If I discover an employee on a long and obviously non-business-related phone call, can I interrupt and tell the employee to hang up? Our policy does not explicitly prohibit personal calls, but is there some way to discourage them? — Anonymous
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Employees taking care of personal matters on company time is a perennial problem. We asked Sandra Rappaport for her thoughts on this particular scenario.
Employees who are not doing their jobs can be disciplined. If they talk on the phone for half an hour or take an extra-long break to talk on the phone, they can and should be disciplined for not doing their job.
If they are on their own time-such as their legitimate 10-minute break-I wouldn’t interrupt or listen at all to personal calls. But when they are supposed to be at work and everybody sees them talking on the phone for a half hour, they need to be told to get back to work. If they don’t, they can be disciplined for taking excessive break time.
Sandra Rappaport is a partner at the San Francisco office of law firm Hanson, Bridgett, Marcus, Vlahos & Rudy