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People In HR Are Sharing 35 Weird And Creepy Things They’ve Seen On The Job
The role of a Human Resource specialist is often a misunderstood role. What do they do all day? Just sit at their desk filing papers and chatting all day long? Far from it. HR people have to tackle all kinds of situations, and it’s usually stuff that they don’t include in the employee handbook.
To find out more about it, one Reddit user asked HR people about the weirdest stuff they had to handle in their line of work. The answers range from all over the place and show just how chaotic it can be managing people at work. How do you politely and professionally tell someone that what they’re doing is completely inappropriate for work and they don’t even realize it? Only our HR people will know.
Check out the top ones collected by Bored Panda and share your weird work stories too!
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"I've been waiting for this one. Two words: d**k tag. I don't know who started d**k tag, but it became a very popular game very quickly. The whole gist of d**k tag was pretty simple. You popped out your d**k and showed it to another employee. Whoever saw the d**k was 'it.' In order to stop being 'it,' you had to pop your d**k out and show it to someone else. I had heard whisperings, but people denied that it was a thing. I never witnessed anything, so the only thing I could do was to send out an email to remind people of appropriate office behavior. D**k tag continued, until one day it was taken too far. One of our managers — we'll call him Kyle — was an idiot. Kyle decided that the best way to welcome a new employee into the company was to induct him into d**k tag. So, while this poor guy was filling out his new-hire paperwork, Kyle pulled down his pants, dumped his d**k on the table, and yelled, 'YOU'RE IT!'"
"Around the same time, multiple employees were in our parking lot also playing d**k tag. Our lovely and sweet accounts payable lady, Ronnie, was walking into work and got caught in the d**k tag crossfire. This woman, who was super religious and had been with the same man her entire life, clutched her pearls at the sight of a barrage of d**ks coming at her. Ronnie walked into my office like she had seen the devil himself, and before she even got a chance to explain, the new guy walked in after her, handed me back the new-hire paperwork, told me what happened, and said this probably wasn't going to be a good fit for him. Ronnie then launched into her story about the indecency and how she wasn't sure she'd be able to look her husband in the eyes after what she saw. After soothing Ronnie, I called Kyle up, and he explained his side, the rules of the game, and ratted out everyone who was playing. Kyle was fired. That Friday, a company-wide memo went out and banned d**k tag. We had multiple training sessions on sexual harassment, and I had to tell 50 grown men that it's not OK to take your penis out at work."
The key to understanding the role of a Human Resource specialist is in their title. Businesses want to look at their employees as more than just that, they want to look at them as… a human. Can you believe it? But in all seriousness, it means looking at the people in their employment (or potential employment) as a resource worth investing in.
Until we’re all replaced with robots that never get tired, demotivated, or run into arguments and strife with their co-workers, looking after the humans, uh- people in the workplace is essential to a healthy and productive environment.
Worked in HR for a couple years now, mostly for large firms managing facilities within properties. One of the strangest cases was brought about because a Client asked us to review CCTV footage as he'd driven past the office late at night and noticed the motion sensor lights inside going on and off and was concerned there had been a break in.
Turned out our night security officer who's primary role is to monitor cameras from the control room was skipping up and down the corridors cause "he felt too full of energy" and had to get it out of his system somehow.
Watching the footage of him skipping featuring the occasional star jump through vacant corridors for 20 minutes at 1am really made my day
Interestingly, the roles of an HR specialist will be supplemented (but not replaced) by Artificial Intelligence more often in the future. Some examples include learning-AI’s to track employee performance or assist with the hiring process. According to Gartner’s 2019 research and projections in the workplace, approximately 17% of their respondents already use AI to support their HR department, and these numbers are expected to increase to 30% by 2022.
The reasons for doing this are the same for any kind of automation process. If there’s a way to complete manual and repetitive tasks in a better way, it should be done. These productivity tools can help businesses to save time, and in effect, money too.
I used to work in HR at a large corporation.
There was a big HR back-office team doing a lot of processing and data entry including employee's bank info for their salary. It just so happened that on the same day two employees with the same name started, and a huge clusterf**k ensued.
First the banking information was entered for the wrong person, one of them realised and had it corrected, but the other wasn't fixed so both salaries went to one person
The unpaid guy started refusing to come to work, but payroll said that the payment cleared and the account was in his name, so he was terminated for refusing to come to work.
He kept calling and the HR support team kept misidentifying him as the other guy who was still working for us, so when they raised a ticket to get his bank information changed they changed the info of the wrong guy, so now the guy who doesn't work for us is getting paid the salary of a guy who does.
When this was finally worked out the first guy was given his job back, but on his first day back security misidentified him and issued him a badge of the other employee, so now he was clocking hours for the other guy and not getting paid again because he never clocked in for himself.
It took about 3 months for all this to be worked out. Moral of the story is use a f**king email address to identify people
I've shared this story before, but...
An employee (from a different country and culture) never showered. He said that whee ehe comes from, they shower about once a month. His coworkers complained of the smell, which was gaggingly offensive. His supervisor eventually sent him home and told him he couldn't come back until he showered.
It was a union business and the guy filed a grievance with the union steward. They came into my office, which has a camera because it was where we had all major disciplinary meetings.
The moment they walked into my office, I almost gagged from the smell. It was suffocating. I had two chairs in front of my desk and I asked them to take a seat while I went and pulled his file. When I left, I pulled the door closed behind me.
I went to my boss's office, told him the situation and asked him to pull up the camera in my office. It was hilarious.
The Union steward was holding his shirt over his nose and telling the guy "Goddamn dude! You're killing me! You've got to take a shower!".
After letting them marinate in the stench for about 10 minutes, I went back in and the Union steward retracted his greviance and agreed to send the guy home.
