarly dysfunctional HR who fart around when it comes to providing any actual support or guidance to anyone, but have helpfully explained to us all that it’s now called a PSP – performance success plan! My eyes rolled so hard I damn near sprained them.

    1. Anonynon for today*

      A colleague of mine went probably 18 months with one of her direct reports on a PIP. When they didn’t meet the timeline, HR extended the PIP. But…isn’t that what the timeline is for??? My colleague came to the conclusion that the employee effectively couldn’t be fired for insubordination and poor performance and had to find other ways to push them out, but *that* took forever because they were only applying for internal roles and every time the hiring manager found out they were on a PIP, they passed.

      1. Polly Hedron*

        What were the ways that the colleague used to push the employee out (asking for a friend)?

      2. STEM Admin*

        We didn’t have to go quite that long, but we had a really tough year when we had a bad hire (lied about some things on the application – HR said since those things weren’t specifically detailed as required on the job posting, we couldn’t use that as the reason to end employment – think “must have advanced computer skills” vs “must be proficient in Excel” and Excel was listed under software skills despite not knowing anything about Excel).

        We did put conditions in place to encourage them to quit. Full-time in-office work for a while (small office, but applied to everyone and had defensible business justifications), daily review of all work, weekly sessions dedicated to going over all of the mistakes, lots of generic remedial training sessions. Basically had to make the job as miserable as possible and spend an absurd amount of time and effort on oversight. HR finally made an offer of severance that was accepted. The whole thing was aggravating and demoralizing for everyone, but such a relief when it was over.

  30. General von Klinkerhoffen*

    Letter 1

    I think there’s a wider societal problem about how we advise children and young people about careers.

    You like animals? Become a vet!

    You like science? Become a research scientist!

    You like cooking? Become a chef!

    Except that being a vet is maybe only 20% animals and actually 60% customer service and 20% pharmacology.

    And being a research scientist is only 20% test tubes and 80% grant applications.

    And maybe being a chef is only 20% cooking and 40% yelling and 40% gulping down coffee.

    So the questions we should be asking are more like calm or hectic? collaborative or focused? public facing or backstage? routine or variety?

    LW1’s daughter is following a food *service* path because she’s interested in food. But if the service part doesn’t suit her personality/capabilities then the food aspect will not be enough to mitigate that bad fit.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      This has been the advice since my schooldays – and I’m a boomer!
      It often didn’t work out then and still doesn’t. Baffling that careers advisors haven’t realised this yet.

    2. bamcheeks*

      This is exactly what qualified careers advisers do– but typically under the *best* circumstances young people see a qualified careers adviser once, for half an hour, at a point in their lives where they may or may not actually be in a headspace to make any long-term plans at all, especially if they don’t go to university. The way teachers, parents and family friends talk about careers has much more of an impact.

      1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

        Yes, if they’re lucky they have a total of thirty minutes of this kind of help, set against decades of “ooh you’re good at singing you should be on Broadway” or “don’t think you’re better than you are, you’ll be coming down the mine like all the other men in the family.”

        So we need to do this as a society.

        My very first work experience was in an army barracks (because I thought I wanted to join the army) and it went really well – but it went well because it was a highly procedural office job where everybody’s tasks were clearly defined and siloed, which is actually what I’m optimised for! It took me years to realise what part of that role had been successful (alas not the tall strong men in uniform).

    3. Justin*

      Yeah, I liked writing so I wanted to be a writer, but then I couldn’t figure out what sort of job that was (I know there are writing jobs, but I couldn’t get one).

      Eventually I became a teacher, but a good one, good enough that I was eventually able to write books about education on the side of my day jobs.

      Maybe a more circuitous path may have the same result for her.

      1. londonedit*

        Same. When I was little I was good at reading and spelling, and I loved books, so everyone said I should ‘be an author’. Seemed like a nice idea at the time, but in the real world it’s practically impossible to make money as an author – it’s the equivalent of me being decent at football and everyone telling me I should pin my hopes on a career as a professional footballer. Not gonna happen. I had no idea what I was actually going to do until after I left uni and people started talking about ‘jobs in publishing’ – at this point I was just doing admin/reception temping as a way to stay in London. Then someone told me about a publishing-specific temping agency, and through them I heard about a reception job, and here we are 20-odd years later and I have a career as an editor. Wouldn’t have had a clue how to do any of that at 18, though.

    4. EventPlannerGal*

      100% this. Working with chefs and food service professionals, a talent for cooking is *nice* but as far as I can see the most important qualities are things like: can you handle high-stress, fast-moving environments? Can you work alongside people who you don’t get along with and are often pretty unpleasant? Can you work through physical discomfort? Can you keep a million different little pieces of information straight under pressure? I can’t! That’s why I don’t do it!

      (Similarly, I often get people assuming that I got into events because I must just loooooove parties. I mean, I do, but the actual important qualities in my job are things like being super organised and good at prioritising deadlines, communicating with clients and vendors, handling difficult personalities, obsessive attention to detail – not very glam personality traits! When I was a kid I was most often told I should be a librarian.)

      Some of the issues LW mentions are medical, some sound like standard teen-in-first-job adjustments and some sound like questions of her personal suitability. The first two can be addressed or adjusted to, but the last is what she needs to think about long-term: if she needs a job that can frequently accommodate these kinds of issues, this one isn’t it. That’s not a disaster! She’s 19!

    5. Tau*

      The other thing that gets me about this is that if this goes wrong and the career turns out not to be for you, that interest is probably… gone. Burned away from the stress of trying to pursue it professionally. I write as a hobby and have for decades, it’s hugely important to me, and that is exactly why I would never want to try to make my living as a writer – my interest in writing is not something I’d want to risk losing that way.

      And “passion” jobs are often stressful and low-paying, increasing the risk of burnout.

      1. MCMonkeyBean*

        Yeah, a lot of people subscribe to the “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” philosophy. But I know for me it’s the opposite–if I turn what I love into work, I’ll never love it again a day in my life lol.

        1. Resentful Oreos*

          Same here. I’d rather keep my interests as hobbies. Partly because I don’t want to turn them into obligations (except, of course, for the pets, which one is obliged to care for!) and partly because “passion” careers pay so poorly and usually treat their workers badly too, because there’s a line out the door begging for your job, so why would your boss treat you with any consideration?

          We 100% need better career education starting in middle school, and not just assume that the parents, overworked “guidance counselors,” or Career Day will provide it.

        2. Irish Teacher.*

          I also think people take that phrase a little too narrowly and hear it as “turn your hobby into your job,” but it can also mean “if you love being around people, take a job that lets you interact with people a lot,” “if you love having peace and quiet, find a job that let’s you work alone,” and so on. It doesn’t necessarily just apply to traditional “passion” fields.

          Now, it isn’t a possibility for everybody anyway nor is it necessarily right for everybody, but I would say that somebody who loves cooking but hates crowded places, noise and working long hours (not saying this is the LW’s daughter’s situation, just using the example as it works so well) isn’t “doing something they love” by getting a job as a chef. They might love cooking, but they don’t love other things that are part of the job.

      2. What name did I use last time?*

        Tau said “[I]f this goes wrong and the career turns out not to be for you, that interest is probably… gone. Burned away from the stress of trying to pursue it professionally.”

        My brother puts it this way: “People tell you to do what you love. Don’t do what you love, it’ll ruin your hobby. Do something you just like enough.”

        He’s an auto mechanic and hopes he’ll have the energy and physical ability and desire, in retirement, to restore all those cool cars from the 50’s and 60’s that he’s bought as wrecks over the years, and stashed away in rural friends’ barns. If he’d been doing another sort of job all these years, they would all have been restored and lovingly polished up and sold by now.

    6. Lab Boss*

      Oh my goodness yes. I like science and knew (through basic cultural osmosis) that meant I should be “a scientist.” Luckily I figured out early enough in college how much I HATED the uncertainty and aimlessness and constant cash begging of being a proper research scientist, and was able to redirect into the commercial sector. Now I get to “do science” in a more controlled and predictable way, but my job isn’t what anyone would think to recommend to some starry-eyed kid passionate about science.

    7. Shenandoah*

      Absolutely – I cannot overstate how much angst and wasted time in my late teens and 20’s could have been saved if I had understood this earlier. Nothing about what I do for work today is something I ever would have described as a passion (or even a mild enjoyment) at any point in my life, but I sure do love my calm, collaborative, backstage, variety-filled desk job. I do the things I like on my own time.

      OP #1, I hope your daughter finds something that works for her! Additional advice that I really needed: there are endless jobs out there that don’t have a “name/title” (think chef/accountant/doctor/librarian). I also got myself into a real rut trying to think of jobs like this that I might like, when again I should have started with what type of work environment/actual work would be good for me.

    8. MuseumChick*

      This is a GREAT point and one we as a society really need to start hitting home. As my user name implies I work in the museum industry. I care for historic artifacts. But you know what most of my time is spent doing? Customer service: Answering research questions, giving a VIP tour, negotiating an artifact donation (and on the flip side finding very tactful ways to explain to someone why we don’t want their great-grandmother’s antique doll collection), reporting to our Board of Directors, attending committee meetings where everyone on the committee is a passionate volunteer who things they know more than the whole staff put together, etc.

      People like to think museum work is going amazing independent research and writing ground breaking articles and sitting with a quiet room carefully cleaning one antique teacup at a time. No. Its dealing with people. A LOT. And people who care very deeply to the point on borderline obsession and who will get ticked if you take to long to respond to them or respond in anyway they think is even slightly off the mark.

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        Yup, I love history, am utterly obsessed, but I doubt I would be much good in your job. Answering research questions, sure, I could do that, but giving VIP tours, negotiating with people and having to turn things down, all the politics that I can see cropping up in everything you’ve mentioned….um, I can’t even phone a parent to tell them their kid hasn’t done his homework. Well, I could but I tend to leave it to the year heads because I’m pretty socially awkward and stuff like that confuses me. (Pretty sure they don’t mind because they know me and I do enough other jobs, even doing the researchy stuff for other people – I sometimes get asked could I find some resources for something somebody else is teaching – that I think they would say it’s fair enough.)

        1. MuseumChick*

          Yup. There are a ton of politics involved just internally. Then you add the national narrative of how history is being attacked and used by certain people to push certain agendas. It can get messy and you have to know how to kind, firm, confident and deferential all in equal measures.

