Cafe Conversations

Being the boss doesn't mean all my fun interactions are only with employees. Yesterday was a really snowy day and the roads were atrocious. We expected to have a bunch of call off yesterday but we only had a few. I was lucky enough to get the best one. He wasn't my direct employee, he worked in another person's department, and he is damn lucky for that fact

Me: Yeah, what is it?
Employee: I'm not coming in today.
Me: Oh,
Employee: Yeah, the roads are horrible, nobody has plowed, and it isn't worth 40$ a day for me to bother coming in.
Me: Okay, you are going to have to hold for a minute

At this point I transferred him over to the manager of the book floor. I was so tempted to just say "Well, you aren't worth 40$ a day so don't bother coming back in." Unfortunately that would have been overstepping my bounds so I transferred him over to the book floor manager where he proceeded to repeat himself. Can you believe that? Now we expected call offs so if he just stated his case we would have been fine with it but now he has himself labeled as a malcontent. What an idiot.