What one earth was going through the HR person's mind? How did they let such absolute monsters remain at these companies? These horrible people don't know the meaning of the word professionalism, and they definitely needed to be called out on their nonsense. Content has been edited for clarity.
He Swindled Everyone
“He automated his entire job and told no one. We worked as help desk IT, the guys that come to your desk when phone support can’t solve the problem. He started out writing a simple script using the ticket system’s API to assign the good tickets to himself the second they came in. Then he wrote some software to solve those tickets remotely and close out the ticket. Over time, he kept expanding the software until it could solve almost every common issue by itself. He built a scheduler for it, so it would start solving problems at 8 a.m. every day, and stop at 5 p.m. It had limits and random time delays, so it wouldn’t do something suspicious like solve 50 tickets in a minute.
To management, he was the untouchable rock star of the team. He had the most resolved tickets by a good margin, extremely consistent performance, and was part of why our team was always on the list of top performers at Corporate. He got the big raises, bonuses, and awards. They even sent him to other facilities around the country to talk to other teams and ‘share our successes’. Nobody knew he was strolling in at 10 every day, ducking out at 3, and spent most of the time in between browsing the internet or reading books. No one caught on for three years.
Then Corporate decided to outsource all the help desk teams to some third party. He used his reputation to land a sweetheart job in a different part of the company, and took his software with him. The disaster that caused took years to recover from.”
Graphic Design Disaster
“I worked at a small agency last year as a designer for their marketing department. It was one of those super corny places that makes you hold props for your bio picture while naming the top 3 songs on your island getaway playlist. Well, their marketing director was a total fraud, and it stressed me out constantly. She assigned everything to her interns, never met her own deadlines, and failed to communicate anything properly. Well, one day I’m updating a blog graphic on our website, and I notice the writing just seems a bit… jarring and disconnected. So I googled the subject line and the first result on google was another published blog, copied word-for-word. So I brought it up to my managers, but someone else got wind and tried to confront her about it. She talked her way out of it and deleted any blogs that were incriminating before my creative director saw proof. So she took off for a week and came back just to be a major loser towards me. I was almost going to forgive her, but then she started blaming the boss for her own mistake.
Fast-forward to a couple weeks later, and I’m on our homepage. I just see a quick tagline, but I can’t help to wonder. Is all writing this stolen? It was. I spent the next two hours compiling a list of evidence with sources and everything. I found over 30 examples of plagiarism. How could everyone be so stupid? She’s stupid for not covering all her tracks, but my job was even more stupid for trusting her and not even checking anything else she’s touched.
I got called in two meetings after I showed my director. Then no one saw her for a week. Then, they lied and told the whole company that she left due to personal reasons. Then they fired me after cleaning up her mistakes, but also told the company I left due to personal reasons.”
He Got The Last Laugh
“We had a manager (not mine, thank God) who was a backstabbing piece of garbage that ran his employees into mental illness. He liked to hire programmers with daddy issues and need for approval (all young men), then make them slave away and do 50-70 hour work weeks, grinding out code and trying to run other departments out of business. So many people quit under him, citing excessive abuse, long hours, and terrible working conditions. No manager liked the guy, and he was always scheming while thinking on ways to advance his career. At one point, this guy was so hated, our company hired someone from a consulting company to resolve issues between him and other people in the department. She did a thorough review of the department and in the middle of her work, this manager openly scorned her.
When top brass asked him why he refused to meet with her to give her information about his development group, he said, ‘I have not, and never will take orders from a woman.’
I felt, ‘If they don’t fire this guy for blatant prejudice, I’m leaving.’ Some of the top leaders were women.
They didn’t fire him, and a few months later, I left that company. Later, that repulsive toad drove the entire department into the ground when he got promoted. So he was eventually let go. The guy had the nerve to contact my former boss, a good man whom he railroaded out of a job, to get MY contact info for his government clearance for the position. I refused. I wouldn’t even call him back. He listed me anyway.
So, in the only time I have done this, gave a scathing review, complete with examples, to the agent that interviewed me about him. He knew me, I had done interviews with him before about other people, and he chuckled. ‘I can honestly say I have never heard you describe someone so harshly.’
I told him, ‘Not only would I never trust this guy with country secrets, I’d guarantee he’d sell out the United States of America at the first hint he could make an extra buck.’