      2. goddessoftransitory*

        I think far too many people think archeology/museum work is going to be like the Indiana Jones movies, when in fact it is far more on the side of the board of old guys saying “top men” and then applying for more grants.

      3. londonedit*

        Yeah, I’m basically a project manager. The projects I manage are books, but it’s still fundamentally taking a manuscript and pushing it through the editorial process until a book comes out the other end. People think I must be reading all day, having glamorous meetings with authors, discovering the next big thing, etc etc. I don’t even commission new books. I don’t copy-edit or proofread either – I do some of that as part of my editorial checks at each stage, but freelancers do the actual editing work. And I don’t work on the ‘glamorous’ books, our stuff is very niche. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy my job and I’m good at it, but people have this idea of the publishing industry being all book launches and exciting meetings and sitting in an oak-pannelled office surrounded by books and papers just waiting to discover the next Harry Potter.

    9. rebelwithmouseyhair*

      Yeah. I remember in something like 1980, filling in a long “computer survey” with questions like “would you mind working outdoors whatever the weather all year round?” and “would you mind staying until midnight when there’s an emergency?” and the computer then computed our answers and spewed out suggestions. One girl wanted to be a cook but answered that she didn’t want to work weekends, and was upset that that answer basically ruled out her chosen career.
      I put that I loved languages so the computer suggested translation. Then the careers officer told me that I would need to be much more proficient in foreign languages, like diplomats’ children who live in several different countries and learn the languages by mingling with the locals.
      She was completely wrong: I don’t know a single translator with diplomat parents. Diplomats’ kids grow up in the embassy compound and attend the international school and only really learn English plus their parents’ language. And I became a translator without having to study any foreign languages beyond school education, the rest I learned by myself.

    10. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

      Oh you hit the nail on the head there.

      I left virology because my physical disabilities meant I could not handle the lab work – not matter how much I loved viruses (still do, they’re fascinating. Harmful, but fascinating).

      Weirdly, one of my colleagues who was more toward the molecular biology side of things actually started with an interest in food. Couldn’t cook to save her life but the knowledge of how things all work together and how proteins change under heat translated very well.

  31. Ozzac*

    LW5: I found myself in a similar situation. Due to various circumstances my girlfriend is going to become my businness partner, and as such one of my employees is going to get laid off. They are a good employee, so I’m thinking of giving them 2-3 months to begin their search for a new job, glowing references and a “firing bonus”. I have also been thinking about asking my employee to help train my girlfriend in their duties, but I think it’s going to stretch their goodwill.

    1. Still*

      I’m glad you want to do right by your employee, but please, please don’t call it a “firing bonus”. A layoff is not a firing and it’s really confusing to use the two interchangeably. I believe that “severance” might be the word you’re looking for.

      1. Ozzac*

        Yes thank you. Since english is not my first language sometimes I forget the words I want to use.

      2. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

        I think they’re firing, not laying off. Doesn’t “layoff” generally mean that the job will not be re-filled?

        1. doreen*

          I think that’s a situation that doesn’t cleanly fir either – “laid off” usually means no replacement but “fired” usually means a performance issue. This is the situation that “terminate ” or “separate” is best .

        2. New laptop who dis*

          Firing generally has a negative connotation, it’s assumed it’s based on employee performance. Whereas layoff is more of a neutral connotation, it is due to business decisions.

          1. Ozzac*

            That’s why in my original post I used lay off, since it’s the closest approximation I thought to the situation. Unfortunately sometimes all your choices are bad, and you have to choose.

    2. Scarlet ribbons in her hair*

      Please don’t ask your employee to train your girlfriend. If I were told that I was going to be laid off so that the owner’s girlfriend could have my job, and if I were asked to train her, I wouldn’t like it at all.

    4. 1LFTW*

      Aside from burning through your employee’s good will, you won’t get honest feedback about your girlfriend’s training. If I were in that position, and she had any problems with her training, I’d worry that I’d look petty and vindictive if I raised them with you. I’d also worry that appearing to criticize her in any way would put an end to your promise of a glowing reference.

      Lay off your employee if you must; offer them severance, give them plenty of notice and stellar references. But train your girlfriend yourself.

  32. TG*

    LW#1 – four times leaving in a new job is not good. You mentioned she is in culinary school so it sounds like she wants to do something in the restaurant industry. I’ve worked in it as it both a server and a host at several restaurants. I’m concerned that your daughter is not going to be successful because of her anxiety, because most restaurants require people to be able to handle the fast pace, the stress, the late hours, etc. if I were your daughter, I would quit and see if she can get more help for her anxiety because this industry is very stressful

  33. Dog momma*

    If daughter is a student in culinary school, how is she going to get a job where she is on her feet all day? bc that’s pretty much what its going to require. I had a waitress job every weekend while in nursing school. Never sat down. We were always doing something. And nursing? For most of my career, I sat down for lunch, to chart or use the phone.. so not much. Sometimes we didn’t get lunch either. We survived.
    Mom needs to have a talk with daughter, get some medical advice on the incontinence and stop using introvert as an excuse. Many of us are introverts and have successful careers & aren’t medicated. People go to work all the time with sore muscles, headaches etc after a sports event or doing a hobby. They wouldn’t last long if they kept calling in for minor issues.
    Otherwise she should butt out.

    1. ecnaseener*

      The letter doesn’t say anything about whether or not the daughter is an introvert — where are you getting that from?

    2. metadata minion*

      “Many of us are introverts and have successful careers & aren’t medicated.”

      I echo the previous commenter’s confusion about why you’re bringing up introversion, and many of us — introverts and extroverts — have successful careers while being on medication. If there are underlying health issues causing her problems, the LW’s daughter may need to be on *more* medication!

  34. Justin*

    I feel for the daughter but I don’t think the job is really doing her poorly here.

    Also there’s a difference between being accomodating of needs in general and “the day you did not manage your condition with prescribed medicine.” And the wakeboarding thing being the reason for leaving is not going to get you any leeway. Those are, sort of, medical issues, but less so given the full context. The nausea and the incontinence alone probably wouldn’t have gotten the lack of shifts, but it all adds up in a short time, even if it’s not all her “fault” per se.

    I worked retail at age 19 (less high stakes than food service I know), and I definitely had some reliability issues, and it was something I really had to just learn.

  35. Irish Teacher.*

    LW1, I can completely understand why you are concerned for your daughter and want to support her here and yes, I think her employer was wrong to say they “don’t feel she’s a team player,” which does make it sound like they think she is doing this deliberately.

    But well, for one thing, I’m honestly not sure what you can do here. It sounds like your daughter is better off without this job anyway. She’s 19. This is a part-time job that is unlikely to be related to her future career. It sounds like she might be stuggling to meet the requirements of the job. And it sounds like her employers are not the most sympathetic.

    It’s possible she’s just not at a point where she can manage both college and a part-time job. That’s true for a number of people and it may be better for her to just focus on college right now. Or it might just be that food service is not the right job for her.

    While it was rather bluntly phrased, it really seems like taking some time to focus on college and get her medical needs under control might not be a bad idea. That’s not failure. It’s just focussing on what she needs right now.

    And I do understand that your main concern probably isn’t so much about the loss of a part-time job, especially if it’s just a temporary loss, as the effect on her self-esteem, but the latter is really something for you to work with her on rather than something for her employer to become involved with. Talk to her about how fit and how a job being a bad fit doesn’t say anything about her, especially when it isn’t even in the field she wants to go into. It just tells her what kind of roles not to choose in the future. And how this was a one-off and doesn’t say anything about her.

    1. Irish Teacher.*

      I also think this is kind of a difference between school and the workplace. In school, the focus is on the students. If a student is having difficulties, the school has some level of obligation to help them succeed despite these. And parents are often involved, so the school, student and parents are working together for the benefit of the student. In the workplace, it’s different. The focus is not on the employee but on the work goals. The aim in this case is to make money.

      Yes, good employers will want to support their employees and help them to grow, but it’s not really the focus in the way it is at school.

      And in this case, there is even less incentive, since it’s basically a part-time college job. They probably aren’t expecting your daughter to be a long-term employee or to play a large part in their business. And it’s the kind of job where it’s pretty easy to replace employees who don’t work out, so there is less incentive to accommodate additional needs than there would be if they had hired your daughter for her specific qualifications and skills which others might not have or even if they were hoping she would build a long career with them and it was worth working with her for a couple of months while she sorted her health issues out in order to have her skills for years. In this case, they are quite likely thinking that your daughter may quit anyway once the summer is over and the college year resumes so if she isn’t meeting their needs right now, they don’t really have any incentive to support her for the future.

    2. CityMouse*

      The problem I’m seeing is that LW’s daughter is in culinary school, meaning she wants to work in a food service job. So the.problem is the issues she’s having at this job are just absolutely magnified the more you do in food service. I think struggling with shorter shifts and kitchen issues here may be a sign she needs to consider a career pivot.

    3. TPS Reporter*

      Now is a good time to coach your daughter on the connection between self-esteem from work. “Rejection” in a work context is not at all personal rejection. Her abilities and skills, for now, are not matching the job expectations. That’s it. She’s 19, she’s still learning and growing, still working on juggling school and work.

      The owner is trying to manage a business and they need people that can be reliable. She’ll understand that more as she grows older and for now instead of piling on the owner, talking to her about self worth or getting her therapy for that seems like a more productive way to help her.

      As someone who has also struggled with anxiety and self-esteem, I appreciate that the parent is very concerned and wants to help. I had the opposite parenting where I couldn’t talk about how I was feeling and was told to always go along with exactly what my employer or school wanted me to do. I was able to white knuckle my way through school and various jobs until I fell apart at some point mid 20s. So mom I like your instinct to protect and support, it’s great to know that your daughter can be very open with you about her struggles.

  36. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    I can cover 1 and 2.

    1. One of the things I’ve learnt quick is that to a certain extent my physical/mental issues are my responsibility. It took losing a job because I called off so often (untreated depression) to solidfy that. I could never work retail or food service because my body isn’t reliable enough.

    2. Constantly ‘giving someone a chance’ after failure after failure isn’t kind – it’s cruel. Even if there are medical/life issues causing the work problems it’s not helpful to just let it slide. How will someone realise that a job really isn’t for them or that they need some expert help with their issues when everyone just lets them carry on? I owe my career to the manager who told me I was out of line and unless I shaped up I’d be fired. I got help (this wasn’t the job above, this was the one after. What can I say, I’m sometimes slow to learn)

    You’re doing someone actual harm by continuing this.

