Having a Human Resources department is essential to make sure the day-to-day operations of a company flow correctly. Even if someones the complaints can be a little on the dumb side.
Emply
What Convinced Him To Say That?
“I used to work at a small software company in the early 90s that was bought by a bigger company. We were about 20 people and merged with a company of 130, so we moved into their downtown office from our little suburban hole in the wall at an industrial park. At our little company, we were pretty casual about everything, and the company we merged with thought they were still in the 80s from an office culture perspective. This meant no business casual, clock in and out, timesheets, memos, the whole nine yards. It was quite a culture shift, but we adjusted well enough.
But this one guy, who I will call ‘Morton,’ was an oddball at the best of times. He was very abrasive, but he did know what he was doing, so for the most part we just left him to his own devices in a corner and gave him tasks to write code, and it worked well enough. One of his many quirks was he didn’t spend a lot of time at his apartment, and when we were at the industrial park, he had all his mail delivered to the office. At the time nobody cared, but when we moved in with the new parent company downtown, all the mail went through reception and he was told to stop doing that. He did for the most part but forgot to inform a couple of places about the change in address again after he was told to stop getting mail at the office.
One day, a letter from the tax office arrives for him personally, and one of our receptionists accidentally opened the letter since the envelope it came in was identical to the envelope the company gets literally thousands of other pieces of mail from the government offices every year, so total honest mistake. The receptionist took it downstairs to Morton – who sits just over from me – and reiterated the policy about no personal mail to the office. Then, she explained she opened his mail by mistake and handed it to him. Morton lost his mind. He figured she did it on purpose to ‘teach him a lesson’ and just went off on a minutes-long screaming rant. Eventually, our boss came over and calmed him down, but the receptionist was now extremely upset. She went to HR and a couple of hours later, there was a meeting set to discuss ‘The Incident.’
Morton, his boss, the receptionist, and the HR person all went into the meeting room and were in there for about 20 minutes. Everything looked cordial and nothing out of the ordinary. Suddenly the door opened and the head of HR directed Morton to leave the office immediately and announced he was no longer employed by us. Morton, looking all mad, grabbed his jacket and stalked out, never to be seen by us again.
A few minutes later, we talked to the receptionist and found out the meeting was going well, Morton was being given a written warning for continuing to break the policy on mail at work and just given a talking to, not a warning, over the shouting fit he had. Seemed reasonable enough.
At the end of the meeting, everyone shook hands, and then for who knows what reason, Morton (who at this point I should probably mention is 6′ 4″ tall) leaned over the tiny receptionist during the handshake and said, ‘You’d better not walk out to your car alone tonight.’
Insta-FIRED. And to this day we have no idea what the heck possessed him to do that. Maybe he was trying to make a stupid joke and his failure to read the room was profound, maybe he was serious. Whatever he was toast.
And we took turns walking the receptionist out to her car in small groups for a month, just in case.
Never heard from him again.”
She Was Finally Gone
“I was working as a Teller Manager in a small regional bank. My branch had six small colleges within a 30-minute drive. The company liked to hire college students to work as tellers, because they usually didn’t want to work full time, and with their somewhat random availability, it was easy to schedule even the unpopular shifts. All of the tellers in my branch were college students.
I got a call from the regional HR Manager, he was transferring a teller to my location from another branch (across town) who had been nothing but a headache. I was to document every single thing this teller did wrong, no matter how minor the infraction was. Apparently, she had ticked off all of her coworkers thereby filing HR complaints against all of them. I’ll call her ‘TT’ (Transferred Teller) from here on.
I was able to get more detail out of one of her managers. TT was a student at one of the local colleges, but her only hobbies were riding her horse and going to her church. The only things she ever wanted to talk about were her horse and her beliefs. Talk about anything else and she’d find a way to connect the topic to violating her beliefs. Criticize her, or talk about something that she wouldn’t do, and she’d file a harassment complaint.
TT was transferred to my branch, and on her first day, she went off on another teller for talking about a date said teller’s boyfriend had taken her on. The next day, she filed her first HR complaint against one of my staff for talking about using a certain famous dating app.
The employee handbook said, in summary, on the topic of harassment, what counts depended on what offended the most easily offended person present, so watch your mouth and where you talked. I pulled each teller into a one-on-one meeting, walked them through the sections of the handbook on harassment, and warned them to be careful of what they discussed where. I did not call out TT, but everyone guessed who we were talking about. A word about her had made its way around the grapevine.