He did not get the job. Not just because of me, but apparently I was only one of many who warned about him. I hope he dies alone in a hole.
She Never Expected HR’s Response
“I used to work at a boarding school of sorts for kids with special needs. One of the employees decided she didn’t like me because I befriended someone she had previously been involved with (which, according to most, was half the staff). She would constantly tell other staff members she was ‘friends’ with not to speak to me in the middle of my professional conversations and meetings with them. She would burst into their classrooms in the middle of class sobbing, completely disrupting the lessons. I also had her tell several students not to talk to me because, ‘I was a bad lady,’ the students later confessed to me.
She eventually made up rumors of her ex and I making out in various places. Because of these, he and I were both reprimanded by our department heads and told we were not to be in the same room together. His supervisor even called him a womanizer and from then on treated him terribly. He taught a lot of safety trainings, and whenever she had to take one, she would constantly be disruptive. Oh, and she stalked us on campus after a late shift one night by borrowing a friend’s car to hide among the work vans. This one was caught on camera, but it apparently didn’t matter.
When we finally both quit, I let the HR director have it. I asked why on earth she would allow this kind of behavior with staff and students, why he and I were constantly chastised when NOTHING was going on anywhere near school property. She just stared at me like I had ripped my top off and then managed to mutter ‘What are you talking about….?’
Which is when I learned that crazy witch was never once reported to HR, even though he and I had been told she was being ‘handled’. Happy ending: We get married in 5 weeks. He’s moved on to work for an incredible company and I’ve started my own business.”
Threatening Her Boss’s Life
“I worked with another woman who called in sick for several days about every month or so, but she was also in public sector, so no repercussions other than people not liking her. One day she gets a travel advance (from the organization) to pay for a work trip a few days out. She spends the money then tells her boss she can’t go on the trip because she can’t afford it. She’d spent the organization’s money on rent or whatever. Rather than get her in trouble, the boss hands her his personal credit card to pay for her travel costs. She runs several non-work-related purchases on the card while on the trip and promises to pay him back. Now her boss is mad but takes her at her word (why, I don’t know). Several pay periods go by and not a cent paid back. When confronted, she has some excuse and says the boss actually owes HER money because she isn’t paid enough. The boss finally takes the matter to the organization and the woman is accused of theft and gets fired—just a few months before she would earn full retirement and pension.
In public sector, stealing will get you fired pretty quickly. Apparently, getting fired because you threatened to slit your boss’s throat will take a while longer.”
This Is Who Takes Care Of Patients?
“I work in a hospital pharmacy. We have this new piece of equipment we call “the robot’ because it’s a separate room with a huge robot that goes around on tracks and picks the most commonly used medications (aspirin, Tylenol, etc) so that we don’t have to. Then it spits them out through a little window and we can tube them (like the tubes at a bank drive-thru) to the floors for the patients. It’s really great, because it frees up time for us to do things robots can’t do, and since a computer with barcodes picked the medications, we don’t have to double check to make sure it’s the right thing.
Anyway. Every few minutes we walk over to the robot to make sure that nothing is sitting in the window for us to tube. My coworker, we will call her Anna, is known for being a huge slacker and a drama queen. She chats so loud constantly and takes about three and a half times as long to do things, if she does them at all. So she’s already on thin ice. Once she went over there and touched the metal windowsill and got shocked. Like a static shock. The robot was off for maintenance, so it couldn’t have been the cause. She FREAKS out and says it hurts a ton. So naturally, she LEAVES the pharmacy without telling anyone and strolls on down to the ER. When we notice she’s gone, we scramble to finish what she was working on. When she gets back two hours later, she is so shocked that everyone was able to finish what takes her over six hours to do.
Basically the ER told her she was full of nonsense, so she came back to see how we were doing before leaving AGAIN to walk down the other hall to the insta care. They, of course, tell her she’s full of nonsense too. But she pleads and prods, and they tell her that if she passes out later or gets a migraine, maybe come back. So she strolls on back to the pharmacy a couple of hours later (this is in the US, mind you) and decides that even though everyone finished her deliveries for the day and should leave, she’s going to STICK AROUND for another THREE HOURS. ‘Just in case’ she gets dizzy or passes out.
