No. The window for that to be a reasonable request closed months ago.

You can provide a locker for the phone and include a policy in your hiring packet that phones are not allowed. Headphones with iPod should be OK.

$50 is cheap to rid yourself or a thief. If the opportunity had been there it would have been more.

You are in luck, I happen to teach vocational rehabilitation skills to adults with disabilities for a career and have worked with people with Autism for almost 15 years.

It sounds to me like she isn’t respecting the boundaries you have set. The best thing you can do is clearly redraw them and establish some natural consequences that can occur if they continue to behave the way they are in the office. Put the ball entirely in their court. Some notes to consider for the conversation -

1. Note the relationship, bring in some personal anecdote or story about them that highlights their positive qualities. Let them know that they are appreciated for those quality outputs that have been seen in the past. How long have you known the person? “I have known you for X years now” is a very grounding statement that doesn’t illicit argument, establishing a history with no bias.
2. Address the change in behavior. In short, what happened? Give some very specific examples of the undesirable behavior and contrast it with the desirable behavior. Use I statements that can’t be argued with like "When I heard you say X thing I was surprised. I have always known you to be a level headed person. (lie a little if you have to, you need to establish that you believe that they can achieve the results that you are expecting)
3. Reasonable accommodations - note the accommodations you have made to make sure they actually do fulfill the function they are designed to. Extend an offer to revise these accommodations if need be but they are probably fine. You still need to ask for HR reasons anyway. I wouldn’t linger long here, it is their responsibility to let you know if they don’t have the tools they need to do the job.
4. Let this person know that you are personally invested in their success. You also have a larger business to consider and your obligations that that business is an obligation to everyone in your office. Be candid about the lack of adequate experience and why you felt the best decision for the company was to lead with someone with more experience.

Document it all. Either they change their behavior or you already have your paperwork done for when they file an unemployment claim.

You are in luck, I happen to teach vocational rehabilitation skills to adults with disabilities for a career and have worked with people with Autism for almost 15 years.

It sounds to me like she isn’t respecting the boundaries you have set. The best thing you can do is clearly redraw them and establish some natural consequences that can occur if they continue to behave the way they are in the office. Put the ball entirely in their court. Some notes to consider for the conversation -

1. Note the relationship, bring in some personal anecdote or story about them that highlights their positive qualities. Let them know that they are appreciated for those quality outputs that have been seen in the past. How long have you known the person? “I have known you for X years now” is a very grounding statement that doesn’t illicit argument, establishing a history with no bias.
2. Address the change in behavior. In short, what happened? Give some very specific examples of the undesirable behavior and contrast it with the desirable behavior. Use I statements that can’t be argued with like "When I heard you say X thing I was surprised. I have always known you to be a level headed person. (lie a little if you have to, you need to establish that you believe that they can achieve the results that you are expecting)
3. Reasonable accommodations - note the accommodations you have made to make sure they actually do fulfill the function they are designed to. Extend an offer to revise these accommodations if need be but they are probably fine. You still need to ask for HR reasons anyway. I wouldn’t linger long here, it is their responsibility to let you know if they don’t have the tools they need to do the job.
4. Let this person know that you are personally invested in their success. You also have a larger business to consider and your obligations that that business is an obligation to everyone in your office. Be candid about the lack of adequate experience and why you felt the best decision for the company was to lead with someone with more experience.

Document it all. Either they change their behavior or you already have your paperwork done for when they file an unemployment claim.

You need to validate your idea. Throw a free small event to taste some food and gage the local response. Pass out flier, meet people in the area you want to work and see what the environment is like. You know, basically do the same shit Gordon Ramsay does at the beginning of every episode of Kitchen Nightmares. Dump a little money into your area that can provide some evidence that the customers will support your plan.

Networking and getting yourself out there. You gotta shake hands and meet people.

It’s a total non-amswer that sounds insightful but means nothing.

Parents will always see their kids as kids, even when they are 40. They’re thinking “I’ll be nice and give this kid some money for his doodle and put it in the fridge.” They don’t respect your profession as a valid career path and this is a passive aggressive way of telling you that.

They pay rent for the space.

All he did was collect money all day long. He had a whole network of gumball machines at every Hollywood Video, Blockbuster, and a lot of theaters. He just played his niche hard. He obviously had employees.

Gumball machines. When I worked at Hollywood Video we had one of the big globe top ones with a clear base with a spiral ramp in it. A guy would come to take the quarters out and replace the gumballs, and he was always the happiest person about it. I was a miserable cunt to everyone because I hated my job, so I wanted to know his secret. It turns out the dude had no high school diploma or formal training in business, but he was a millionaire in the early 2000s on gumballs. He would drive down to a Mexico and get his gumballs for pennies and then turn around and flip them for 50c each to kids renting movies.

Absolutely nobody knows the answer to this question because with the rise of large language models the landscape is in flux and heads are rolling in every industry.

With a raise and a heartfelt thank you. What would you want given the choice? Are you particularly motivated by gift cards or Costco liquor? (Former Employer just gave away a bar and Uber gift cards every Christmas)

Are you using this sub to test what accounting services you want to expand into?