30 Spicy, Wild, And Disturbing Workplace Incidents That HR People Had To Sort Out

I once asked a candidate to tell me about a time your attention to detail paid off. I hate that question, but it’s a standardized one that our department had to use for all positions.

The candidate said completely stone-faced: “I worked at Sears and would follow the black customers around to make sure they didn’t shoplift anything.”

There were 3 of us on the hiring committee, we all just looked at each other in disbelief and wrapped up the interview there. It’s been a running joke now about the worst possible answer you could give to a question. This person has actually applied to about 5 other positions since.

I had an applicant list JESUS as her references.

My mom doesn’t reddit so I will type this out for her:

“We received an outside email with a photo attachment, the photograph was of a nurse we employed with what looked like a glass pipe is some sort on her lap. The email alleged that she was an addict, we found out later it came from an ex-girlfriend she had just broken up with. It prompted us to go seek out the nurse, when we arrived at her desk she was on the phone with a patient but visibly nodding off. We requested she come to the HR office to with us to talk, then we confronted her with the allegation. She denied everything and agreed to a drug test. Instead of sending her to an outside lab we had one send technicians to our office building to administer the test, that’s when things went south. She began telling us she needed to go out to her car (we believe this was because she planned to use synthetic urine or someone else’s and us not sending her to an outside lab lost her the opportunity to do that) and we flatly told her that leaving the bathroom would be noted as a refusal to take the test which would mean an automatic termination. This woman proceeded to throw a tantrum on the floor of the bathroom for the next 7 hours of the day (we had to shut down that entire bathroom, other employees started a rumor we were holding a pregnant woman hostage) and at lunch time she demanded a meal. So I went to the cafeteria, purchased her a sandwich and drink, and then she at it on the bathroom floor!! After hours of tears and yelling 5pm rolled around, she calmly stood up and said ‘it’s the end of my shift so I’ll be leaving now’. We repeated to her that leaving would *still* be considered a refusal and grounds for immediate termination. At this time the technician (who had also been there watching all this for the last 7 hours) tried to intervene and talk some sense into her. Eventually she reluctantly agreed to a buccal swab rather than a urine test, and then she left for the day. Needless to say, the results we got back were Positive and she was terminated as well as reported to the licensing boards. I though that was the end of it until several weeks later when she called to complain her insurance card was no longer valid and she couldn’t pick up a prescription. This turned into an hour long discussion about how losing employment also means losing the benefits. “

I work in HR. Had an employee refer her bf (not 100% sure anyone knew they were dating, but they had a baby). So they work in the same building, but different areas. One day a new girl starts and he cheats. Find out him and new girl disappear at times. New girl harasses old gf (not sure if they really even broke up) and so the gf gets a peace order against the new girl. So we have to move the new girl to a different site. She quits and then the guy throws a fit and quits too. The gf eventually gets fired shortly as her work performance changes drastically.

Few weeks later I get employment verification request for the gf and the guy for a different state. I’m like....ok...

A year later he ends up murdering her and drives across numerous state lines with the toddler and drops the little one off with family back in our state. They eventually find him in a wooden area with a self inflicted gunshot wound.

Before they found him or the toddler I was made to deal with the FBI and local police as most of HR was new. This is when we discovered the managers had concerns about him. Might have been the one time I lost my cool with a manager. They never mentioned anything to HR about possible domestic violence.

We had a guy in one of our stores submit a grievance to us about how we were discriminating against him because we were giving a female 7 months pregnant colleague some extra breaks (she had a medical note confirming the reasonable adjustments needed) so she could sit down for an extra 5 mins every so often because he was unable to get pregnant so could not take advantage of the same extra breaks.

Didn't really know where to start with that one!

Government employer. Agency management fired a popular program manager with about ~250 employees under him who all love him. He's entitled to a public hearing about his dismissal if he desires, which he demands, after his HR meeting and his private hearing before the agency brass.