Over the course of the next couple of weeks, she filed a new complaint roughly every other day. All of the complaints were for coworkers talking about or doing, normal things for 18 – 22 year-olds, such as a coworker went to a party and had a one-night stand; saw a coworker hug her boyfriend when he brought her lunch; a coworker wore a blouse that showed a bit of cleavage; a coworker refused to get up early on Sunday to come to church with her.
Morale was low, everyone was stressed coming in every day, most of the staff were refusing to talk to TT. I was grumbling to the HR Manager, who just answered everything with ‘document her infractions.’ So I was writing up every minor mistake, categorizing them, and for each category, I think I had enough to start composing a formal write-up and submitting it to HR for approval. I wish I could remember how many I wrote.
Was sure we’d be stuck with TT for months before I had enough tardies or drawer errors for HR to be willing to fire her. But after about a month, she made the error we needed. There’s a special group that’s well known in our state, and the group’s HQ is in our city. The group’s leader occasionally would come into my branch, for some reason he liked dropping off deposits and transfers himself. It didn’t take much to get him preaching on a topic. Everyone would just smile and nod along while finishing his transaction. But, TT couldn’t do that.
He came in to run a transaction. She called him next out of line. While running his transaction, she recognized the name of his group. They started talking, then arguing, then she was yelling at him. Unfortunately, I was in the back, so I missed this. Fortunately, I was in the bank, so it went on long enough her customer took offense. She was dragged into the back to separate them. He filed a complaint, which I wrote up as an official customer complaint. Those get reviewed by a VP and the Operations Director, but I also CC’d HR Manager.
The harassment of a commercial customer with a few million on deposit was sufficient for HR to terminate her the next day.”
Caught On Camera
“I managed this smaller company and also served as the ‘HR guy.’ Had this one employee who needed rides to work for a short while, so I’d pick him up when he needed one.
One day, I go to pick him up and as we are driving away, he very calmly tries to explain that one of the employees of the company we were servicing had approached him, saying another one of our employees basically cornered her in the break room. He kept trying to get close to her, flexing by saying he had family who was higher-ups in the company she worked for, and kept trying to ask where she lived. There was more to it that I can’t quite remember but basically, he was hitting on her.
Once he had said ‘trapped her in the break room,’ I u-turned and sped back to the site, running frantically inside and finding the girl, who I actually knew from high school somewhat vaguely. I pulled her aside and asked about what happened. She repeated basically the same thing to me. Thing is, this guy is married but the way she quoted him, it definitely sounded like she was telling the truth. And we had zero problems up to this point. I had no reason to believed she would just do this out of nowhere. I apologized profusely and told her she would never have to see him here again, she was very kind and understanding.
With the other employee still in my car, I speed to the other guy’s house, let’s call him ‘Dan,’ and knocked on his door. He answered and immediately, I demanded the keys for the on-site vehicle. Once he hands them, over I unleashed it.
‘So I heard this interesting story that you wouldn’t leave this girl alone, and you kept trying to ask where she lived, and wouldn’t let her leave the break room,’ I started.
He immediately glanced back over his shoulder because his wife was nearby in the kitchen, and came outside and closed the door.
He talked in a whisper, ‘I didn’t talk to anyone.’
Me: ‘They have cameras, so how bout I go ask security to take a look?’
Dan started trying to guide me over to the parking lot away from his front door as his wife cracked it open to listen in on what’s going on.
‘I was in the break room with some chick but I didn’t do anything except say hello and asked if I would be in her way (for cleaning),’ he informed me.
I was mad. I could tell by the way he was acting he was desperate for me not to say anything.
Me: ‘I find it odd we’ve had that location for over a year, and a week after I put you there, I get the first harassment complaint I have ever had to deal with.’
He tried getting all puffy chested, saying things like, ‘How dare you question my integrity and won’t even let me hear my side of the story?’
‘So were you blocking the doorway so she couldn’t leave or not?’ I calmly said.
‘No,’ he firmly stated.
I shrugged, ‘Okay fine. I’m going to go back and see what the cameras have, and if I see otherwise then you’re fired.’
Then I started walking away and he shouted out, ‘Then I’m freaking done!’
‘Great! Pick up your last check tomorrow from another HR person so I don’t have to freaking deal with you ever again,’ I informed him.
This guy was a pain… twice my age, this was his second job, always tried to make himself seem vital while he would also complain about ANY job I put him on. It all just kind of came out right then and there.
So I leave and ignore the argument between he and his wife that broke out and, I got into my car and drove off. The other employee riding with me broke the silence with,’ So we’re good, right?’
Anyway, I went back and saw footage of him definitely obstructing the doorway when she was obviously trying to get out, several minutes of conversation (no sound, just passage of time)
Freaking creep.”
