I own a mini e commerce and live selling business and I’m about 6 years in, the first 4 years it was just me- working 60+ hours a week to build this business up to the point where I could afford to start hiring the help I needed. I now have 3 employees, my team leader, who is in her second year with me, and 2 who work under her who are at about 1.5 years. My TL is paid pretty well, $22/hr - no education or experience - we are in TX, plus at 1 year she got front loaded PTO-5 days and PSL- 3 days along with 6 company holidays. She is early 30’s with no kids and lives at home with her parents. Well, she burned through all the paid time off and sick leave by 2/9 this year - she was out with the flu for a week which accounted for 5 of them… since then she has called out 5 more times in the months leading up to September when she asked for a week off (unpaid) then she called out the day she was to return from vacation on 9/23 and 3 more times since then. I feel this has also had an effect on the other employees who also have had 13 absences each this year with 4 each being in the past 6 weeks. My TL’s absences also happened to occur on the 2 live selling days of the week for 2 weeks straight after the vacation week which left me with zero sales made for all three weeks. I sat her down today to talk to her about her attendance and let her know that she is well past our attendance policies 6 unplanned absence mark where termination may happen. She was pretty combative about it, in her opinion she “had legit reasons every time” and that her attendance was perfectly normal, she was visibly annoyed that I had sat her down to talk about it. I told her when she has a company she can set her own policy how she likes but mine is not up for negotiation and further absences this year will lead to termination. However, considering her view of what is acceptable, her reaction and her position as a lead I left the conversation feeling like it may be best to let her go.