The helper will finally be back on Friday - and we're going to have to have a long talk. The deal that I knew in advance from the start was that she went home to visit her folks two to three times a year. And that's what it's been until now - but in addition to going back already earlier, she went back for Thanksgiving for over a week, and Christmas (which she hasn't done before) for TWO weeks and now I've been informed her folks for Christmas gave the family a cruise - eight days at the end of January. I've kind of already told her that for those eight days she has to have someone on call to ship stuff - it's mostly because of Amazon - when those orders come in, you have to confirm them immediately and say you're shipping the same day - it gives you NO options to ship later and they send you harassing e-mails if you don't confirm in twenty-four hours. Needless to say, we've got eight orders that came in since she's been gone that haven't been shipped. If people start complaining we get negative feedback and Amazon could suspend the seller account and I just can't have this repeated stuff. So, unless we come to an understanding, I may be on the lookout for a new helper, which I'd hate to do after four years, but it's too much already.