  37. Turingtested*

    LW 1, I’d like to offer a different perspective. I managed a restaurant for years and it was many employees’ first job. Obviously, most did not prioritize coming to work to take out trash, bus tables and kiss butt all day over basically anything else. It’s not because they were lazy or terrible or unsuited for employment but because they were learning to have a job.

    Many cases were like your daughter’s: a mix of completely reasonable and completely unreasonable excuses. Rarely did I feel manipulated, they just didn’t know better.

    All business considerations aside, I am still a person. And I’m the one who picked up the slack, at expense of spending time with my own family, when people called out. And I was salary, so no overtime. It’s not reasonable to expect people to do that to allow others to remain employed. I do not think in a million years your daughter considered that aspect nor the kids I worked with.

  38. YetAnotherAnalyst*

    Yes, this exactly. We don’t really explain what the day-to-day job really is, or the range of options available, when we’re talking to young adults. Though in fairness, I’ve been working in business intelligence for years and I wouldn’t be able to explain it to anyone, either.
    LW1, this is a really valuable experience for your daughter, and an opportunity to think about what sort of work she’s actually going to want to do for the next forty years of her life. Is there a career path in food that will play to her strengths, if she can address some of her reliability issues? Is there a better fit in a different career? Make sure she knows she’s not locked into a single career choice just because she’s in culinary school – she has options!

  39. Lily Potter*

    OP5 layoff – this situation sounds like you’d just be laying off your admin, as opposed to it bring a multi-employee layoff. As such, you’re in a good position to do assist creatively. Can you cut her hours down to 3/4 time NOW? This would give her time to job hunt plus stretch your admin budget out an extra month or two in the fall. Could you keep her on as an “employee in name only” for a few months this fall rather than paying her a severance check? Her job would be to look for another job; her resume would be able to truthfully say she’s still employed by you. At a minimum, have her last day of work be at the beginning of the calendar month so that she can truthfully say she was employed “October 2024”, even if her last day employed was 10/1. I was laid off right at the end of December last year which was a particularly stinky thing for my employer to do. They could have kept me one extra day and let my resume show an end date in 2024 rather than 2023 – makes a difference when someone is very quickly scanning a resume.

    1. Miette*

      I worked a job that announced layoffs were coming where they made it clear we could–within reason i.e. our work got done–job hunt and interview on company time. As my manager put it, my job in that time was to find another job so that I’d be saved having to be unemployed. To the extent you can allow it, I hope you will consider allowing flexibility for your employee as she looks for her next job, in addition to the very good advice above.

      1. OP #5*

        Love these ideas, especially the idea of allowing her to stay in name, until a new position is secured. Thank you!

        1. Lily Potter*

          Just make sure that you continue to pay her for the “in name only” time (this would be in lieu of severance). It’s ethically tricky to say you’re “employed” by someone if you’re not getting paid by them. If if she’s just working very part-time on a project that doesn’t require her to have file access, she should do SOMETHING.

  40. I should really pick a name*

    #5

    (she is a visible minority, and I think unfortunately may be subject to discrimination). So I want to give her as much lead time as possible to begin seeking new employment.

    You should be doing this for any employee that it’s possible for, not just her because she’s a visible minority.

    Your concern about her possible struggles in the job market comes across as condescending to me (and I’m black).

    1. Hyaline*

      Agreed. Support good employees because they’re good employees! There doesn’t need to be another reason!

    2. Angstrom*

      LW may be aware of issues in their local job market that would make it harder for their employee to find another job.

      1. OP #5*

        I actually am a racial minority myself. I get the condescending part. Probably shouldn’t have mentioned it. However the employee is a very visible and less common minority, not just racially. I will leave it there but you’re right that it shouldn’t matter. I just think that realistically someone with this employee’s drive and work ethic would be ‘snapped up’ by another employer extremely quickly were it not for being quite so very visually ‘different’; I worry that humans are gonna be humans and the pool of roles will be smaller. But hopefully I’m wrong and they still are snapped up just as quickly!

        1. I should really pick a name*

          What would be the downside of providing more notice for any employee whenever you’re able to?

          If someone who isn’t a visible minority is snapped up, good for them, but if they aren’t, they’d also benefit from having more notice.

          1. sparkle emoji*

            I think OP5 is anticipating that their employee’s search could take longer for discrimination reasons. Hopefully those fears are unfounded but I don’t think it’s useful to nitpick about if they’d do something different in a completely hypothetical situation.

            1. I should really pick a name*

              I realize that.

              My point is that if you can swing giving them more notice, you should do it regardless of the perceived challenges the employee faces (in part because there may be challenges you can’t perceive)

  41. Apex Mountain*

    When I was younger and worked restaurant/retail jobs, the saying was that the only ability they cared about was your availability. That’s all these jobs are really looking for – someone to be there on time reliably

  42. Stinkfinger*

    LW1:
    My first boss had an adage: “If you kick the job too many times, then the job will kick you.”

    Your daughter has treated the job as the lowest priority thing in her life. She expected them to deal with the fact that she FORGOT her medication, that she couldn’t handle something stinky, and that she was sore from an outside activity. The fact that she pissed herself – by itself – would have been excused likely…but after the 3 “kicks,” the job had it with her. Frankly, it’s understandable.

    This is a good chance to help your daughter understand it’s time to grow up and focus on her job as a new employee. Teach her to build her professional reputation and to understand how her actions affect that reputation. This is not the time to blame the job.

  43. Pastor Petty Labelle*

    #2 – HR is running scared because of the mental health issues. You need to point out the business effect this person is having by not doing their core function. That other teams are not having their issues addressed quickly which affects work flow, that your own team has more work or whatever to make up for this person not doing their job.

  44. Kesnit*

    #3

    Talk to your employee. It can make a huge difference.

    I started losing my hearing a few years ago. I didn’t realize it at first because the courtroom set ups gave me ways to compensate for not being able to hear very well. (Microphones amplifying witness testimony. Witness stand in the middle of the well of the court. Both sides standing at the bench close to each other.)

    I changed jobs last September and quickly realized there was a problem. But my ego was getting in the way, and I thought I could keep compensating the way I had been; I was wrong. (No microphones. Counsel tables farther apart. Witness stand on the other side of a large courtroom.) I had almost gotten to the point of getting my hearing checked when the matter was taken out of my hands. In January, one of our judges asked one of my coworkers if I had hearing problems. Coworker told me what the judge had asked. I knew then I was NOT compensating the way I needed to, and if I didn’t fix it, I was going to have serious problems.

    So I got my hearing checked. I have 5-45% hearing loss in each ear. I now wear hearing aids and notice a drastic difference. But my life (both at work and away from work) is a lot better because I can actually hear!

  45. Bast*

    LW 1 — If she is unable to stand and complete the shift for whatever reason, she probably should get checked out and perhaps request medical accommodations if needed. I have worked food service, and it is a very demanding, on your feet job where there is little rest time, and where unless you’re laid up in a hospital bed somewhere you are expected to be there and work your shift no matter what. Sick days are virtually nil, as unfair as it is. Unfortunately, I do have to say that without a medical accommodation, someone who frequently shows up and requests to leave early looks flaky, same as someone constantly calling out. Getting sick once or twice and having to leave early? Okay. Four times, particularly for a new employee who you don’t know all too well, and it gets to look like someone who just doesn’t want to work and cuts out early. There is no way for the manager to know this because they don’t know her that well — if she were an established employee who suddenly started becoming ill at work, that would be a different story, but I am sure we all have run across someone who will do anything to leave early, and that’s likely where this manager’s mind is going. Consistently not having a closer is a problem. This isn’t just relegated to food service jobs either. I work in law firms and if a new employee was constantly asking to leave early, a conversation would likely be had with HR.

  46. Rebekah*

    As someone with terrible eyesight I think I would actually appreciate someone coming out and suggesting the possibility of an eye exam. If your vision has always been good (or you never realized it was bad) it can be something that just never occurs to you and blaming it on tools could lead to a lot of frustration and wasted time trying to fix something that isn’t broken.

    I had this experience when I was a young teen and didn’t realize I needed glasses. I went on a long and passionate rant about how the projector at church was broken and why did they even bother using it until they fixed it because absolutely no one could be expected to read any of those blurry words. My parents were like, “Maybe we need to take you for an eye exam….” but I definitely blamed the tools and never even considered I could be the problem.

    1. MCMonkeyBean*

      I didn’t get glasses until I was like 25 and I had just gotten so used to my vision that I thought it was normal! The biggest thing for me is that honest to god I did not realize that some of the bumps and textures on the moon were visible to the naked eye lol. I thought we just saw a big bright blob and then could see more detail in pictures. Then I got glasses and was like WOAH.

      1. Person from the Resume*

        I remember saying that I didn’t realize that you could see individual leaves on trees. My vision was so bad that trees were just a blob of green until I got glasses.

        1. MsM*

          My mom’s had terrible vision her whole life, and she still talks about what a revelation it was for her after having her first eye test and getting glasses that not everyone was terrified of falling off stages because they couldn’t see the edge.

        2. Lady_Lessa*

          I, too, was surprised to see better after I got glasses in 4th or 5th grade.

          Grin, we had our vision checked annually at the school, and the year after I got glasses, the note was sent home, that they needed to be stronger. (The eye doctor thought that the total correction needed was too big of a jump, so he compromised)

        3. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

          This is the exact thing I noticed! I just retold that story yesterday to a lady who was talking about finally getting cataract surgery. Your brain compensates, so you don’t realize how bad things have gotten until you get it fixed.

        5. RetiredAcademicLibrarian*

          This was my reaction when I got my first glasses (at 6). My mom still remembers my comment about the leaves on the tree on our drive back from the eye doctor’s with my new glasses.

    2. Person from the Resume*

      For the employee, they may have never had regular eye exams as a child or up until now because everything else pointed to fine vision. I did because I got glasses when I was in 3rd or 4th grade and now have an annual eye exam.

      I do the the LW should follow Alison’s advice, but once they get here “If that doesn’t solve it, the next time it happens look at the blurry item together and ask if they can see what you’re talking about.” It is at this point you mention an eye exam as a step for them. Or possibly just reading glasses. I would specifically mention it and not hint at it. But also not assume it is correct just as something they should try.