They Just Couldn’t Win
“I got called into the HR manager’s office one day and told that I was being written up for discussing ‘inappropriate and dirty things’ in the office. I had never done that, ever.
‘Who complained about me?’ I asked, being young and naive.
‘We can’t tell you that. There are confidentiality rules,’ HR said.
‘Okay, I understand. What was it that I supposedly said?’ I said.
‘We can’t tell you that, either. You may use that to discover who lodged the complaint,’ HR replied.
‘So, I’m being written up because an anonymous person complained I was saying dirty things in the office, but you won’t tell me who complained or what I supposedly said?’ I asked.
‘That’s right. Now, please sign this form to indicate that you understand the severity of your infraction,’ HR told me.
‘No, I won’t do that,’ I firmly told them.
‘You have to,’ they replied in shock.
It was a stalemate for almost 20 minutes while I refused to sign their form. They threatened to fire me, but I still refused to sign. In the end, she made some comments on the form about my ‘unwillingness to participate in the process.’
Then, to top it off, the rest of the office wondered why I completely stopped speaking to all of them altogether. I refused to engage in any of the usual non-office-related talk. If it was not 100% required conversation in order to do my job, I flat out ignored my coworkers’ presence.
Again, I was called into HR and reprimanded for my abrasive demeanor.
I quit that job shortly thereafter.”
She Asked A Fair Question
“I am on the HR team that supports a wide variety of US cities for our company, including our colorful Florida locations. This is the best story I heard.
We had some woman trying to avoid doing work by sitting out in her car in the parking lot. While she was hiding out there, she needed to use the restroom. Well, instead of going back inside (or doing literally anything else), she decided to pee out her car window. Even though I am also a woman, I was impressed and disgusted by the physics behind this feat. She had stuck her bare butt outside the window and just went for it. Unbeknownst to her, her male co-worker had arrived at work late due to an appointment. He drove past to find a parking spot as this was happening, and got full view. He then reported the incident to us.
One of our HR people had to investigate this, and sure enough, parking lot cameras could corroborate his story. Our HR person confronted the woman.
Her response, ‘Well how did he know it was me? It could have been anyone.’
We thought, ‘Okay fair enough.’
The cameras aren’t CSI grade zoom, so we only saw the BUTT part. It was harder to completely identify the face. So we went back to the male peer and asked how he knew it was her.
His response? ‘Oh, it was definitely her. The face tattoos are pretty recognizable.’
We definitely don’t get paid enough for this.”
Bill Had Ulterior Motives
“When I was in my gap year, I worked a part-time job as a fitness instructor at a leisure center. One of my coworkers, call him ‘Bill,’ was a nice guy and I would often sit and chat with him on my breaks.
As part of my job, I used to teach spinning classes on a fairly regular basis. I would normally leave my phone in the staff room while I was teaching, or behind the reception desk. Both these places were secure, and my phone had a passcode on it. I didn’t want it going off while I was teaching because when it received calls/texts, it interfered with the stereo in the spin studio. I didn’t have a locker or anything where I could store it.
Sometime in around January, I was at my university for an interview weekend. My girlfriend at the time had come to pick me up and while she was waiting in the car, she was scrolling through my messages on my iPad.
When I got in the car, she showed me one of my chats and said, ‘Why did you send this video to Bill?’
I had no recollection of sending any videos to Bill, since I did not speak to him outside of work beyond ‘I’m going to be late,’ or similar.
I thought it was a mistake but as I scrolled further back up I saw ‘I’ had sent this same video to Bill a couple of weeks prior. Feeling thoroughly perplexed, I clicked into the video and saw it was a video of my girlfriend and me on holiday in Thailand. We were just joking around, but we had just got out of the shower.
At this point, I was still thinking it’s some kind of big mistake as Bill is a nice guy with a baby at home. However, I look a little closer and realized the dates/times of when ‘I’ had sent these videos was at times I was teaching spin classes, and therefore had left my phone unattended.
Bill, being the sicko he was, had obviously seen me put my passcode into my phone during all the times we had been sat chatting on breaks, and had memorized it. He had then taken the opportunity to scroll through all my personal photos and videos when I had left my phone unattended to go and teach classes. I’m assuming he had deleted the video once, hence why he had sent it to himself again a couple of weeks later. He’d also deleted the chat history from my iPhone but hadn’t realized it synced to my iPad. I would only have been about 18/19 at the time when the videos were taken.
