We have a situation with one of our sales people. The job is mainly an 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, Mon-Fri. However, we sometimes ask our salespeople to help out at night and to work in the office one weekend out of every six weekends. She has just told us she can not work at night and on weekends because she is starting her own company. My position is our job must come first. If she wants to spend her nights and weekends working on her new company she needs to make that her full time job. Is there a law that would keep us from terminating her?

Rita Risser replies:

You're right. An employee's duty of loyalty is to her primary employer. Tell her, in writing, that she must continue to work nights and weekends as needed for you, otherwise she will be terminated. Good luck.