      1. ChildhoodExams*

        They should have gotten basic acuity exams in elementary school, and some later on (depending on age). I had one every year from 1st through 4th or 5th grade.

        I’m pretty sure the current guidelines require one at least every three tears in elementary school plus one in jr high/middle school and one in high school. It’s something like that, at least.

        The school exams aren’t as comprehensive as the exams you’ll get at a real optometrist and certainly don’t include anything extra you’d get from an ophthalmologist, but they should screen for whether more tests are needed. So even if you didn’t get them, you should have been aware you were supposed to go get real eye exams.

        This is in reply to everyone who said they never got an exam; it’s certainly very possible the employee developed vision issues later in life.

        That said, as a coworker or even boss, it’s not your place to suggest any particular medical issue or test. You get to name the issue – things this employee creates are fuzzy – but not suggest they have eye issues or need to get a checkup. You do not get to impose your medical diagnoses or suggestions on someone you work with, even if you think it would help them.

  47. DramaQ*

    The problem with food service, especially entry level food service is you are VERY easily replaceable. There is always another teenager waiting in the wings to take your shift. It’s a part of food service life. She’s going to have to learn to suck some things up like unpleasant smells if she wants to work in food service. She’s going to have to learn to either not wakeboard or dose herself with ibuprofen before work. If she is scheduled for closing leaving her shift early is a huge deal because you are sticking whoever is still there with closing duties. It’s not fair to those people to have to pick up the slack. If your daughter is not a reliable closer she will not be scheduled to close. That is a fair and logical thing for her employer to do. If you don’t show up you don’t get scheduled. That’s how food service works this isn’t an office job with set hours. Your hours will go to people who do stay to finish closing. She’s only 19 so it’s not like losing this job would be the end of the world she’ll snap back. BUT if she is in culinary school she needs to grasp how important it is to show up and stay for your entire shift. Culinary is HARD both physically and mentally. Even at what they are paying now I refuse to go back to food service. She may want to talk with her advisors or instructors to get a better idea of what she is walking into. As far as mom goes .. stay out of it. This is a valuable life lesson for her to learn and it is better for her to learn it now at 19 when she has a soft spot to land in you than learn it later when rent depends on her showing up.

  48. ijustworkhere*

    I don’t think culinary arts is the right career choice for your daughter. If you think an ice cream shop is demanding, try working the kitchen in a full service restaurant. Consequences can be a way for someone to understand their limits. It might actually be a blessing for her to learn this before she’s spent a lot of money and time training for a career that is incompatible with her physical and emotional makeup.

  49. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

    LW1 #1 OP1, don’t forget that your daughter has the option to LEAVE this job and find a BETTER one! It’s so common when you’re first starting out with work, the same as when you start dating, to think “this is it.” But she can find another job. Maybe food service isn’t for her, or maybe it is but just not this place.
    When I was 19, I lasted a single shift at Denny’s, then spent a whole year at Cracker Barrel. I also quit a “summer dream job” with great pay because the noise level in the building was driving me batty.
    Just like with dates, you can realize “it’s not working out” at any time.

  50. Person from the Resume*

    LW1 / Mom

    I think you’re off to a good start by knowing you should not get involved and insert yourself.

    You can coach from home. I recommend you read more AAM. Possibly starting with accommodations and what that legally means. And also what medical issues to be shared with employers because I think your daughter might be oversharing and expecting them to take it easy on her. An accommodation does not mean going easy on someone in general. It is something specific within reason for a specific problem.

    Your daughter has had 4 different issues – two of which are within her control. Great that she learned she cannot forget her meds on work day.

    She needs to work on her reliability. Or maybe find a new job where she can start fresh. Who knows if she’s even going to end up back on the schedule. If she job hunts, she can take what she already learned to a new job,

    1. Dog momma*

      Please clarify what kind of accommodations she could get in food service. if there’s only one other person that can close, is it fair to them to Close ALL THE TIME, bc daughter feels the need to leave early, for whatever reason? or that she can’t help bus/ clean tables bc there might be some ick? That’s not fair to the rest of the staff. That happened to me, in my 50s. I couldn’t even make a doctor appointment. So on the advice of a trusted consultant, who gave me a great reference, I quit.. Don’t know or care what they did in the interm.

      1. Jackalope*

        It depends on her situation, but for example: letting her take more regular bathroom breaks if that will help with the bladder issue. We don’t know what the food was that made her feel nauseated, but if it’s just one thing that’s not made a ton it may be possible for her to not make that thing. Especially if she’s paired up with someone else who has a task they dislike, she could trade with them. And if it works better with her medical situation, could she be scheduled for mornings or afternoons?

        Now, it’s possible that none of these are options at her workplace. And even if they are, it’s possible that the boss(es) may not want to try. But any of them *could* be options. (In particular, the extra bathroom breaks if needed, since that would potentially only take a few min out of her work time.)

        1. Thirisa*

          This comment is so refreshing in the sea of “workplaces naturally suck and it is unreasonable to think any improvements to working conditions are possible” mentality in the other comments. Your suggestions are highly reasonable and also very common outside of toxic workplaces.

  51. Harper the Other One*

    OP1, I have two neurodivergent teens (younger than yours) and the top advice we’ve received is to help them consider what jobs would be a good fit for them. I can tell you right now that food service would not be a good fit for either! Shelf stocking or behind the scenes work like bakery or warehouse receiving would be fine, but a busy ice cream shop at peak season would be awful for them.

    Is there a local psychologist or support association that you can tap into? In my area there are several that offer career counseling and job placement to help teens get their feet under them. It sounds like your daughter would benefit from this process, and then she’ll be able to separate typical teenage mistakes (like the wakeboarding before work) from the areas where a job really doesn’t work for her.

  52. MCMonkeyBean*

    I’m gonna add this for LW1: You daughter should absolutely not discuss her anxiety or ADHD with employers in the future unless 1) she is asking for a specific accommodation and 2) she has reason to feel confident they won’t hold it against her.

    It is unfortunately very common for people to hear someone has ADHD and kind of immediately write them off mentally as unreliable, especially at work. I personally *have* talked to my boss about it, but I was asking for a specific accommodation and I had already worked at my company for several years and had established a reputation for good work and had a good relationship with my boss so I felt confident she wouldn’t hold it against me. Even then I knew it was a risk!

    In your daughter’s situation she not only has not worked there long enough to build a good reputation–but she is already actively coming across as kind of flakey. The bladder incident is unfortunate and certainly shouldn’t be held against her. Nausea is not her fault, though if she was reacting to something they make there her boss is probably worried that may be a regular occurrence. They have not known her long enough to know whether forgetting meds is a common issue, and to be totally honest–leaving a four hour closing shift because you are sore from wakeboarding is just a really bad look.

  53. rebelwithmouseyhair*

    OP1 Your daughter flaked out four times at a job she just started out, she’s lucky she hasn’t simply been told not to go back.
    A smell made her feel nauseous? If it’s a smell that is part of the job (you say it was because of something they were doing?) she needs to be able to suck it up, or it’s simply not the right job for her.
    She was in pain because of sport she’d been doing earlier? She needs to learn to make sure that she is fit to work! I mean, it’s no better, for the boss, than if she couldn’t concentrate on TPS reports because of a hangover.
    And then she forgot to take her meds? Again, she needs to make sure she’s fit to work, that includes remembering to take her meds. She should set up an alarm on her telephone in order to remember. If that’s not possible, she needs to come up with some other plan.
    She had a bladder problem? I imagine that must have been excruciatingly embarrassing and if it doesn’t happen regularly, she won’t have packed another set of clothes, but there might have been some other clothing she could have worn? This is the one situation that I think she might deserve a little grace on.
    In short, her boss needs someone she can rely on and your daughter has not proven that she is in the least bit reliable. She’s not at school any more, she’s out there in the cruel real world and needs to shape up. Excuses don’t wash, the boss needs to know the work will get done.
    I’ve been there and done that: I was literally in tears after my first day working in a bakery for a Saturday job when I was 15. No mobile phone to be able to call my Dad for him to take me home. My feet were killing me, my shoes were cutting into my swollen feet, drawing blood. I got home and lay on the floor with my feet up against the wall until I felt normal again, I thought I couldn’t possibly go back the next week, but I put plasters on those feet, bought myself a pair of comfy shoes with my first pay packet and showed up on time with a smile on my face because I was going to buy the new Bowie album with my second pay packet.

    1. Ana Gram*

      This is such a true comment. A friend’s teen daughter just got her first job (at an ice cream shop, no less) and is absolutely exhausted by her 5 hour shifts and appalled at all the deductions from her paycheck! It’s really made us all reminisce about our first forays into the workforce and the stories are really similar.

      I feel for the OP’s daughter but I don’t think she’s a good fit for this job right now.

  54. Spite Sweater*

    LW1: I was let go from one of my first jobs as a teen by them just not giving me shifts. I took a bit of time off for school extracurriculars and when I was ready to come back they never put me on the schedule. This was before texting was as big and they just wouldn’t answer my calls or return my messages. I finally went in in person to see what was up and they said they just didn’t need me right now. Thinking back, I probably wasn’t great at the job (I was only 15 and it was my second job and to give myself some credit I didn’t have great training). but I had just wished they told me they were letting me go instead of ghosting me. If I were your daughter, I’d probably just look for something else.

    1. uncivil servant*

      Also just taken off the schedule from my first fast food job at 15! I couldn’t even blame it on being too cool to show up, I was just too awkward around customers and staff, and way too slow. It’s good to have those experiences when it doesn’t matter as much.

      1. Spite Sweater*

        Me too haha. There was also a night I spilled a coke on a customer, great times.

        1. Dog momma*

          I can top that.. I was a banquet waitress in college, serving tomato juice off a tray during a Xmas party. Yes I spilled the entire thing…on a woman’s full length mink coat. She took one look at my face and was very kind. ” Don’t worry, it will come out”. I must have been as white as a sheet.. and no I wasn’t fired. I was a very hard worker. probably 18 or 19 years old

    2. doreen*

      I think that’s pretty standard at those type of jobs , to fire someone by just taking them off the schedule. The only times I remember people actually being told was when they didn’t want them working even one more day ( because they were suspected of stealing or something ) or in a couple of cases when someone called in sick and they were suspected of doing so to work at a second job. Otherwise it was just “you’re not on the schedule” until they figured it out.

