So I'm not sure where to ask advice or this but this is related to personal finance so I thought I might give it a go here.
I own an office space that has minimum wage ($10 an hour in CA) employees as front line cashiers/general office worker. We rotate these employees in shifts, of course, with more or less set schedules week to week.
So one of our employees is this 21 year old girl with a 1 year old baby that we let her bring to work because she can't afford a babysitter, she'd have to pay the exact rate she gets, unfortunately. By the way this is a startup and we are in the red around $20k of family money now. Not profitable at all.
This girl is nice and all but just terrible with money. Her boyfriend and she are about to get married, he works part time in construction but was recently injured in the job and can't work now. They also get assistance from the state. As far as I know her $600 a month job with us and a bit less than that via welfare add up to $1200 a month. That's around $14K a year. Yet she wants to spend $1200 on a wedding dress, $3000+ on the venue, more on limos, flowers, etc. She's asked to be paid the day after her timesheet was in and is now asking for advances, which we denied.
Am I wrong in thinking someone needs to tell this girl to be more responsibile with her money? My wife (who runs day to day operations) said she gently broached the subject (something like ... "Wow that's a lot for a dress. Do you think you could get another one that looks like that for less cost?") and was met with a look of derision and "this is none of your business" haughtiness.
She's a nice enough girl but man it's hard to watch someone do this. She states her parents won't lend her any more money because she hasn't paid them back so this is a big burden to her. My wife and I are extremely frugal, we eat rice and beans most nights, and when we got married she wore a $20 eBay dress and we got married in a quickie $100 wedding chapel above a Subway. This wasn't a rush wedding either, it was planned for 6 months, the reception was in our backyard. Total cost under $1000.
It kinda feels like I'm subsidizing someone's poor financial decisions and it's frustrating. So is there any way to educate this girl, or is it too late, or is it truly none if my business? Any advice personalfinance?
Edit: Thanks for all the thoughts, it sums up what my instinct was and followed more or less our conversation so far. A lot of advice to not let her bring her kid in for liability reasons. While I thought of that I guess I never considered how that might open us up to some kind of litigation. Guess we may have to review that policy. She'll likely just have to quit if we change it. Thanks everyone!
Submitted March 02, 2017 at 01:04PM by Spamwaller http://ift.tt/2mKFqV1