The reasons for doing this are the same for any kind of automation process. If there’s a way to complete manual and repetitive tasks in a better way, it should be done. And as soon as possible because these productivity tools can help businesses to save time, and in effect, money too.
And another part of this involves decision-making. When comparing candidates for a job or trying to choosing the best course of action for a business, it’s always easier to let someone else do it. Using statistics and making a pragmatic decision is simple for a computer, and it’ll only take them a few moments to make their calculations compared to an HR specialist who already has a lot on their mind.
Former HR here. A woman once complained that someone in her department kept meowing and it was getting on her nerves. I asked the meowing woman to come to my office. I said “you’re not in trouble but apparently you keep meowing and an employee asked us to address it with you”. Her response: “this is america, I have freedom of speech” and “what happens if she sees a cat in a commercial and the cat meows, does she get mad at the cat?!” To which I replied, “well no, because it’s a cat. It’s expected to meow”. This went on for sometime until she agreed to stop meowing. There was no reason for the meowing. She was just meowing.
I used to work at a staffing agency that placed people at manufacturing positions. Everyone had to be drug tested at the office as part of the orientation. If the pee cup came back as “inconclusive”, we’d send the potential hire to a medical lab. They would take another drug test and the lab could determine if the person was on a prescription or using illegal drugs (and therefore, not eligible for hire).
So one guy failed his drug test at the lab. He came back to the office claiming that it wasn’t his fault. He explained that he was riding in a car and he stuck his head of the the window. Then, when the car passed under a bridge, someone threw a bunch of cocaine off the bridge, it hit him in the face, and he accidentally inhaled it.
However, nothing can take the human element out of choosing the best person for the job. A lot of it depends on the character that a potential candidate may bring to the team, and their chemistry within it. Sherrie Haynie, the director of The Myer’s Briggs Company (based on the personality-type testing framework of the same name), said that there’s more to a candidate’s personality than just getting along well with others.
She told Forbes about her belief in using personality tests to support the hiring process. She said, “Personality is made up of psychological preferences, temperaments, and predispositions. And while many factors influence us (including social and cultural pressures), personality is a major force behind our habits, behaviors, and attitudes. So it’s not surprising that some personality assessments can be a strong predictor of job performance.”
The family of the guy who passed away came to speak to us (it was in a factory environment). To get pension docs etc. We sent them away with a to do list.
1 hour later reception pinged us saying Mr Xs family was here. Strange. The documents take a few days to get.
Nope. New family.
Yup. The guy had 2 different families.
Who were about to have a fun surprise
Two people had cut a hole in the wall between their offices. They pushed their filing cabinets to hide the hole on both sides. Cleaning staff was asked to deep clean the offices one day and they found the hole.
Both parties involved were married, not to each other. They were having sex through the wall.
But at the end of the day, it’s all down to an HR specialist to decide whether or not a candidate is a great fit for the company. Knowing a person well enough also makes it easier to tackle any issues they might have at work too. Although you can never tell exactly what you’re getting yourself into, based on the stories that we see here.
The maintenance guy had been living up above the ceiling of the building. He had built a little cubby living area with electricity and a small fridge and everything.
I got a call from a woman I'd never spoken to, asking when she could start. She'd received a job offer after interviewing with a manager for a customer service position, she told me, but no one ever contacted her about a start date or pre-employment processes like a background check, and it had been a month.
After a lengthy investigation, it came out that this manager had fabricated a job opening and offered it to this woman in an attempt to impress her. She quit her job (but, it should be noted, did not respond to the manager's romantic overtures) with the expectation of joining my company. She got a settlement (with an NDA) and the guy who "hired" her got fired.
There was also a guy who faked his son's death for some extra PTO.
Wow. At least she got compensation and he got fired, but what a creep
I had to see a video of a guy who s**t himself during work while running to the restroom because his manager wouldn’t let him leave a meeting early... the guy had IBD and the manager knew this, so the video show him running down the hall and literally a few feet from the restrooms, he starts s**tting himself and you see it coming down his leg pant. He looked to be in pain cause he kinda collapsed, and then got back up. People were baffled when they saw this live lol Manager = Fired, so definitely the weirdest s**t I’ve ever seen, literally.
Someone murdered their husband then called the next day from jail and asked our department for bereavement pay.
One of the candidates I was interviewing via Skype
answered the phone while in his boxers and a tank top then stood up to grab his blazer that was probably about 3ft away. I had to see him in his stretched out boxers
Had a adult site up and open during a shared screen trial (to see how well he can use the digital classroom). I had to remind him I can see his screen he goes "oh yeah sorry" next instead of just closing it from the corner of his partially hidden window he clicks open the window in full view THEN closes it
That was nice
Call center employee calls HR to complain about their supervisor: “He’s abusive... he won’t even let me leave my desk.” Supervisor calls HR to complain about employee: “can you please tell ____ that she’s allowed to leave her desk. Oh my god... she’s s***ting in her trashcan!”
It may sound humorous, but there was significant mental issues at the heart of this.
I worked in the head office for a company on the south coast of England. Each year we had people come down from London to perform the annual audit. I don't know what country they were born in or anything about their upbringing but after a couple of days the cleaners came to me as part of the facilities team and told me that rather than use the toilets normally some of the auditors were wrapping their faeces in toilet paper and leaving it in waste paper bins. Our HR department was so worried about upsetting their "traditions" it was allowed to carry on until they left. We often referred to HR as Human Remains.
Guy came in to the interview in sweatpants and a hoodie, and said he didn’t need the job because of how much money he was making illegally, but he wanted to have a job so the IRS didn’t get suspicious.