The rest of the week she goes around telling everyone the robot is dangerous and management has to tell everyone not to talk smack about Anna (because everyone knows she’s an idiot), and the robot isn’t dangerous. They also have to work out the fact that she stayed an extra three hours on the payroll ‘just in case’. The kicker? She workers comped both ER visits.”
Deserting In His Time Of Need
“I work at a psychiatric hospital, and we had a patient who was blind and who was admitted for psychosis along with visual and auditory hallucinations. At my hospital, we only accept the people who are an immediate danger to themselves or others. When a patient first comes to us, they are put on a check sheet, meaning every 10 minutes a staff member needs to see that the patient is breathing and safe. But sometimes we need to do a one to one (1:1), meaning a staff member needs to be with this person at all times, either for their safety or the safety of other patients. We also have little body alarms and floor alarms for patients (mostly geriatrics) who are unsteady while walking and need assistance. These devices let us know when they get up so we can assist them.
So anyway the blind patient was on a 1:1 and was taking a nap in their room. The staff had a laptop to do some charting while sitting on the 1:1. Well this staff member put the laptop on the floor and left the room, all while neglecting to hook up any of the body or floor alarms. While the staff member was out of the room, our patient got up from their bed and tripped over the laptop and face planted. Another staff noticed and we ran down to take vitals and make sure the patient was okay. Thank goodness the patient wasn’t injured, but we were furious with our co-worker for leaving. Their excuse was they needed to get some paperwork they had been putting off.
All in all, this person didn’t get fired (lord doesn’t even know why) but did get a slap on the wrist. My co-workers and I were angry! You do not leave a patient while on 1:1, even if they are asleep!”
Showing Up To Work As A Scumbag
“The owner brought in a friend when they started because he had connections, no conscious, and knows how to sell. He has gone so far as to let this guy say he is a co-owner, despite this man never putting a dime into the place. But he brings in people and mostly deals with the clientele, which the owner doesn’t want to do.
This guy has been the cause of pretty much every single employee who has ever worked there quitting, and he has all the employees who are there now, including me, wanting to quit. He lies pretty much every time he opens his mouth, never admits fault, and always places the blame on other people who were sometimes never even involved. He is mean when he’s wasted or high and has been known to do both while at work. He is never there when he is supposed to be, which most people find a blessing, but customers always want him, so we’re always having to cover. He may be good at bringing in people, but he gets bored with them quickly and they end up feeling neglected and stop being customers sooner or later. He’s really a double-edged sword and I think he’s going to end up tanking the place eventually.
Oh, I didn’t even mention that he’s always ogling female customers and making inappropriate comments about them behind their back. He is constantly inappropriate with the female staff, including the 18-year-old that he is more than twice the age of. He touches inappropriately, not just comments. He will totally ignore customers if he doesn’t like how they look, but if you’re pretty, he’ll trip over himself to be helpful. If he finds out there’s a big sale involved with someone he has written off, he’ll swoop in and pretend he’s been the point of contact from square one. Since this quarantine thing started, he thinks it’s funny to run around coughing on people’s workstations or breathing heavily behind them. He and the boss refuse to wear masks while insisting customers wear them. He is just a total scumbag.”
Everyone Was In On It
“This guy in the same building I work in was going into the common bathroom and watching adult films in one of the stalls on his phone. This moron was using earbuds but had the volume up so loud that anyone could hear it and know what it was. And to top it off, in the background noise you could hear him whacking it while the video played.
Finally, someone noticed the shoes that were in view and busted him in the hallway later. HR was called and did interviews with all the dudes in the building who may have overheard him yanking it. Despite many confirmations, he was never fired. But oh the nicknames that came from it.
So his bust went down like this. He wore very distinctive dress shoes that were visible during his whacking sessions. He was so ignorant of the volume level that he didn’t even try to lift them up out of sight. While most dudes just found it funny when they heard it, one particular religious guy was so offended that he took a picture of his shoes and waited in the hall. From what I hear, the culprit denied it all when confronted, and he claimed he was listening to a soap opera.
So he was reported to HR, and the most hilarious part was that the poor girl had to do an investigation. I had opened my big mouth and said I had been there and overheard one of his beat down sessions, so I had to give a statement. She had a list of questions about the incidents, all of which were very awkward. I know a few other people have statements and God knows what they said. But to this day, this serial culprit has no idea that the entire building of 100 people are mocking him to this day. The guy was promoted a year later.”