    3. Bast*

      This seems to be fairly common in food service and retail. For Big Box Retailer, they did not want to outright fire people, so they’d in essence force people to quit by giving them one 4 hour shift a week (the minimum corporate would allow unless someone went on a leave). Most people “got the hint” and couldn’t afford only one shift a week, and left. In my stints in food service as a teenager (mid to late 2000s) texting was not really as common and you’d find out you were fired by showing up and seeing that you weren’t on the schedule for that week… or the week after… or the week after. The owner would be cagey when you asked and finally say something like, “Well, school is starting up again, won’t you be going back soon? You know it slows down after summer” after you spent 3 weeks hunting him down. I guess they didn’t want to upset me, but it was more upsetting to have no extra spending $$. If he had straight up told me I would have just gone somewhere else.

  55. MuseumChick*

    LW1, I can understand from your perspective why this is frustrating. But I think you are missing a great opportunity here to help your daughter develop some really important life lessons around work. Food service is a HARD line of work and multiple call-outs/going home early in a short amount of time is not going to play at most work places in that field. Similar to retail, they often need to have a certain amount of people to both open and close the store for safety reasons. They need people who show up and work their sift consistently.

    This is a great opportunity for your daughter to learn the often harsh reality of the working world: You need to plan ahead so you don’t forget your medication or are physically exhausted from a recreational activities. You need to really weigh if a bad smell is enough of a reason to leave a shift early. You need to think from the managers perspective when they are looking at black-and-white data of who has and has not missed shifts or left early.

    She is young and this is her first job, use it to teach her what many of use took many years to learn: things in the work place can often feel unfair but you have to make good judgement calls to plan long-term so you can work your way into better jobs with more flexible schedules, work/life balance, etc.

  56. DrSalty*

    #3 it might also be a computer resolution issue if you are reviewing things digitally. Are you and your employee working on the same hardware?

  57. Also ADHD and Anxious*

    Many people have given good advice about the restaurant service for LW1, but I want to chime in with other ways OP can support her daughter emotionally during this difficult time:

    * Let her know explicitly that food service is a hard job that is physically and emotionally taxing, and she is not a failure for struggling with it.
    * Remind her that one job going poorly doesn’t mean she’ll never succeed at any of them. Maybe ask friends or think back to your own memories for anecdotes about jobs they were fired from or performed poorly at in their youth. (I’m thinking of a friend of mine who was hired as one of those street canvassers who flags down people and solicits donations–she was fired within 48 hours for being too timid and not getting enough donations as a result.)
    * As she gets medical and psychological care and hopefully gets to a more stable place, encourage her to inventory her skills and strengths to find a job that she might be more suited toward. I have conditions similar to your daughter’s and found I really enjoyed tutoring for my college!
    * For those career skills that still need to be addressed, like planning and executive functioning, I love the idea of looking for a lower stakes job and working with a therapist to come up with a plan for dealing with challenging situations that may arise.

    As a mom, you may not be able to influence your daughter’s workplace, but you can help her put this into perspective and be there by her side as she figures out her next steps.

  58. Parenthesis Guy*

    Best case scenario, your daughter hit a string of extremely bad luck at the start of a job. I feel like all the issues but the nauseous bit could be one offs. If so, may make more sense to just try and go elsewhere for a new start. An ice cream store is a good idea for a first job, but sometimes things don’t work out.

    Worst case scenario, your daughter is unable to handle this type of job. If so, that’s going to make working after culinary school a challenge.

    1. Ms. Eleanous*

      And this is a blessing to have this knowledge that food service is taxing, before she spends all that time and money on culinary school.

    2. Mark*

      LW4, I disagree with the reply you were given. Although you absolutely do not have to name who another offer is from, there are at least a couple reasons a company might do this. One, which I haven’t used but I know those who have, is to possibly call a bluff from the applicant. It could be a way for them to try and tell if you are making the other offer up to get some leverage. The other is something we have done. Our primary area competitor in our field has a well-deserved reputation among their former employees as over-promising and under-delivering to employees, and for refusing to discuss employee-portions of insurance coverage until someone is hired and has started working with them. We’ve had people leave us to work for them, and within weeks ask to come back. Others have told us horror stories during interviews. I do ask someone who their other potential employer is, and if it is this company, I share everything I know about them, all of which has been at least double-verified. Even if the person does not come work for us, I want to help prevent them from entering into a bad situation.

      1. nnn*

        I’d find it pretty off-putting if an employer asked me who my offer was from and then told me all the reasons I shouldn’t work for them. It doesn’t really matter if you’re right, it feels pretty gauche.

  59. hi there*

    LW5, I want to offer an example to support Alison’s advice. We had a grant-funded project during the pandemic and hired about 10-15 individuals. All of them had to be let go at the end of the project. We let them know well in advance at multiple intervals (because press coverage and questions would have made them worry). I advocated successfully for a severance package even though we were not required to offer one (based on org size, group size, and staff ages). It ultimately helped the team make the best decisions for themselves, while ensuring communication would be open both ways. I even kept an eye out for job postings and sent recommendations to team members, if they were open to me doing so.

    There were a few folks who didn’t stay the full work period or didn’t handle the transition well. In those cases, though, that was 100% a reflection of the employee’s personality, not anything we mismanaged.

    You do want to consider legal implications and put things in writing, but don’t let that scare you from doing what you feel is good/appropriate/right for your team. Laws and regulations are made based on worst-case experiences. It’s a good thing that you’re not one of them. If anything, it was weirdest how “formal” our process felt, but we talked about that with every team member.

  60. Hell in a Handbasket*

    LW1, I would gently suggest that you take a step back here. I know it’s hard; I also have a child with anxiety. But when you swoop in to help them when they hit setbacks, that just reinforces the message “you can’t handle this on your own”. This is exactly what the anxiety is telling them, so it ends up exacerbating the anxiety. Look up the work of Lynn Lyons, an anxiety expert — she’s amazing.

    I feel you may have been, with good intentions, coddling your daughter a bit. (It’s unfortunate that she didn’t get her first job until age 19.) Remove yourself from the drama, sympathize with her difficulties but not too much (“aw, sounds like a tough day. Sorry you had to deal with that!”), help in short-term concrete ways if you can (e.g. working with her to set up a system to remember her meds), then tell her you trust that she can handle it — and back off.

    1. bamcheeks*

      It’s unfortunate that she didn’t get her first job until age 19

      I’m going to push back on this a bit– yes, there are lots of people (myself included) who have jobs from their mid- or early teens. But 19 is still a perfectly normal age to have your first job, and shouldn’t be in “started late and missed on a key development” territory!

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        I agree. I only know one or two people who worked before the age of 16 and those were generally in stuff like family businesses. And even 16/17 is hit or miss. 19 is well within normal limits for a first job.

        1. Nom*

          At least in the US, I’d say at least 40% if not 60% of people 16-18 have had a job. 19 would be kind of late here!

          1. bamcheeks*

            But that also means 40-60% haven’t! So being 19 in your first job would still be very much in the norm.

      2. Hell in a Handbasket*

        No job until 19 means she graduated high school without ever having a job, even in the summer. That is far outside the norm for anyplace I’ve lived. It may be more common in very affluent communities. (Remember, we’re talking about a job that is 8 hours a week.)

        Regardless of how common it is, I still think it’s a big disadvantage. For one thing, an employer is probably going to expect more of a 19-year-old adult (in this case, being able to close) than they would of a 16-year-old, so they may not get as much slack as they would if they were younger.

        1. bamcheeks*

          Where I grew up, you were more likely to have a job at school if you came from a reasonably affluent background because the people from poorer families were involved in caring for other members of their family, didn’t have access to transport, were encouraged to put all their effort into the education and various other things. A couple of my friends had disabilities that meant they couldn’t drive and/or couldn’t do the kind of physically demanding customer service jobs that I did as a teenager. Most of the employers I’ve known haven’t made much of a distinction between 16yos and 18-19yos, except insofar as they can serve alcohol and be held legally liable for their safety and the safety of others. So yeah, this is definitely location-dependent.

          1. Irish Teacher.*

            Yeah, plus under 18 (at least in Ireland), the most likely way of getting employed is if you’ve an “in”. Under 18s are generally considered to be kind of a hassle to employ, so it’s often kind of done as a favour. And who has parents who can call in a favour to get their kid a job?

            The kids I knew who had jobs at 16 or 17 tended to have parents who were either business people themselves or who moved in the kind of circles where they had friends who owned businesses.

        2. Ferret*

          This is very dependent on location – in the UK only 25% of 16-17 year olds have had a regular job – I don’t think you can describe 75% of the country as “affluent”. Frankly most businesses really wouldn’t be interested in employing minors so almost no-one has a job until they leave school which for most people is at 18-19.

        3. Jackalope*

          I didn’t start my first job until 19 and I didn’t find it to be a disadvantage. I was unable to work in high school – junior year I was an exchange student and senior year I was taking classes at both my high school and the local community college, meaning that I didn’t have the kind of availability needed (some of my college classes were night classes so I was at one school or another all the time). I wouldn’t have wanted to wait too much longer, but I got a job 2nd semester of my first year at college and that was plenty early to get the work experience I needed for post-college full-time employment.

      3. Daisy-dog*

        Yep. In the US, anyone under 18 has to follow some special rules around breaks and can’t perform certain duties. These aren’t necessarily essential duties, but it’s hard enough that some management just don’t bother. And even if it was due to something like extracurriculars or other high school things, those are different valuable learning experiences.

        Not getting a job until 22/23 is unfortunate. (Obviously, this can happen for a wide variety of reasons including immigration visas, but still not ideal.)

      4. Cheesesteak in Paradise*

        Not even “unofficial” jobs like babysitting or mowing lawns or dog sitting or tutoring or something? Even the kids who didn’t have to “work”did those things. And if you made a habit of trying to leave babysitting early because of bladder or hurt wrist issues, those parents would definitely never hire you again.

        1. bamcheeks*

          None of those are typical teenager jobs where I am, except for babysitting! Me and my brothers all worked in retail, pubs or restaurants, but we were able to do that because we had access to a car and parents who didn’t mind us working with alcohol. I had tons of friends who didn’t.