Weirdest part is I don’t live in America, I very much doubt the IRS cares about Canadian tax returns.
Actually, they do. American citizens working abroad still have to file with the IRS and you do need to submit copies of your tax withholding and salary information from the country you work in. The US is one of the few countries to do this.
Got a call from our office in India that staff who supported the night shift were running a brothel from the office. They didn't know they couldn't do that.
Still fired. They tried to appeal the decision. Did not work.
I worked closely with HR in a call center. You'd get some crazy stuff.
Guy that carried a cooler every day was wiping s**t on random walls and desks. It was his s**t in his cooler. We thought it was his lunch. He got caught when he wiped it on the front desk directly in sight of the camera.
Another guy had a colostomy bag that he refused to empty when it got full. You would find these trails of liquid poo randomly and we had to throw out four chairs that he ruined. He was fired quickly and tried to claim discrimination because he was a veteran.
You'd also get a crazy amount of period stains on chairs. Look, it happens, but when it's the same few people (and we have free sanitary supplies in the bathroom!) you know they just don't care.
Midway through an interview, the applicant reached into his briefcase, pulled out a beer, cracked it open, and took a sip. I guess he figured that he was not a good match for this particular job and the interview was over. He then made a bit of small talk and left.
I once had a temp job in HR. I was scanning lots of old personnel files, and the one perk of the job was reading old complaints against people. The best one I came across was a mediation caused by one member of staff accusing another of witchcraft.
Personnel files and complaints are the best reads. Some of them are so petty and many ridiculous. And I say this as a historian who loves digging through Soviet party records. My favorite this month is a Gulag prosecutor who signed his own arrest warrant in a corruption proceeding ( for stealing goods from Latvian prisoners to resell) either because he was that grossly incompetent or he just signed things without reading them.
Worked for a large trucking company. Every employee would get a present on their birthday (in the mail) and their names on the video board (this weeks birthdays are:).
A guy called to ask if his name could not be on the board. Reason : his twin brother murdered his parents and he did not want to be reminded of his birthday
I was interviewing a candidate via Skype, and their connection was not very clear. There was often a little bit of lag in his response, and there was almost no sync between the video and audio. He also thought over each question for some time before answering. I offered to reschedule the call when he had better network connection, but he insisted on finishing the call since he'd taken the day off for the interview. After I asked one of the questions, I told him to take his time and think over the answer. Suddenly, there seemed to be a spike in the internet connection, and I could clearly hear someone sitting behind the laptop, coaching him on what to say
We had a manager who was having an affair. To hide the affair from her husband, she had saved her boyfriend’s phone number in her phone as the name of a male subordinate. Well, one day the husband was looking at her phone and found the text conversation with her boyfriend. He was pissed, and since she had saved the number of the boyfriend under the name of an employee, he came to the office to fight the male employee. Imagine being the male subordinate and getting an ass-kicking over something you have no knowledge of
One of our former VPs was let go due to improper use of a company card. What did she buy? A boob job. You can’t make this s**t up
The new receptionist was coming in every morning and opening up programs/documents to make it look like they were busy, and they'd sit with one hand on their mouse and one hand on their keyboard and stare blankly at their screen for 8 hours a day and not do anything. They'd also consistently pick up the phone and hang it up without saying anything so that it would stop ringing.
I sat in on their termination, and the employee started screaming at the manager about how they were doing an amazing job, and they had to give them another chance... I was 100% confident that they were just trying to get some easy money and wouldn't be surprised that they were finally getting fired, the whole thing was just bizarre.
I'd prefer to do boring work than sit there with no kind of mental activity all day.
An IT guy who worked the overnight shift (because he was doing support for our Asia/Europe regions) got written up for improper use of company systems. He had dozens if not hundreds of Google image searches related to foot fetish stuff. Like insert celebrity here feet along with other random stuff like “cute toes”, etc
Like dude...YOU’RE IN IT. You KNOW this stuff is tracked and that your boss could easily monitor it.
Oh lord, I remember running through some reports on the computer before a visit from the regional manager and found a stash of kink photos where the reports were filed. Turns out my part-timer had some rather specific interests. I told him that I had found some pictures and deleted them before they had been found by the higher ups, and that in future he should not use company property to pursue his "interests". He was very grateful that I wasn't a complete ass about it. I was grateful that the regional manager didn't find the pictures!
What an idiot... I type as I'm reading and commenting on my computer at work. lol :-/
This really depends on a few things. When an eymployee starts to miss deadlines or just not doing their job well, their line manager can ask to look at internet history with the permission of the HR & Legal dept usually to find out what's going on. I get the feeling this guy wasn't doing a lot of tasks and this was an excuse to weed him out. The guy works in IT, he would have been called in for a chat, and just as he enters the office, his colleagues would have been instructed to lock his account followed by a change of the admin password and he would never have been allowed back to his desk to clear it.
Obviously not a very good IT guy. Arrogant little prig most likely assumed he was the only one who could delve into the system.
I started working in HR-ish functions shortly after college. It took a few years before I got to make hiring decisions, but it happened eventually. The first position I was to fill was an Admin for a client's leadership (middle manager over ~300 people). After interviews we ended up with a super bright and professional lady. Her fake name for this story will be Sarah. Sarah always had the biggest smile, was super positive, and everyone loved having her on the team.
Three months later, the client calls me. "painturd, we need to talk about Sarah." "Is everything ok?" "No, it really isn't. Do you have her emergency contact information? You need to get in touch with her mom. She needs to come to the hospital. We are heading there now too." Several hours of juggling calls to family, the General Manager, our parent corporation's Legal and HR teams, and a federal investigative body ensued. Sarah had jumped off a seven-story parking garage, which was on site at the federal facility we were supporting.
