Should I fire my NTU interns
I am getting complaints from my colleagues and boss that the interns are not responsive. Despite my repeated reminders and even going to the school’s internship office, the situation is not improving. They are on 10 week internship ending in mid July.
From time to time, the interns take long lunch breaks (2-3 hours) during working hours. My startup has a relaxed culture where we WFH 1-2 days a week. Despite this, the interns take long lunch breaks when they are in office. This is a very blatant misuse of the trust given.
The interns are slow to respond on whatsapp and do not acknowledge when work is assigned to them. This makes coordination difficult as they do not seem to value work as being important. They have ignored work assigned to them by my boss and other department heads until I had to call them.
The interns expect the supervisors and other company staff to match their timings. The interns seem to think we are their lecturers or school teachers and we must meet their expectations. They were late for an event and expected me and my colleague to wait for them.
Seeing that the interns were late and there was a long queue. Me and my colleague wanted to have an early lunch at HDL and didn’t mind treating the interns but the interns refused and made us go back to attend to them.
My colleague felt very offended and felt that the interns did not have respect for us. They have also forced me to give them an off on 29 May as it was results release day and threatened that they would not be in the mood to work.
Despite me telling off the interns on their work attitude, they have threatened me and told me to tell their school to release them early for internship if I am so unhappy. When I emailed the school, the school said they are interns and expect me to give more guidance and be understanding.
At this point, I feel more like a nanny and lecturer. Should I just fire these interns and get banned from the school or leave the interns to finish their internship.