Everybody packs into the auditorium, all 250 of his employees there to advocate for him. His lawyer gives an opening statement about how he's been fired for caring too much and for refusing to cut corners the agency brass wanted cut and for protecting his people from politicians trying to score political points and blah blah blah. Cheers from the crowd.

Our HR director stands up. She's booed. She informs the hearing that they guy forged every single one of his employees' required-by-law assessment forms that determined raises and promotions. He forged the signatures of all 250 people there, and filled the forms randomly. She puts examples of the forgery up on screen. It's obvious. He ran out of time, and didn't want to get reprimanded for disorganization (a long running but minor problem with him), so he forged a s**t ton of government documents.

250 people walked right out of the hearing, FURIOUS. He hadn't told any of them the real reason he got fired! He told them it was random retaliation for being awesome. He knew the agency had all this evidence; it had been presented to him twice before and he had admitted he'd done it! It was INSANE. I guess he figured he had nothing to lose by punting. He became such a pariah he had to move.

As an office manager, I hired an employee and on the first day he was told to fill in his new hire paperwork. I put him in an office and come back in a while later and ask for the papers. He hands them over, and I scan them off to our HR dept. About twenty minutes later I get a call from our HR rep who thought it was pretty funny that he filled out their name as "Batman" on all his paperwork. So I have the guy re-do the paperwork, and he wrote his name as batman.

By the end of the day I had to get this new hire on a call with HR to have them explain to him that if he didn't fill out the paperwork correctly he'd be out of the job. I had him in my office about once a week for one ridiculous thing after another until one day he comes in and announces that he's changed his name, officially, to Batman. So, I get him the W-4 and paperwork, he fills it out and off we go. He's Batman now. HR comes back and says they need the proof of name change so that they can update his withholdings. I tell Batman he needs to provide that so we can finish updating him in the system. No problem, I'll bring it tomorrow he says. Three weeks go by where he's telling me and HR he forgot again, then it got lost, etc. Turns out, he'd never actually changed his name.

Manufacturing, long story short, the company uses some pretty dangerous equipment and machines. The manufacturing floor and warehouse had started to have some safety issues, so they decided to start doing random drug tests.

60% failed, including the best friend of the owner. This same person was responsible for several of the safety issues mentioned above and was directly responsible for two people being injured while on the job due to negligence on his part. So what did HR do?

Nothing. The owner was one of the people that failed.

My job is a constant HR nightmare. Boss has slept with coworker A. Coworker A is married to coworker B. Coworker B+A have been married (unhappily), for 10 years or something now, B has no idea, even though B invites boss over for dinner once every other week.

Boss is now dating new coworker (my best friend lol), and has already "gifted" her 2000$, despite another coworker suffering from cancer and barely being able to pay the bills when he was still working.

My other boss, who owns other lesser half of company has called me a narcicist in a meeting, told me literally "there are no such things as business ethics".

I was asked to translate for some visitors from the parent company at a celebration held by HR. I stopped translating around the time the director of HR started asking overly-personal, sexual questions to the two young HR "office ladies". A couple days later, during a private b******t session, I recounted the story to a friend who happened to be a director from the parent company. He put on his professional hat and asked me to write it up and submit a complaint to the parent company's HR.

Nightmare ensued. Local head of HR had been in charge of the sexual harassment avoidance training that had narrowly saved them from lawsuit. CEO of local company insisted that I bring the story out in public and talk to the director of HR "like an adult". Parent company HR brought in HR from another local subsidiary to perform an investigation. It became painfully obvious who the whistleblower was.

Nothing came of the investigation that I heard about, but the next year was made to be a living hell for me by the local company. Even the office lady who had been the subject of the sexy inquisition resented the fact that she was in the center of a controversy.

I left that company as soon as I possibly could and was not saddened to hear of their bankruptcy and partition a couple of years later (they had other "issues" as well).

TL;DR Got harassed out of my job by HR after reporting HR director for sexual harassment.