TL;DR: My first hire killed herself at work, triggering a federal investigation.
I was a recruiter, and you would be shocked to see what some people actually have as their personal email. Most people have come around to using just their name, but then every once in a while you'll have to verify that "brownglitter69" is in fact how they would like to be contacted.
One of our customers has 'spicedonkey'. To this day, I really want to know the story behind this.
A guy who was so high at the time of his interview that he forgot who he was meeting and why.
Our applications say we do not hire violent felons. A guy checked that he was felon. When I asked him about it, he said it was for domestic violence and stalking. I asked him if he read the part about us not hiring violent felons and he just couldn’t connect the dots. It’s got violence in the name of the charge, dude.
Literally had a guy complain, “How come we only have overtime when YOU want it?!” “You” meaning the company. That’s how jobs work, man.
In casual conversation a guy told me the “hilarious” story about how his girlfriend got an IUD without his permission so he ripped it out by the strings.
Had a mom show up on behalf of her son for the interview.
The HR person from my previous job told me about having to fire an employee who consistently went into the employee fridges and stole the cheese off people's sandwiches. HR had gotten several complaints of food tampering, so they watched the video of the area and finally figured out who the ‘Cheese Bandit’ was
I investigated a performance issue where an older nurse decided to give a wedgie to a younger nurse whose thong was showing. The older nurse had no remorse and justified the action because they thought the thong was inappropriate
It's not super weird but just the idea that this guy thought this would work still confuses me.
I worked at a corporate office for a line of dental brands. We had all the upper mgmt of course, then a call center, tech, insurance, and HR on the same floor. It was a pretty cool place tbh.
Anyway, I ran background checks on folks as part of my job. We had a 40ish Male come in and apply for insurance dept. We ended up deciding he was worth hiring so we start the paperwork. We get his social, his birthday, etc. Ran the check, came back with his name, clean record, everything seemed fine... but upon our last look through of his background check we notice his birthday is completely different. And not just like a number off or anything but more like a 25 year difference with a completely different month and day. Turns out the dude used his dad's SSN on his app because he had a deeeeeeep history with fraud and the like. Definitely dodged a bullet there.
So a guy with a history of fraud committed fraud and identity theft on a job application? Sounds like HR needed to make a phone call to the local constabulary. I'm all for giving someone a second chance because we all make mistakes. People should be encouraged to do better for themself and the world. However, the serial offender needs to be reminded of consequences when they do it again before they hurt another person.
My dad works in HR. He just told me about a day when they had to layoff about half of the company. It was crazy and there were a whole lot of moving parts that day. Unfortunately, in all the craziness, no one remembered to tell this one new hire that sadly the position he was hired for was no longer affordable. So he came in to the office only to see everyone clearing out their desks and leaving. And then...he got laid off. An hour into his first day.
He said the guy understood, but it was the most horrible he ever felt for someone in his life.
A guy pinned a real wasp to his resume to prove he was 'metal'. This was for a software developer job, but most of his resume was about his band.
You're only real metal if you have at least one thumbtack in your eyeball.
Former hiring manager in a small agency, specializing in tech. I was in charge of dealing with designers and visual artists.
Sheer incompetence was pretty much the default: Roughly 80% of the CVs I got were idiots with photoshop who think they are the next Stefan Sagmeister. That was normal.
I was tasked with finding candidates for a senior motion artist position. Pretty cool stuff, but also supposed to be fairly easy: the list of requirements was very clear, and largely technical.
I then received the CV of a potential candidate, lets call them Kevin. It lists relevant positions and education. No list of tools, nor link to showreel, but, I mean, the fact they suck at writing CVs doesn't mean they suck at what they do. Right?
I mail them back asking for one. They reply, asking he doesn't have one.
Allright, then can you send samples of things you made? Doesn't have to be commercial work. Just anything showcasing their abilities.
I get a reply. With files attached.
It's PowerPoint.
With WordArt. And the built-in effects.
Puzzled, I asked Kevin if he sent me wrong contents. Weird accidents happen. It wouldn't be the first.
"I also know Word, if it helps."
Ha ha I'm a graphic designer working professionally for 16 years. I can't tell you how many people I have encountered, either not in the industry at all or sometimes actually IN the industry, who had no idea about the basics of graphic arts. Low res clip art in a ppt would pop up more often than you'd think lol It's alarming. and also, why don't I get paid more? ha ha
I work HR for a call center. Entire company has around 500 employees, maybe 250 of them are in the call center. Entry level work, tiny bit more than minimum wage. A girl started her first week doing really well and then week two got really weird. She walked into the CEO's office (on another floor in the building) WHILE HE WAS MEETING WITH SOMEONE, to demand that he buy her a dog because she thought having a companion would improve her work performance. That was the entirety of her rationale.
Edit: Many are asking. No she did not get the dog. I wasn't in the room with the CEO so I don't know exactly how he handled it. He is an exceptionally nice human being so I assume he handled it kindly. Though, I mean it made its way back to HR pretty quick so he definitely told some people about it. My colleague spoke with her about it and was just like, no, thats not a thing wtf. she was fired soon after for unrelated reasons (attendance I believe). Also many are questioning if she had some kind of mental disorder. I have no idea.