          1. londonedit*

            Yes, exactly. In my day it was quite rare to get a job before you were 18, because the only decent casual part-time jobs available were in pubs. You might get a job as a pot washer or glass collector at 16-17, but there are strict rules here about employing under-18s and a lot of places just couldn’t be bothered. I grew up in a rural area and if you didn’t have a car (plus the driving age here is 17) then you didn’t have many options for part-time work. The local pub was your best bet. Friends who lived in the nearby town had paper rounds as teenagers, but those paid pennies and you had to get up really early, so they weren’t very popular jobs. I had a couple of friends who did Saturday shifts in shops, but again the pay wasn’t great. Most people I knew waited until they were at uni, then they got jobs in the union bar or worked in a supermarket at the weekend, and in the summer they might do fruit picking or pub work. It definitely wasn’t the norm to have a job as a teenager.

        2. Irish Teacher.*

          In Ireland, tutoring jobs are done by qualified teachers. Occasionally, a college student studying a subject might be hired to give grinds in it, but I dunno. I do see college students advertising “I got an A in higher level Physics and am now studying Physics at college. I am available for tutoring,” but I have never heard of anybody actually getting grinds from a college student. Anybody I knew who got grinds got them from qualified teachers.

          A school kid giving grinds…not a hope of it.

          Yeah, some kids babysat, but that would still be a minority. Again, most people want adults caring for their kids, unless they know the teen really well and know he or she is responsible.

      5. sparkle emoji*

        I understand what you’re saying– my first job was at 19– but I think in this specific case the daughter really would have benefited from working a job like this before enrolling in culinary school. Food service is one of the few fields you can try out in high school. If you’re going to choose a degree specific to the culinary world, why not take advantage the ability to try before you buy, so to speak.

      6. I'm here for the cats*

        It’s regional dependent. I’m an immigrant, I’d say this is normal in my birth place, but extremely odd in the place I grew up in.

  61. MistOrMister*

    OP1 – assuming your daughter has been working 2 or 3 months at the shop, it sounds like she has already left early 4 times which means she last left early or about a quarter of her shifts. For the food industry or retail, that is going to come off extremely poorly. Honestly, I think even in a full time job someone leaving early with that percentage (which would average out to minimum 1 early departure a week and some weeks having 2 early departures) would be on thin ice pretty quickly. The problem is that even if the reasons for leaving are legitimate, you only have so much good will as a new employee and she has used hers up. Beyond that, while two issues seem to have been out of her control, 2 of them were not. If she had not called out any other times the wakeboarding issue and the missed meds might have been overlooked but add that to the other 2 call outs and it is no wonder the owners feel like she is not committed. She doesn’t have enough history for them to know if this is her normal and it’s understandble that they don’t want to keep scheduling someone who they can’t depend on to finish their shifts.

    OP5 – Please give the admin the maximum possible warning!!! I was laid off a year and a half ago with no warning and it was awful. I did not like my company so was not sad to not be working there anymore, but the stress over losing my insurance was terrible. COBRA basically costs about $1,000 just for a single person. For someone who has lost their job, they might not have enough savings to keep their insurance and the stress of that is rough (never mind that added stress of will you be able to pay your rent/mortgage, food and bills). Please give the admin as much time as possible and, as Alison said, make sure to drive home that it is strictly because of the budget and that you will be a reference. You might also consider allowing her to send applications and/or go on interviews during the workday without having to use PTO, if her work schedule would permit it.

    1. OP #5*

      Yes! I absolutely am ok with her going on interviews while ‘on the clock’ and will be explicit about this, thanks.

  62. kiki*

    For LW 3– I like Alison’s framing of this concern and would hesitate to bring up an eye exam unless all other possibilities had been looked into first if the LW has a really strong relationship with their direct report. There’s a strong likeliness that this issue has other causes and immediately jumping to an eye exam when the issue may just an issue with a monitor gets LW into an awkward situation.

  63. Van Wilder*

    #1 – random comment – I also once inexplicably lost bladder control while working cash register at the Gap in high school. Why did that happen? Standing up for too long or forgetting to go? Luckily, I was able to hide it with my navy, flat-front chino capri pants. I told my manager I was sick and went home.

    Happy to report, it hasn’t happened since. Or at least not until I started having babies.

    1. PeeHappens*

      I was keeping score at an away field hockey game in 9th grade when I suddenly lost bladder control with no warning. It apparently was very visible to everyone in the stands behind me. I got called down to the office the next day and kicked off the team by the male Vice Principal and male AD (who had been my 8th grade social studies teacher; thankfully I was in the other section that year). It was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life (probably theirs too in retrospect but I wasn’t very sympathetic at the time). My dad, who was the AD in a neighboring school district was livid and made it into a whole thing which did not help.

  64. Apex Mountain*

    On #3, if you go and sit with them and look at their screen, and they’re saying that what’s blurry looks fine to them, I think it would be odd to just suggest looking at tools and hope they come up with the glasses idea themselves.

    I realize you don’t want to diagnose or whatever but there must be a way to say it without doing so

  65. T James*

    I work for a large organization with lots and lots of policies and procedures, where our HR unit’s priority is making sure we follow those policies and procedures, rather than that we have an efficiently functioning organization. As a result, it takes 18-24 months to fire someone for performance-related issues, unless you know someone in the executive suite who can expedite the process (which has happened occasionally). Since everyone knows about this process, there are people who have figured out how to work the system to stretch it out to 3-4 years. And it’s not unusual for people to just stop working when they hit 62 or 63, knowing that they’ll retire before the firing process is complete.

  66. CubeFarmer*

    Mom, if your daughter is truly an adult, let her deal with her employer!

    Calling out four times from a new job is too many times.

  67. Jake*

    #1

    This isn’t advice, so much as understanding and sympathy. I’m 35, and my 20 year old sister is currently living with me. Within the first 2 weeks of her temporary Walmart job she called off for a mental health day, left early because her back was sore, left early because she forgot to take her meds, and called off sick with a severe cough.

    Then she called off 2 weeks straight with respiratory illness. Luckily, Walmart has allowed her to apply for FMLA leave, even though they aren’t required to. She went back to work last night for the first time in a almost three weeks. She is unhappy because people are acting like she is unreliable and unable to do the job. Unfortunately, they are right.

    All of that is to say, I come from a place of understanding. Also, both my sister and your daughter will not be able to hold a job while behaving this way. They aren’t being singled out. It isn’t just fast food or service industry type jobs that won’t accept this behavior. If you or I had called off 4 times in two weeks at our jobs when we first started, I’m not sure that either of us would’ve remained employed. Instead of trying to view this from her point of view and figuring out why the employer is being unreasonable, try to view this as if somebody was working directly for you did this and left you scrambling to fill spots. My guess is you’d be frustrated and understanding all at once while actively looking to find a person that is more reliable for that spot.

    2. Elbe*

      Agreed.

      Walmart has allowed her to apply for FMLA leave, even though they aren’t required to.
      This is side note, but this is probably the only good thing I’ve ever heard about how Walmart treats employees.

      1. RedinSC*

        I know! I was thinking the same there. Here you only qualify for FMLA if you’ve worked at least 1040 hours!

  68. kiki*

    “She left right at close another time when her manager told her it was okay for her to leave since she was struggling with sore muscles and an injured wrist after wakeboarding earlier in the day. On another day, she had failed to take her anxiety meds and let the owner know she was struggling to cope appropriately with stress on that occasion.”

    So I want to be clear that I’m not saying this to blame your daughter for this– things do happen and we’re humans not robots! But these two incidents above were a bit self-inflicted. When all of that’s taken together with the other incidents, it’s a lot for the employer to deal with for a relatively new employee. In food service, reliably having somebody present and ready to work is 90% of the job– it’s not like school where you can make up for missing a lot of time in class by doing work on your own independently.

    People have hobbies outside of work and sometimes those hobbies cause injuries. I don’t want to discourage LW’s daughter from ever wakeboarding again, but taking into account how likely it is to get injured right before a shift is important, especially if you’ve already missed work recently or have personal situations that make it likely you’ll miss work again in the future. It sounds like the wakeboarding thing happened before some other the other incidents, so LW’s daughter didn’t realize going in she’d have so many issues in upcoming shifts, but wakeboarding right before a shift might be something to reconsider in the future.

  69. Pizza Rat*

    LW1, I completely understand that you want to protect your daughter, but the best way to involve yourself is give her a reality check. The service industry is famous for either understaffing or staffing to the bare minimum to save money. Your daughter is not working to expectations and hurting her co-workers.

    It doesn’t really matter what the reason is that she’s leaving early. Management doesn’t care why unless she’s going to need Worker’s Comp. She’s not there and she’s not working. She either needs to be able to fulfill her commitment or find another job.

  70. WantonSeedStitch*

    LW #1: Culinary arts might not be the best field for someone navigating the mental and physical health issues your daughter has. It’s a stressful and demanding field without much flexibility. But you need to let her deal with her employer on her own. Their expectations were reasonable, and if your daughter can’t meet them, she’s not in the right place. Maybe you could put your energy into helping her brainstorm other work opportunities she could look into, where she would find a better fit.

  71. Carol the happy*

    I have to firmly agree that 1) Food Service is essentially about aroma (smells) and “atmosphere”, absolute cleanliness, and customers’ needs. 2) It pays poorly for almost every person at the start, or who isn’t a fast-firing worker, and even they have to start at the bottom. They have to prove that they deserve good shifts for the business’ benefit. 3) Food service doesn’t care that you have a sore wrist, or knee, or migraine headache, the customers are there to pay for food and service. IF YOU HAVE PROVEN YOUR VALUE, your manager might care that you’re sick, but not if you keep ditching work.

    ALSO: I have a friend who works for her county health department- (and I’m in healthcare) she would be appalled at an ice cream place keeping someone on who has even occasional bladder release episodes. Frozen desserts are DIFFERENT from grilled, baked, fried, sous vide, smoked, roasted.
    Frozen dairy products are dangerous and can be deadly if there’s a glitch ANYWHERE “From Cow to Customer”!

    Dairy foods demand the most strenuously, impeccably sanitary area possible. Gloves at all times, correct chemicals for sanitation, no bringing trash through the prep areas, and if there’s a bathroom, public or not, it requires a chemical disinfection BY HEALTH CODE SCHEDULES. You know those charts on the back of bathroom doors? They’re not just a convenience for knowing whose turn it is to swab; they’re a legal document required by the Health Department.

