I run a cleaning company, I started 6 years ago on my own and over the last 1.5 years have added in 6 more employees. The first lady I hired, Ann has been with me since October 23. I employed her daughter to work with us 2 and the pair of them work in a team and the daughter doesn’t drive. Everything was fine until this year, they’ve had 6/7 clients leave and they are calling in sick atleast one of them weekly.
Today, the daughter called in sick because she was too tired to work. I managed to cover her work and team up someone else with Ann for the day, I did ask Ann if she could work late and she said she had something on, which was fine. Then driving home from work today, I drove past one of their old clients houses, who left us a couple of months ago, to see Ann and her daughter loading up their car with all of their cleaning equipment (which is actually all of my cleaning equipment) I’ve had 2 more clients leave in the last 2 weeks, which I now suspect have been taken on privately by them too. Am I being unreasonable to feel really hurt by this dishonesty from someone who I trusted as a friend?! I’ve always subbed her wages early, helped her out when her husband left, we go out for drinks together and catch ups regularly! How would you go about confronting them?! I also now have to sack them, I’m so upset to lose them as members of staff.