We had a woman who was terrible at her job, always off sick, never met a deadline. Any way protocol was followed. Because some people had given her half decent staff reviews to get rid of her she called in the union to support her. This dragged the process. Then when she got the final papers she sent them back saying she couldn't be fired, she was pregnant. This woman was 54. It turned out she had frozen eggs so she defrosted them etc. The process proving no discrimination then began. Six months go by, she gets served again. We worked at an organisation, big building in manhattan hence terrible beaurocracy. Papers come back, that isn't me you've sent the documents to. Turns out she had provided a false passport when hired, she was actually in her 60s. In the end they gave her early retirement to get it over with
One of my relatives worked in tech support for a really high-profile company in Silicon Valley during the height of the dot com boom. Some guy who desperately wanted to work there was emailing his resume to HR one thousand times every day. Several times a day, the number of emails would get too overwhelming. So the people in HR would just select all the emails in the inbox and delete all of them, whether the emails were from the applicant or not. My relative had to show them how to filter emails from the applicant.
It always surprised me when someone would be shocked at something I took for granted, like sorting by column in Windows Explorer. But then again, most of the helpful tricks I ran across accidentally.
Years ago I worked HR for a retail store. A manager would always clock out on time however the alarm wouldn't be set until about 30-45 min after he clocked out. Since we had a lot of trouble with internal theft we assumed he was stealing. Loss prevention approved the installation of cameras across all stores but we were told not to talk about it to see if we could catch any internal theft. The way the ceiling was set up,the cameras weren't too obvious but if you knew what to look for it was quite noticeable. Anyway turned out this dude was banging a co worker who was 16 (he was 25 expecting his first child with his wife). I didn't see the footage but our regional manager of loss prevention did and had to turn it over the the police. The real kicker is the girls dad was a captain on said police force.
Edit: I'm not sure what happened to the guy unfortunately I didn't sit in when LP interviewed him. According to my District Manager the authorities were notified but I'm not sure if he was arrested after the interview was finished. We weren't allowed to discuss what happened but word got around.
This was in Texas and the age of consent is 17, and the female had just turned 16 a few months prior. As for her she officially "resigned" and last I heard she became a nurse
You can be sure he got arrested and has now his name in the sex offender register. And I'm sure that he moved to another state because his life was hell in his home town.
Not weird as much as kind of funny (and inappropriate). Was working in HR at a call center in the early 2000s. Got a visit from the IT guys one day letting me know that a guy in Quality Control had been visiting adult sites on his work computer. They gave me the report and I set up a meeting with him.
"So John...you've been visiting adult websites on the job."
"Well, you know how we do a lot of research...and...sometimes you just accidentally land one. It happens."
"John, you visited one particular site 27 times."
"Um....should I grab my things?"
"Yup."
Not HR but have been on teams to interview and have input on possible hires.
One standard question: "What would you do if your were having problems with a coworker?"
Answer's can include: "I would try and work it out" or "I would take it to a manager" etc.
His answer: "I'd take him out back and beat the s**t out of him."
He was surprised when he didn't get the job.
I’m not in HR but my sister-in-law used to be one for a large Canadian tech firm. An executive at the company got very drunk at a conference in Vegas and the company got a call from the hotel saying they’d have to pay for outside contractors. He had rubbed his poop all over the walls of his hotel room and the hotel cleaning staff refused to deal with it.
Hats off to the cleaning staff for refusing and for the hotel who didn't force their employees to do a disgusting job.
A guy came in dressed as a clown to drop off his résumé. He was carrying a large rubber fish.
I was a trainer and recruiter at a call center of about 150 employees for a few years. It was in a low-income city so we saw a lot of crazy s**t.
a woman who showed up for her first day in a white T-shirt and a pink bra that we could see through her shirt and flipped out when we talked to her about it.
A manager who would hit on every female employee under the age of 25. They all either quit or got into it and he ended up having multiple side chicks. His main girlfriend got promoted from his team into the payroll department because the company didn't want to address it or change their policy which didn't address office relationships. He was well into to his mid-forties.
My coworker, a male in his late forties who texted candidates after their interviews saying he would get them the job if they went out with him. Mind you this was for $10 an hour s**tty job but these girls were desperate. He ended up making so many women uncomfortable that a few that we hired ended up coming forward and the company actually fired him.
a weird employee who used to scratch his head so often that there would be flakes of skin all over his workstation and all of his co-workers that sat around him complained to me and I had to address it. Turns out it was a compulsion and he couldn't stop. (Edit: the part that bothered everyone about him the most was that he would scrape the dead skin flakes into piles and leave them on his desk. His black keyboard was almost white. He never put the piles on the floor or in the trash can that every employee was issued at their cubicle. You could literally see a white haze above his cubicle. Other people were freaking out because it was getting on their desks.)
An employee who had diabetes and who used to have medical emergencies in the middle of work. He would keep six cans of mountain dew on his desk to drink throughout his shift. We couldn't tell him to stop doing that even though it was obvious that he was creating his own health issues.
An employee who claimed to be friends with cardi B before she moved to our area from New York City. This girl told me that she and her ex-boyfriend had worked at a call center and had taken credit card info from hundreds of people and made good money doing it. Obviously we fired her and she was shocked. She was still in training when she told me this. I was a f**king HR member and training her and she said this in front of four other employees in training. Like seriously dumbass?
in that same training class I had an employee who had a stroke in the middle of our 4-week training course. my boss told me to fire him and let him reapply when he was able to speak again. I refused. we had to make reasonable accommodations for him and we actually had clerical positions that required no speaking but she wouldn't give one to him. That was the last straw and I left the company.
And then of course dozens of employees who didn't know how to use a computer, who didn't know how to right click, who used the caps lock key to type capital letters at the beginning of sentences...
Love the way the employer protects this man over and over... this is what's wrong with the world
I worked as an intern in HR, and we found out that a president of a small bank had been stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars and making fake 'loans' to clients. It only came to light after his wife and kids ordered Frozen on demand (charged to the bank) so many times that it flagged in the system as potential fraud. That's when we found the actual fraud
How many showings of "Frozen" does it take before it gets flagged as fraud? 2? 20? 200? I know a particular young woman who watched it back to back every day for what seemed an eternity. I have personally purchased at least 15 different versions (VHS, DVD, extended cut, box set, etc) of a certain documentary about a farm boy in a galaxy far, far, away.