So Easy To Uncover His Evil
“I had a boss storing pictures of himself in only his wide open bathrobe on company servers. It was reported to HR, but he wasn’t fired for it. Later, he was arrested as part of an undercover sting where he thought he was meeting a 15-year-old girl about 500 miles away. The images were stored in a shared folder used by a few employees. The guy was our IT manager, so he should have known better than storing them there. I’m assuming the pictures were taken using a work camera, because digital cameras were very expensive at that time and the company had none.
Before he left for the weekend to meet ‘the girl’, he had asked to use the digital camcorder I had for work. He told me he needed it to make a video of his home possessions for insurance purposes, but I was suspicious of that, so I told him I needed it for work. We found out he was arrested when he called the computer room collect from jail. This was later in the evening, after he hadn’t shown up for work that day. We didn’t accept the charges, but we called back later to see what he was charged with. At that time we were told solicitation of a minor, but the whole details came out later when he was on the local new station.”
Boys Won’t Be Boys
“This sales guy (we’ll call him ‘Chad’) worked with our company through an outside supplier. He took a liking to one of the young female employees at my company (who was engaged). Chad flirted with her a bit and finally asked her out on a date. She politely declined, saying that she was engaged. Chad wouldn’t take no for an answer and continued to bother her. Nothing inappropriate, per se, but annoying and definitely unprofessional.
We called and asked for a new salesperson to be put on our account. The outside supplier said no, and that they would ‘speak’ to Chad. Well, whatever they said just seemed to egg Chad on. It finally crossed the line from annoying to inappropriate. The whole thing culminated when he left a wildly inappropriate VOICE MAIL on her phone, detailing all the things he’d do to her if he got her alone. The young woman was understandably freaked out about that and got HR involved. That was the final straw. Unfortunately, I think it was the final straw for my company because they were afraid of being sued rather than worry about their employee’s well-being and safety.
One of the female VPs called the owner of the company and played the message for him. The owner LAUGHED and said, ‘Oh, c’mon, boys will be boys.’
Well, the female VP made it her business to be sure that this company got not one more dime of our money. They were blacklisted and that was that, until this VP left the company about seven years later.
All of a sudden, we were doing business with them again. I reminded the COO about what happened (and he knew about it, don’t kid yourself), and his response was basically, ‘Well, enough time has passed. Neither employee is with their respective companies anymore and they provide a good service at a good price, so we’re using them.’
Ugh. The OWNER was still the same piece of garbage and that would be enough for me to blacklist them forever.”
Cleaning Up The Farm Failures
“I have a management trainee whom I was training to head up one of our two departments. The normal training is around a year, give or take. She wouldn’t take direction and would regularly argue with me about every bit of information or directive. I tried to fire her probably a dozen times, but every time, I would get a call from my supervisor about how that she’s just new and blah blah blah. 14 months after she was hired, she told me that she straight up knew how to do everything and could do it perfectly. Somehow, I kept from laughing and let her go on thinking so. 3 months after that, I went on a three-day weekend. Before I left, I made her a list of everything that she had to do, the best times to do it, and little bits of advice about each task. One thing that I stressed is that she had to check the exhaust fans that pull air into the barns. I stressed it so hard that I texted her about them every morning and called every afternoon. She told me how they were just fine and that I didn’t need to worry.
I go back to work Monday morning, and the first thing I did was to walk out there and check on those rooms. Out of the 72 sows that were in those rooms, 7 of them were still alive that morning. This is in addition to all the pigs that were inside the sows, but hadn’t been born yet. It was the only time in my life that I have been so angry that everything turned gray and I stopped having any kind of internal dialogue. I didn’t trust myself around her or the people that had worked that weekend, so I spent the morning locked in my office.
They all came out of the barn for lunch and I confirmed which people had worked that weekend. Those people got suspended without pay for five days. I fired the manager. She told me that I couldn’t do that, and so I called the sheriff to have her removed from the property. She finally left. However, an hour later my supervisor showed up and told me that I couldn’t fire her for that. I showed him all the texts, the phone calls and the notes that I had left. He said that I still couldn’t fire her for it. I have no idea what she has on him but, since that time, I just let her do whatever and then I fix it afterwards. She’s had not one review that even borders on meeting expectations, let alone a positive one, but she’s still here a year later and I’m still cleaning up her failures.