I’m planning on firing my employee this week - she has only been with the company for around 85 days.

It’s a coffee shop - so that’s where my question comes in.

I’m facing the dilemma of, if there’s already this drama/issues, I should just fire her now — or in the other regard, do I give her a chance to correct it, but there’s a part of me that thinks it’s not correctable.

In sorta short - I’ve seen her have an attitude with a customer, like made them the wrong drink and told them they ordered it wrong, but I was passing by and heard the tail end of it so I didn’t get a chance to step in and correct it immediately.

But within that same minute, a customer came up to the counter and said they didn’t receive their pastry. And this employee immediately said she put it on the counter already but someone must have taken it. I replied, I’m so sorry about that, we’ll grab you another —- I open the microwave and the danish is in there

She has this weird tendency to immediately deny everything, like for no real reason

Another example of the defensiveness was I asked my employee group chat if a customer left an item and if they could check. An employee replied that they saw employee in question put it by the register — in a totally passive way. And this employee replied like are you sure, I didn’t do that

But for small instances, it’s hard to talk to her about it. In the beginning, I had an employee approach me that she was washing dishes incorrectly and I had to pull her aside and go over it again - like she’s the type of person that she says she understands, but I don’t know if she does?

It’s hard because she’s a nice person, but it’s causing tension within my staff. I have a few employees that have approached me about various issues with her.

One last thing she did that was a weird red flag, I was texting an employee about like coffee inventory, but I didn’t want that person to be doing it all. So I said in the same text if you can do x task and can that employee do x tax to split it up

And I got a reply that employee already did a bunch of tasks and I’m like okay thanks … later found out that employee in question replied back. Like she saw that persons phone open, and her name in there and replied about herself as the other employee.

I tried to rationalize it - like maybe she got defensive that she saw her name in that employees phone. But it was regular work talk and that doesn’t give her the right the reply on someone else’s phone.

My question lies within on I guess she’s not going to really see this coming bc it’s one of those weird gray areas. Where’s she’s not breaking policies. She’s just not doing a good job, and it doesn’t seem like a simple conversation to correction thing.

It’s like a disconnect. But it makes me feel guilty

Any insight is appreciated.