I work for a software development consulting company where we go onto client sites and help them develop custom software. One dude, super nice, 7ish years of experience. Goes onto his first client with the company and all is good for about three weeks. Until the following happened in increased escalation every couple of days:
I don't think the manager likes me
The manager is badmouthing me to others
The manager isn't copying me in meetings, so I don't know they're happening and miss them
The manager is taking away my completed tasks from the board, so i don't look like I am being productive.
The manager is logging on to my computer remotely and reading my personal emails
the manager is changing my (consulting company, not client) timecards - which the manager has absolutely no access to.
Essentially it turned out that he had mental health challenges and thought the manager was sabotaging his every move on the client site. Te paranoia just kept going.
Unfortunately he got kind of belligerent at the end. I hope he got the help he needed, but it was super uncomfortable. How do you tell someone that their perception isn't reality?
We have two people with the exact same name, but in different departments. This still causes confusion sometimes, but the most awkward time was last year at the Christmas party. We have this annual 'employee of the year' award, and the name was announced before mentioning the department or other info, although I warned the MC not to do that! Let's just say the wrong one got the most excited until he realized it wasn't him
Tech company,
Guy harassed a customer at our own company's product showcase/conference. Customer complained and it went directly to the CEO. Guy was fired the next day.
His boss tried to argue it wasn't that big of deal and we shouldn't fire him and tried to leverage himself. "If he goes then I'll go."
Spoiler, they both went.
This was in the early 2000s, when people still sent paper applications - I worked for a gaming company, so we got a fair amount of unsolicited applications, usually young people trying to break into the industry. But this application letter was extra-special. It started with
"I am in the center of an international conspiracy."
Followed by two tightly printed A4 pages of the freakiest s**t imaginable - researcher, on to something, hunted by dark forces, agent of other unseen forces he fell out of favor with, and a few weird political tangents. Wanted a job with us because "he needed to lay low for a while before he could get out of the country".
We were suitably freaked out by the mere fact that he had our office address, chose not to reply and forwarded the whole thing to corporate HR.
If you worked for a game development firm, that might not have been a terrible hire. Creative people are often 'extremely creative.'
Hi. I'm not in HR but my mom has been for quite a while. A few years ago when my mom worked at an automotive plant, my mom had an issue with an employee who would clock in on time and then dissapear. She asked another of the floor employees if they had seen him and was told "he's in the parking lot." So, my mom and one of her co-workers went out to the parking lot and found the employee asleep in his car. Apparently, he'd been clocking in and immediately going out to his car for another hour or so of sleep for two weeks (I can't remember why it took this long for HR to find out). He didn't see a problem with it if he was clocked in and still on company grounds. Needless to say, they fired him but I'm sure he was fine with it since he could catch up on sleep now that he didn't have a pesky job getting in the way.
I used to work a technical role that required some night shifts once; we'd be paired on site for the night shift, one engineer and one customer services person. One time I got called in the middle of the night by one of the customer services staff, a woman I was friendly with who was upset and apologetic but didn't know what else to do but call me as the boss wasn't picking up. The engineer who was supposed to be on shift with her had turned up, logged in then disappeared. It had been 5 hours, multiple customers had issues that needed an engineer and were screaming at her etc. I came in and got everything sorted, went home and according to my friend the engineer on shift eventually reappeared looking bleary eyed. He'd gone off and found a quiet spot out of the way and gone to sleep for almost his entire 12 hour shift. HE DID NOT GET FIRED. What the actual...
I no longer work in HR or at this company, but it's my favorite story from my time there.
Our benefits team made the decision to eliminate reserved parking as lots of employees were frustrated when they walked past dozens of empty spots in the reserved lots every day. This new policy applied to all of the company's locations.
Of course, the benefits manager received hundreds of complaints in the first few days from people insisting they needed an exception for their own personal spot. The best reason by far was from one person who "needed a spot close to the door because they were terrified of bobcats". No other context. We didn't have bobcats near the corporate office so at first we thought they meant construction equipment? Turns out there actually were sightings of bobcats, like the animal, near this person's location.
Last I heard they were told to arrive earlier to get a closer spot and didn't get an exception.
My wife works in HR. She had to question a high ranking employee about an incident where a lower ranking employee - who was being talked to about her inappropriate wardrobe choices which clearly violated company policy - decided in an act of protest to take out her (quite large) left breast and smack it down on the table and ask him in her thick New England accent “is this too much cleavage for you?”
I was doing a Skype interview with a guy when I noticed he kept looking to the side of his room. When I asked him if he was alright, a bat flew in front of the camera. He immediately grabbed a broom and chased it around the room, whacking at it until he hit it. Then, we finished the interview."
Finally: "I worked as an intern in HR while I was attending college, and I remember one guy we interviewed had created his résumé on Google Docs. He had named the file 'f**king résumé,' which was prominently displayed in the top corner of the paper
I work at my family's business in the industrial sector, and HR is one of the hats I wear.
2018 was insanely busy for us, so we had to hire a staffing agency to get some General Labor guys in. It's a simple wax-on, wax-off kind of job.
The most memorable part of that hectic summer was one temp that the agency sent over for 3rd shift (Midnight-8AM). We will call him Bobby for this story. Bobby shows up wearing nothing but a pair of cargo shorts, so we had to provide pants, shirt, and steel toes. Come break time at 4, he decided to go out to the parking lot and scale the building (about 30 feet, probably climbed a tree or something), had a smoke and managed to turn the security camera away from the parking lot.
