 Being short-staffed is a strain on the production of your business. The worst thing that you can do is honestly lose a good employee because you won't let the bad one go. This is from someone who would like to remain anonymous, anonymous. That's weird. This is from someone who would like to remain anonymous. My youngest employees seem to be calling in sick all the time. They have completely exhausted their PTO but don't seem to care. I don't know how they can afford to lose so much time. And one of them always seems to be sick on Fridays or leaves early on Fridays. What is the best way to handle this? Good question. The best way to handle this is really to look at what is causing the problem. What do you have implemented in your office to keep it from being a problem, right? Is this a lack of understanding that people don't understand your policies in your office? Are they actually really sick? Is it a lack of maturity overall? So the first thing is their clear understanding of the expectation in your office. Some think that just offering sick days, you know, I don't know, five or ten sick days a year will give people enough to manage. And beyond that, that people will be able to make it work, right? Kind of suffer through it and, you know, get to work and you start feeling better, right? But in order to take action on anything in your office, you must have formal communication on it, like an office manual. A proper office manual, like the one that we give in Spexy 101, will help to set expectations on how the office performs and expectations for each team member as well. Consider having a policy that for anything beyond the PTO, that they must have a doctor's note for the sick days. That's not asking too much. If there's no doctor's note, then they would be placed on a probationary action. And maybe they really are sick. I was in a practice training a team one time where I noticed that the fridge was full of just hot pockets and energy drinks. And I made a joke of, you know, someone really loving these super unhealthy things. And the doctor unloaded, not in a bad way, not on me, but just kind of like broke down saying about how this was something that really made her super uncomfortable because they belong to her three opticians. And that's what they ate and drink every single day. So then I went on to say that these opticians seem to be sick all the time, you know, saying that they weren't healthy and everything else, right? Well, with me being an outsider, I was able to have a conversation with the opticians. And it turns out that, you know, the monster energy drinks were a solution to having something to drink in the office where they didn't have to leave and go get something. And it was a perk that they got an energy boost. Understanding that there was a lack of healthy options provided to the employees and that the energy drinks were super unhealthy. The doctor bought a nice water dispenser and even went to like Bed Bath and Beyond and bought one of those like water fizzy flavor machine things. In return, she asked that the energy drinks no longer be consumed or stored in the office. The team thought that was a fair trade. And what was kind of interesting to me is one of the girls mentioned after the fact that she didn't even realize how dependent she was on the energy drinks. So, you know, healthier all the way around. And last thing, alluding to the comment about them being the youngest in the office, is this a lack of maturity? Maturity and making healthy decisions, maturity and prioritizing the job and, you know, powering through. I mean, we've all heard of, you know, the man called thing, right? The joke about how some men, not all men, but some men develop an inability to function when they have a cold, right? Yet the silly stereotype, honestly, it's a stereotype because it's often rather ridiculous. But it seems to be expanding into the younger generation at an alarming rate. And I believe that this is now more than ever something that we must have clear guidelines set out, not to only protect the practice, but to be able to set expectations and protect the other employees from having to pick up the weight of the person who isn't showing up. So whether they are or they aren't actually sick, the thing is that if someone doesn't show up, then someone else has to do the work, right? The moral of the story is that you have to do something. You can't just do nothing because being short staffed is a strain on the production of your business. The worst thing that you can do is honestly lose a good employee because you won't let the bad one go. In this scenario, when you are unable to manage the issues of employees not showing up for work, it's putting a strain on the rest of the people in your practice. So if this continues, you'll end up losing the good employees mentally. Basically, you're depleting their morale for those who are actually working. And eventually, you'll end up losing them completely, right? You'll end up losing them physically, right? Starts mentally, you'll lose them physically because they'll end up quitting. You need to make sure to set proper expectations in your office policies, right? Office policies help to create accountability. It sucks to have to lay down the law, but have honest conversations with your team members. So many times, the management is back in their office and they only come out when they have something to bitch about, right? You need to have honest conversations with your team members because when you're doing that, you can tell them, express to them their value of their contribution to the office. And if it gets to the point that they're harming more than helping, you can have these conversations with them, but you have to know that if they're harming more than helping, you have to know that you have to be able to let them go because someone better equipped will come in and take the place. Because if you let someone just drain on your office all the time, it's going to hurt your office overall.