Obviously, I reported this to my manager and to HR, but it was a bit of a minefield for them to navigate. I don’t know what he told them but I imagine it was along the lines of saying I sent them to him of my own free will, how would he have known my password. It took a long while to get sorted but in the end, he did get sacked, thankfully. The police also paid him a visit so I’m sure he had some explaining to do to his SO.”
He Couldn’t Fix That Issue
“I work in HR and we recently moved from one HRIS system to another- the system manages personal information like benefits, time off requests, contact information, etc.
Part of the transition was teaching the workforce how to use the app. There were a lot of challenges, including the boomers who are technology illiterate, employees who speak very little English, and managers who think learning the system is below their pay grade. I’m normally pretty patient with the language barrier, I mean it’s not like I am bilingual either, so if they have the basics of English as a second language they already know more than I do.
This one fine day, I had a stream of employees trying to figure out how to access the system on their phones despite the step-by-step written and pictorial instructions, when I had this one older individual ask me to help him.
Nothing but XXX hardcore adult photos would come up on his smartphone browser. He legit couldn’t understand why I couldn’t help him. The browser just kept going back to the pictures, no matter what I typed in.
I usually feel like I can figure people’s phones out but I reached my limit. I couldn’t tell if the poor guy had an underlying problem on his phone or if he was messing with me. Creepy old guy my father’s age, barely speaks English, and not embarrassed by the raunchy pictures stuck on his screen.
I told him to go get his phone cleaned up and don’t come back with it until he fixed it; I haven’t seen him since.”
Never Too Old To Get Revenge
“The morning shift starts at 5 am. A lot of guys come in a little early and sit in their cars (read, sleep, whatever they want to do). Apparently, Guy A has a fancy European car in which the headlights don’t turn off (his explanation, not mine). Well, Guy B parks directly in front of him like he always does. He thought his headlights were stupid and was becoming increasingly angry because ‘Guy A won’t turn his freaking headlights off!’
So instead of choosing to park somewhere else, Guy B began parking at an angle with his headlights shining directly into the window of Guy A. He did this for a few days before then bringing in a taller truck so that his headlights would fully shine into the car of the other guy. We saw this in the footage of our security cameras.
No one told me this was happening until a while after this had been occurring, as I don’t start at 5 am as everyone else does. When the operations manager finally told me, I just burst out laughing because I cannot believe 50-year-old men were acting like this. Yes, really, my employees should know better at the age they are, but the pettiness happened anyway.
We had Guy A take some pictures for documentation and told Guy B to knock it off, and that’s been the last of that as far as I’m aware.”
That’s Not How It Works
“Was handed a handwritten letter from my boss, as he said ‘I think you might need this.’
The letter had been written by an employee, who let herself into the boss’s office and left it on his desk while he was out, complaining she was unhappy about how the staff were ‘mistreated and disrespected’ because he often left during the day to ‘go shopping and get haircuts’ (this rarely happened, probably not even once a month), and she thought it was appalling he left for a week over Christmas to see his family, while they weren’t allowed more than three days off over Christmas.
Had a meeting with her and literally had to explain he is the owner of the company and can come and go as he pleases, he works evenings and weekends when others don’t, and the week off was the first time he had taken holiday in eight months, unlike the rest of the staff who get 28 days throughout the year.
She looked at me, expressionless, and said, ‘And? I want a week off at Christmas. If he gets it, I should have it.’
I told her her complaint had been logged and we’ll look into it. She walked out, relayed a different version of our conversation to a dozen employees, and gossiped about the boss. She was gone within a month of the letter.”
Red Flags
“I work in an industry where we can have a real problem with certain groups coming in and making trouble, and I was doing all of the hirings for the location at the time. I had one lady come in for a tour of the facility as part of the pre-hiring screen. She was late, which automatically disqualified her from going, and I brought her into the office to inform her I would be rescinding her tour offer. Cue a sob story about just getting off the bus from New York. I asked why she was coming all the way down here, and she said she was looking for a job after graduating from college.
I said, ‘Oh, congratulations. What was your degree?’
And she said, ‘Criminal justice.’
These are all textbook red flags for hiring in my industry.
So I documented everything, firmly told her I’m afraid that you were late, so you are unable to proceed with the hiring process at the time. She tried to argue with me, but I stayed firm and walked her out.
A few minutes later, she calls the HR number and got me on the phone. She doesn’t recognize my voice until I tell her the same, ‘Well you were late,’ so she demanded to be transferred up the line so she could complain about me.
I sent her to my boss, who had his door cracked listening to the entire conversation about her sob story, all the red flags, etc. I got an email that was sent all the way up to VPs saying what a good job I did handling a potential red flag.”