Bobby then walked away from the job and went home in the uniform and boots we provided for him. We assumed he wanted to break into some of the cars, but nothing was gone. Ended up costing probably $300 for training, uniform and just wasting our time.
TL;DR temp employee scaled the 30 ft building and played with the security cameras on his first day.
In a club I worked at in the 80s in Spain it was normal to have casual hires, money in pocket workers. One day a girl comes looking for work and to of the regular staff hadn’t turned up, so we put her in behind the bar with of our best waitresses, call her Vicky, to show her the ropes before it got busy. We had anticipated a slow weekday evening but thinks started to pick up we had to call in staff from other venues we had. Vicky told me the new girl was doing ok and was experienced so we open an extra bar an put here there. We kept an eye on her and she was doing great, turned out to be a great night. When we closed, I asked the floor manager to go and help her with counting the money etc. He calls me back on the walkie, no girl at the bar. She’d walked out and taken all the takings from the till with her. Never saw her again, could even remember her name.
I worked in HR and had to do investigations. Someone took a dump in someone else's lunch bag. The owner of the rather large and slightly green turd is still at large. Can't make this stuff up.
Cemetery keeper admits he buries animals that die in the cemetery in occupied graves. Police wont investigate as unlikely to be able to convict. Employer won't tackle as he is old and litigious. So someone's nanna is currently bunk bedding with a muntjac and apparently that's OK
We had a stair pooper. For years, someone would poop in one of the many stairwells in the giant distribution center every few months. We tried to set up cameras to catch said pooper, but to no avail. We haven't seen a poop for over a year, but are confident the stair pooper is still out there
I'm not in HR, but I have a weird HR related story involving this 6 pairs of brand new Levi's jeans I have.
My best friend works for this pretty big company and one day he gets approached by one of his bosses, who is in his late 40s. He asks my friend where he got his jeans because he liked then a lot and my friend tells him that they are just Levi's he got at the store in Wicker Park here in Chicago. He says cool and then my friend doesn't think about it.
That weekend he actually ends up at the Levi's store looking for a denim jacket. He spots his superior there shopping and they say hi. He told him that he came down to check out the jeans because he liked my friend's so much. They chat a little and my friend introduced his girlfriend and then they left the store leaving his boss to shop.
That Monday his boss approaches him and hands him a bag full of jeans. He bought a bunch of them at the Levi's store for my friend when he was there and wanted to give them to him. Keep in mind this is at the store itself so these jeans are full price of about $60 each. My friend said he couldn't accept but he insisted, so he reluctantly took them.
He gets back to desk and his coworker sees the jeans and asks what was the deal. He tells him about what happened, not saying who it was, and his coworker was like, "Was it_____?" My friend confirmed and his coworker said, "Oh yeah HR has a whole file on him. He's done this before with other guys. He bought me a bunch of jerseys last year."
So apparently this guy liked to buy gifts for his coworkers, all male and made most of them feel uncomfortable enough they went to HR about it, but he was big enough in the company and he never really did anything totally inappropriate, so nothing was ever done about it.
My friend didn't know what to do with the jeans, because he didn't feel okay with wearing them himself, plus only a couple of them sorta fit him, so I said I would take them. As you can see they are various sizes because the guy wasn't sure his exact size and just guessed around, but hey they were free for me.
I had two employees at the manufacturing site that I support that didn't get along. Nothing much ever came of it until one of the employees put in his two week notice.
On this second to last day of employment, he brought a garbage bag FULL of dog poop with him to work and dumped it on his coworkers car. I'm not sure where he got it from - he either collected it from his dogs for months, or he went to a dog park and just picked all of it up. The amount of dog poop covered the car from the front bumper to the rear window. The only part that wasn't covered was the trunk.
But surely it's just as gross to have to pick up and bag and transport and dump all that s**t? The lengths people will go to to get 'revenge', c'est incroyable 🤦♀️
I had to fire two employees for having sex on the roof of the warehouse. They were married, but not to each other.
They were just following the rules then. If you're having an affair, you can only shag on the roof. Surely everyone knows that.
I was supposed to conduct an interview with an applicant, so I sent them a text two hours prior as a reminder. This applicant came 30 minutes past his interview slot, and in that 30 minutes, I called and texted him to check his ETA, and all he said was that he was on the way. At the 30-minute mark, I called him again while standing outside of the office building. Well, there he was — smoking a cigarette. He turned to me, gestured at his cigarette, scowled at me, and gestured for me to wait. He didn’t get the job, and when we sent him the rejection email, he got upset and sent me a rude email and then proceeded to block my number
Not on HR but a guy that was aiming to get hired in the department that I work in sent his curriculum and the photo that he attached was of him chugging a Tonaya ( the most cheap drink you can find and is super trashy if you drink it too much you will go blind) and without a t shirt on.
I received a résumé covered in blood. The applicant attached a handwritten note to the résumé explaining that their printer had run out of ink, so they couldn't reprint.
One of the dumbest things, an employee that worked night audit at a hotel parked his car at the entrance and would occasional go out there to drink a bottle of vodka in full view of the cameras. He didn't even sit in his car to drink! Just grabbed the bottle out of the car each time and drank in the open. Seriously, he could have put it in a water bottle and drank at the desk and would have not been caught as soon as he was. If at all!
Overnight IT guy started working pantsless. He was the only person in the building, but it still didn't fly. After being warned, he did another shift in his boxers and hit canned.
The number of adults doing inappropriate and unhygienic things with poop is astounding.