    It’s not that critical in a big box store that sells a few packaged food items, but a restaurant has to display and chart. Any place that sells dairy that isn’t cooked onsite needs to have the proper (sometimes stinking) chemicals.

    This place can absolutely be held liable for E. coli outbreaks that might be traced to a single employee. Every state I’ve been in, I check the Health Department ratings (there’s usually a website) for a restaurant’s report. And not only the critical deficiencies. I’ve had cancer, so it must be almost like an operating room with food. (Yes, that’s an exaggeration, but not by much.)

    Food sellers’ responsibility is first to their customers health safety. No exception.

    Food service in high school was an important wakeup call; it readied me for the word “Stat”, absolutes in procedures, and following instructions perfectly.

    OP, your daughter doesn’t sound as though a food service career is a reasonable choice for either her health or their needs. There are legitimate medical reasons, (ANY bladder release, on more than one occasion. Sudden weakness) and personnel reasons (absenteeism for one!).

    People who are neurodivergent or have ongoing health problems often have helicopter parents who run interference and prevent them from seeing the IMpossibilities. This can stunt their emotional and social growth. The help they really need is often being allowed to fail early, so they can come to grips with unpleasent and even painful realities.

    When that happens early enough, they can look for the wide world of things they’re actually able to do, and find something that gives them satisfaction- and maybe joy. Real self-esteem can’t be spoon fed, (that’s entitlement!) it has to be earned- but it’s the foundation to happiness, and that’s what you really want for her.

    1. Resentful Oreos*

      I think you have made good points, especially about how demanding food service is, and how it might not be a good choice of career for the daughter, and that’s NOT her fault. I wouldn’t be cut out for a food service career, either!

      And that, especially, neurodivergent people or those with chronic illnesses often have those kind of helicopter/ snow plow parents who prevent them from “seeing the IMpossibilities.” I know the snow plowing can come from a place of “I need to do this to get the kid the help they need in school,” and that is fine for school, but not for your child living their best life. And while nobody wants to be a crusher of dreams, or to say “no you can’t because your health won’t permit it” – sometimes, a particular career is just NOT a fit for the person. You can emphasize it’s not because the child is wrong or flawed, but because certain careers require certain attributes, and here are other careers that fit better.

      Honestly, this is why we need much, MUCH better career education than most kids get. Parents often do not have a clue, school “guidance counselors” don’t either, and if a young person isn’t lucky enough to have the right adults in their life to connect them with the right opportunities, it’s the trial and error system. At least OP1’s daughter is only 19 and (I hope) hasn’t spent a fortune on culinary school yet; she can switch to another career track, no harm no foul.

      (And yes, it’s bad to have someone urinate themselves in a commercial kitchen! The Board of Health would not like it; and the unfortunate girl is going to be known as Jane Who Peed Her Pants at that workplace, and food service is by reputation very rough and tumble, so her coworkers might not be…gracious and polite, let’s say.)

  72. Crencestre*

    LW1: Your daughter’s employer has actually been very, very patient with her and they’re continuing to be patient; they gave her some time off to work on her own issues instead of outright yelling “Get outta here and don’t come back!” Which, in view of her 4 (!!) instances of having to leave early, is extremely kind of them.

    So how can you help? Well, by pulling back a bit (I know, I know, that’s easier said than done!) and letting her take charge of her own job and her own life. She may or may not make it in this job, but if she doesn’t then she’ll have learned a most valuable lesson about the working world: it doesn’t have to give you an infinite number of “second” chances and it won’t do so – you do the job or you get fired.

    Finally, if she can’t handle a simple restaurant job with a patient employer, is culinary school really right for her? The graduates of those schools go on to positions that are far higher pressure than the one your daughter has now. Is she SURE that she can handle even MORE pressure in a higher-stress environment?

  73. Anon4This*

    Speaking as someone who got their first job at the age of 18 and also was pretty flaky/blase about it*, I do think your daughter is being a bit lax about leaving early for things (especially two that were in her control). The good news is she’s only 19 and has time to learn and better herself, but part of that is having people around her willing to guide her on workplace norms. The employer doesn’t sound like they’re treating her poorly (food places I worked would have fired me for having to leave early four times when I was new rather than just giving me time to figure things out!) it’s just not a good fit for her at this time.

    *for the record, it’s 20 years later and I’ve just been offered an executive director role, so people can get better!

  74. Andi*

    #1: your daughter needs to find a job that she can do effectively and reliably. It sounds like this job isn’t that job. In a food service job being down a person hurts everybody else that’s working that day. I would let your daughter go if I was her boss in this job. Because I couldn’t depend on her. She had issues four times with being able to work and I couldn’t deal with that and manage a schedule and keep my place staffed up.

    I understand that as a parent, you want to protect and advocate for your child. But I think part of that is helping her child understand what is realistic and what is not realistic. Given what you described here it’s not realistic for her to expect that her employers would continue to be understanding and allow these type of issues.

    You mentioned that you are “reasonably sure” that somebody there is related to the owner. Welcome to the world of a small business. This is not some huge gotcha. I don’t know exactly why you think that’s relevant. You also mention that other employees are unhappy with some things at work. Again welcome to the world of work. Employees are always unhappy about something. This is not a gotcha either.

    Here’s the thing, your daughter didn’t do a great job here. That’s OK. It’s nothing that she needs to be protected or shielded from. That happens to every single person at least once in their life. What she can learn from this is to pick herself up and go out and get another job and try to make that one work. Learning to bounce back after a bad experience and to keep moving is a valuable thing. Help her with that. Don’t make her feel like the victim here and that they are mean and awful. If you make her feel like she’s been wronged, how is she gonna learn how to do better at her next job?

    1. Irish Teacher.*

      To be fair, I didn’t necessarily read the part about the manager being related to the owner as a comment that they didn’t deserve their job but more as saying that the manager probably knows about the health conditions the LW’s daughter revealed to the owner. Like they were trying to avoid replies with “well, the owner may not have informed the manager that there was a genuine reason your daughter might have difficulties.”

      1. doreen*

        It’s not impossible that the LW meant that – but it’s not very likely that the owner would be more likely to tell a relative than an unrelated manager. I think , however, that the LW might be implying that her daughter wouldn’t have been taken off the schedule if there had been an unrelated manager working those shifts.

  75. Daisy-dog*

    In regards to #1 – I just wanted to share an example of how ridiculous some jobs can be. I was 19 and working in a clothing store that gave me only one 3.5 hour shift in one week. It was the closing shift 7:30-11 and the store closed at 9. Management had decided that every employee had to get a customer to apply for a credit card that week (which is an entirely different issue) or they would be punished by coming in at 7 a.m. on Sunday to clean the store. I explained how ridiculous that expectation was for me because I had only 1.5 hours to achieve that goal (and I didn’t). But beyond that – I was being “punished” by getting more hours!! The following week’s schedule was not great either (probably 8 hours instead of 3.5), so this made it 10 hours of pay. (Additionally, the Sunday opening manager declared on Saturday night that there was no way she could make it in at 7, so I actually got to arrive at the more reasonable time of 9.) (Also, I’d worked for this store on-and-off for 2 years, so I knew the managers and it was fine to be snarky with them.)

    Basically, all this to say: You can’t use too much logic on food service/retail jobs. And even if you think that they are being unreasonable, they might be and aren’t going to change that.

    (No comments being made about the actual content of #1 because that has been covered pretty well already.)

    1. Bast*

      Big Box Store that I worked at when I was younger was BIG on pushing cards too, no matter where you worked in the store. Someone would get hit up as they returned an item, went to the sales floor to look for clothes, again at the fitting room, and again at the register. There was absolutely NO logic in that, and if anything, it got people pretty upset because they’d be asked 3 or 4 times in a single visit to open up a credit card. Even if I had intended to open a card, those pushy tactics would have me annoyed and less likely to open one. Management didn’t care about the logic of this — your raises, your choice of shifts, your ability to cross-train, was all based on your number of credit card sign ups. If you didn’t ask someone to open a card, and they happened to be a “trap” (corporate regularly did walk throughs, as did the management’s family and friends, who would rat you out if you didn’t ask) you’d be written up, get shifts taken away, and if it happened enough, you could lose your job. They also didn’t care if you only had 5 hours this week and Bob had 30 and therefore more time to try and swindle people into getting a card they didn’t need — Bob clearly was the harder worker.

      You brought back some fun memories with that one.

  76. bertha*

    Food service mom: Supervisors can be flexible, even in food service, but when that flexibility constantly means more work for managers and other employees, they are going to be right to assume that she cannot be relied on and she will be taken off the schedule.

  77. Nom*

    LW1 – The only one of these reasons that would be considered acceptable in food service is bladder control – assuming she didn’t have a change of clothes. Being in pain from wakeboarding in particular is not acceptable – and if i had been her manager, i would not have let her leave. I know this sounds harsh but this is the reality of working in shift work.

    Think about it this way – most of her colleagues are probably pushing through similar circumstances each day and still coming to work and completing their shifts. They may have child care issues, chronic health conditions, etc., but they are making it work.

    In a perfect world, this wouldn’t be the case… but looking for this kind of flexibility in this industry isn’t going to happen.

    1. Nom*

      ETA: leaving because of a bad smell in a restaurant is… laughable. i’m not trying to be mean but… i wouldn’t have let her leave.

      1. Former Retail Lifer*

        I would have let her leave and then probably scheduled her minimal hours after that. There are going to be smells in food service!

      2. Rincewind*

        I used to work in a seafood restaurant – we steamed lobster meat and boiled the shells to make stock on a weekly basis. One of the kitchen workers had a shellfish allergy and couldn’t breathe in the kitchen when we were making stock.

        He wore a mask.

      3. Elsa*

        Yep, as most women who have been pregnant will attest, it’s quite possible to work while nauseated!

  78. CP*

    Another important lesson, and one I’ve tried to drill into my son’s head, who works out hard every day–don’t do something on a work day (or even the day before the work day) that is strenuous or where you could potentially get hurt, because getting to work is more important than lifting weights. He has a very demanding manufacturing job, not too different from busy food service (actually he is involved with the manufacture of chocolate, so it is food service, in a way!)

  79. Dawn*

    LW1: 25 people would also be way too many for most ice cream shops. Unless it is a MegaIceCreamShop of some variety (I don’t know, I’m reaching here,) they were almost certainly looking for a way to trim down the staff to begin with because that’s an absolutely silly number. The average McDonald’s has 20 or less employees, and I’m fairly comfortable saying that a brand-new ice cream shop doesn’t have their traffic or need for, say, cooks.

    1. doreen*

      That’s going to depend a lot. The average McDonald’s has more like 50 employees and some have more – I had a fast food job where there were at least 12 employees working every weekend shift plus supervisors plus a manager. And a completely separate group working M-F days. I’m sure the ice cream shop doesn’t need 25 employees unless it has something to do with hiring minors – if a 15 year old can only work a 4 hour shift, you will need two of them to cover the 12-8 shift that one adult could cover.

    2. Bast*

      Eh, if this is a shop that hires a lot of high school and college age kids, they probably figure in limited availability due to school/age and the law/other commitments, etc. If I hire a bunch of high school kids that are only available after 3 or 4 PM, and some college students that need Mon/Wed/Fri off for classes, or Tues/Thurs then I’m going to need to buffer my schedule to cover for all the odd hours. Not quite as easy as when you’re hiring someone who has full (or mostly full) availability, and may require more to fill in the gaps. Places like this also tend to have a high turnover, so they are likely counting on that as well.

      1. Dawn*

        Sure, but that’s kind of my point exactly; if you’ve got 25 people and a third of them are asking you for more hours (everyone always asks for more hours) and half of those are great employees and you have one person who isn’t showing up for their shifts…. guess who gets those hours.

  80. Former Retail Lifer*

    #1: You’re a caring mom and you have your daughter’s back and that’s so important. However, she’s 19 and she needs to be able to handle coming into work and staying for a full shift or find a job with different demands. Despite her completely valid reasons, from an employer’s standpoint, she’s an unreliable employee. They have a business to run and it won’t run well when they’re short-staffed. They need to make a decision based on what works for their business.

    Food service is brutal and there’s no shame in determining it’s not the right fit for her. It wasn’t the right fit for most people I know who spent some time in that industry.

    1. Delta Delta*

      This. I was awesome at retail. I was horrible at food service. We all have our niches.

  81. Moose*

    OP 1 some minor points I haven’t seen addressed:

    1. Please don’t call people old enough to have paying jobs “worker bees.” I know it probably sounded cutesy in your head but it comes off as condescending and childish.

    2. I’m honestly surprised by the nonchalance you used when mentioning that she peed herself at work. Urinating where food is being prepared/served unexpectedly is actually a super big deal. If you aren’t aware of any medical conditions she has that would have caused it, I would highly suggest bringing her to a doctor. And if she does have a known medical condition that causes it, food service might not be for her. Incontinence isn’t shameful; we all have bodies and they do what they do. But it might mean that handling food as a career is not a good fit.

  82. Delta Delta*

    OP 1 – I’m going to add something I haven’t seen in other comments. Don’t help Daughter perpetuate an idea that she’s getting unequal treatment because of perceived nepotism. Maybe the manager is related. That doesn’t matter. What matters is the daughter’s performance/attendance. There are tons of small and family businesses, and they rely on reliable employees. They’re completely within their realm to either cut back on the schedule or to fire someone who isn’t reliable. That’s the lesson here, not, “oh, you’re being mistreated because of nepotism.”

    I also want to add that Mom is likely getting her information from Daughter, and may be getting a version of the facts Daughter wants her to hear. This seems like the kind of thing Daughter is going to have to learn to navigate. If she gets fired from the scoop shop, then she does. She’ll have to dust herself off and figure out how to do better at her next job.

    1. Elbe*

      Agreed. I didn’t get the sense from the letter that the employer is being at all unfair to the daughter. Especially for low-skill work, reliability is a huge requirement to hold jobs.

      Employers have a responsibility to their other employees. Calling out before a shift is a hardship on the manager, but leaving early (when there’s no time to get alternate coverage) is a hardship on the other employees working that shift. I don’t think that the LW would be happy if her daughter had a coworker who frequently called out, and the daughter was regularly being asked to cover this person’s tasks.

      I get that the LW is sympathetic to her daughter and wants her to be able to keep the job she wants, but there’s some entitlement coming through here. The best thing the LW can do now is to coach her daughter to be realistic about her abilities, not by setting expectations that everyone should work around her indefinitely.

  83. I'm here for the cats*

    LW1.

    I was in food industry between the age of 15 to 21. While I wouldn’t say it’s the most stressful job I ever had, it’s far from the least either. Had this been just an after school job I’d say, quit it and food service isn’t for her. Nothing wrong with that, I would never be a Funnelweb Milker because it’s the wrong fit for me.

    My concern is she’s in culinary school, and it’s only going to get more stressful from here. Her first priority is to medically check out the incontinence because that’s not normal. Then I think it would be a good idea for her to get a mentor within the food industry. Based on your letter, I don’t believe you are the right person for this role.

  84. NotARealManager*

    LW1,

    Your daughter is not being singled out for not being an easy employee. She is a difficult employee and is being appropriately dealt with. The surprise urination is a more understandable circumstance where she’d need to leave, but most managers won’t be sympathetic to the wakeboarding and forgetting to take her medication. Those are both the result of poor planning, which I realize may be exacerbated by ADHD, but we all have our own stuff we have to deal with and figure out how to prioritize our lives. The nausea due to a weird smell? I don’t work in food service, but I’d bet that just comes with the territory sometimes and she’ll need to figure out a way to get through those instances. And at the end of the day, if you’re someone calling out frequently for a coverage-based job, it doesn’t really matter what the reason is: they need someone that will be there. I don’t call my siblings to babysit my kids, not because they’re bad people or aren’t capable babysitters, but because they always seem to have “something come up” or going on with them. Often their reasons are legitimate, but at the end of the day, I need to be sure someone will be watching my kids when I need them there.

    All that said, this job is a good learning experience for her. It will likely force her to think ahead more and prioritize what she does in her off time so she can still be ready to work at her scheduled shifts. That’s all stuff you learn in early jobs and learning is often full of difficult lessons.

    I also agree with other commenters: she needs to seriously consider what a career in food looks like after culinary school. There’s no shame in realizing she can’t hack it. I had a demanding career myself for a few years and realized (despite years of training and love of the subject) that it ultimately wouldn’t work for my health and long-term life goals.

  85. Elbe*

    The best thing that LW1 can do here is to offer good advice to her daughter. Unfortunately, some of it may not be what she wants to hear.

    Employers are obligated to provide reasonable accommodations to employees due to health issues, but they are not required to keep an employee who – for whatever reason – is not able to reliably complete mandatory tasks.

    Employees also have a responsibility to be realistic about their own capabilities when selecting their career path. I really think that she should pump the breaks on a career in food service before she goes deeply into debt training for a job she may not be able to hold. She’s very young, and it’s entirely possible that she will eventually find treatments that work for her, but she’s risking quite a lot by choosing to invest time and money into a career path that is not a good match for her current abilities. Someone with anxiety and ADHD probably should not choose a career that is – by nature – very stressful and requires a lot of attention to detail, with the expectation that every employer will accommodate her. Sometimes accommodations are just not possible. Her life is going to be a lot happier if she can find satisfying work that doesn’t go against her nature, where she is not constantly struggling.

    The LW should make sure that her daughter knows that each time she calls out, she is negatively affecting the other employees that work her shift. Other people had to do the work that she was scheduled to do. If the employer ends up letting her go, it’s not because of malice or lack of understanding. It’s because they have an obligation to provide a good work environment to their other employees, too. You can be a good person with a lot of good skills and still not be the right fit for a specific type of job. Setting yourself up for success takes a lot of self-reflection and honesty.

  86. RedinSC*

    #5, send her our way, do we ever need good admin support!!!! Sorry you’re having to let her go.

  87. William Murdoch's Homburg*

    OP #1 – First of all, please know that I say this as kindly as possible: I worked in food service many years ago, and I can guarantee that her supervisors see this as a definite pattern of unreliability. It’s not that they aren’t empathetic to her needs, necessarily, but they do have to balance that with the fact that they have a business to run, and they can’t do that effectively if one of their employees is consistently unable to work their full scheduled shift. Four times in a short span is a lot, and I can absolutely see why they’re giving her shifts to the folks who have proven themselves to be more reliable.

    Having said that, she is also 19 years old, and you need to stay out of this and let her manage it and figure it out on her own. You’re not doing her any favors by swooping in to save her every time she stumbles; she has to learn to deal with this kind of thing on her own, or future jobs are going to be even more difficult to cope with.

    I wish you and your daughter the best.

  88. Suzannah*

    Mother of food service worker, I know it’s painful to see your daughter go through this.. but it’s actually an important thing for her to learn about the world world (and why I think it’s important for people to have jobs *before* they graduate from college so they are used to workplace norms, whether they are fair or unfair, or perceived as unfair when there are not).
    When you are in school, the school (hopefully) does what it can to accommodate the individual needs of the students, to the extent that’s possible. That’s becuase the job of the school is the educate the student.
    But at a business, it’s reversed – the workers’ jobs are to fulfill the needs of the company (and get paid for it, of course). If I were your daughter’s manager, I’d be pretty frustrated that she had to leaver early four times. It’s not personal; it’s business. Food serve might not be the place for her.
    I know it’s hard to see here go through this, but ultimately, I think it will be helpful to her as she navigates workplace requirements and figures out what works for her.

  89. Burned Out Banker*

    LW1: I get that you think this is unfair to your daughter for a number of reasons. However, in industries like food or retail, reliability is key. I have managed more than one employee who ended up having attendance problems and while their reasons were legitimate to them, it was also incredibly unfair to everyone else on the team who had to come in early, stay late, or even got called in on their day off because the problem employee called in or didn’t stay for their whole shift and we logistically didn’t have enough staff present to make the business work. Four shifts is a lot of shifts to not complete at a new job, especially when others are relying on her being there. Since this is her first job, maybe she doesn’t know that sometimes you have to push through even when you don’t want to. I’m not saying to work through major issues, but in the case of minor ones, sometimes you have to suck it up and deal with it – especially since these are likely short shifts? I know most of us who’ve been in the workforce for a while probably would love to be able to go home any time we’re not feeling 100% but that’s not realistic in most cases. Tell her to keep painkillers and her anxiety meds in her purse for next time.

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