Not HR, but when I worked for a global retailer, we had a shipper/reciever who was really charming, very fun to work with and also had a personal life that was very unstable. She was nice, but had a ton of drama at home due to drugs and alcohol. She had kids, and had a hard time making ends meet between substance abuse and minimum wage. Anyway, she was evicted from her home, and decided to move. She simply packed up and moved to a whole new city, hundreds of miles away. She needed work so she walked into the global retailers location in her new city, and asked the manager when she could start. The Manager was confused. She asked if they had received her transfer papers from the previous location, and was told no. She insisted she had transferred and the papers should be there. Her people skills were so good that she actually got a job there...and there were no transfer papers. She had simply abandoned her job, moved and talked her way into a position. HR nightmare.
Went to a company Christmas party once and saw a passing acquaintance very drunk and crying at a table. Turned out she had loved the stuffed mushrooms and eaten several before she realized they had chicken in them. She was a vegetarian.
HR departments are typically a bunch of BS. They are supposed to be in place to assist the employees of the company when they have issues. However, in my experience, they are really there to protect the company and it’s higher-ups. It’s particularly bad in the video game industry. If someone complains about a higher up they end up getting fired instead of HR performing their actual job and doing something that benefits the employee.
It is mindblowing to me how much power people think HR has. Guess what - HR is being paid by the exact same people you are. If a higher-up wants you gone, there is absolutely nothing HR can do about it. HR exists in an advisory role - that's it. HR's job is to make sure their company doesn't violate state and federal labor laws and to catch personnel problems that could effect performance or morale, but if the people who give them their paychecks disagree that a higher up is a problem, there is no way for HR to do what you evidentially think is their "actual job." They are not gods. They are not CEOs. They are not cops. They are being paid by the same people you are. That's it.
Load More Replies...
I once supervised a lady receptionist who was late to work every single day, demanded to take an hour break for lunch plus two 1/2 hour breaks just like everyone else, and she wanted to be able to go socialize with other employees. Except she was hired to work pary-time, which meant she spent very little actual time at her reception post and didn't understand what the big deal was!
We had a guy that would call out of work because he was drunk or high. Didnt take long before he was fired.
Everywhere i'd worked, as an IT guy through to manager to architect and board member - HR was always seen as "the" problem, rather than solving problems... then i did an MBA, expecting a different point of view.... nope - HR was still seen as the cause of way more issues than it solved. Remember, HR is there to protect the company - not the employees - sure, sometimes the goals coincide - but not often.
I can't be the only one who isn't buying some of these stories. D**k tag? Really?
I came here for the story about the guy in the hoodie with the illeagal money...where did that post go?
Quite a few people with poo issues. I'll share one from my experience. On a guys last day at work he decided to leave his own sample for us to find on a plate in the microwave after he'd set it for 5 minutes and walked out the door.
I was amazed by the times companies just relented and people got a break instead of due dilligence. 😲😳
The number of adults doing inappropriate and unhygienic things with poop is astounding.
Not HR, but when I worked for a global retailer, we had a shipper/reciever who was really charming, very fun to work with and also had a personal life that was very unstable. She was nice, but had a ton of drama at home due to drugs and alcohol. She had kids, and had a hard time making ends meet between substance abuse and minimum wage. Anyway, she was evicted from her home, and decided to move. She simply packed up and moved to a whole new city, hundreds of miles away. She needed work so she walked into the global retailers location in her new city, and asked the manager when she could start. The Manager was confused. She asked if they had received her transfer papers from the previous location, and was told no. She insisted she had transferred and the papers should be there. Her people skills were so good that she actually got a job there...and there were no transfer papers. She had simply abandoned her job, moved and talked her way into a position. HR nightmare.
Went to a company Christmas party once and saw a passing acquaintance very drunk and crying at a table. Turned out she had loved the stuffed mushrooms and eaten several before she realized they had chicken in them. She was a vegetarian.
HR departments are typically a bunch of BS. They are supposed to be in place to assist the employees of the company when they have issues. However, in my experience, they are really there to protect the company and it’s higher-ups. It’s particularly bad in the video game industry. If someone complains about a higher up they end up getting fired instead of HR performing their actual job and doing something that benefits the employee.
It is mindblowing to me how much power people think HR has. Guess what - HR is being paid by the exact same people you are. If a higher-up wants you gone, there is absolutely nothing HR can do about it. HR exists in an advisory role - that's it. HR's job is to make sure their company doesn't violate state and federal labor laws and to catch personnel problems that could effect performance or morale, but if the people who give them their paychecks disagree that a higher up is a problem, there is no way for HR to do what you evidentially think is their "actual job." They are not gods. They are not CEOs. They are not cops. They are being paid by the same people you are. That's it.
Load More Replies... I once supervised a lady receptionist who was late to work every single day, demanded to take an hour break for lunch plus two 1/2 hour breaks just like everyone else, and she wanted to be able to go socialize with other employees. Except she was hired to work pary-time, which meant she spent very little actual time at her reception post and didn't understand what the big deal was!
We had a guy that would call out of work because he was drunk or high. Didnt take long before he was fired.
Everywhere i'd worked, as an IT guy through to manager to architect and board member - HR was always seen as "the" problem, rather than solving problems... then i did an MBA, expecting a different point of view.... nope - HR was still seen as the cause of way more issues than it solved. Remember, HR is there to protect the company - not the employees - sure, sometimes the goals coincide - but not often.
I can't be the only one who isn't buying some of these stories. D**k tag? Really?
I came here for the story about the guy in the hoodie with the illeagal money...where did that post go?
Quite a few people with poo issues. I'll share one from my experience. On a guys last day at work he decided to leave his own sample for us to find on a plate in the microwave after he'd set it for 5 minutes and walked out the door.
I was amazed by the times companies just relented and people got a break instead of due dilligence. 😲😳
