Bad Hire Stories You Won’t Believe (But They Really Happened) [The Bad Hire Ep. 2]

00:00:00 This is The Bad Hire, the show where epic hiring failures and remarkable wins fuel better hiring. I'm your host, Ken Monroe, and each week we dive into real-life stories with HR pros and recruiters and leaders who've seen it all. Because let's face it, everyone remembers The Bad Hire. Welcome to The Bad Hire. Emma. Hi. Morgan. Hi. Just welcome to The Bad Hire. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you for having us.

00:00:41 Emma, you're both part of our production team, marketing team, so glad to have you. That's kind of cool. Yep, for sure. And just a bit about Emma, you know, grew up in Marshville, North Carolina, real small, daughter of a chicken farmer. How many chickens was it? A lot. When you know when I hired you, I hired you because you grew up on a chicken farm. This is how we do our hiring at B-Checks. I did. Yeah. I mean, you had that really cool degree. Hired based off of your upbringing. Yeah. Yes. You had a really cool degree from state. Yeah. And a tech degree. Yes. But it was the chicken farmer. That's what really sold you. Well, I knew you were a hard worker. Can't grow up on a farm and not be a hard worker. True. That's actually how he introduced you when you joined my team was she's a really hard worker. You're going to like her. She grew up on a farm.

00:01:23 True. True. So, yeah, you know, my dad was grew up on a farm. So I know a thing I do about farmers that I never did. And then Morgan, you're part of the marketing team. Yep. Been at the company for three years now and straight out of college and have never looked back since and loved every moment of it. But the bad hire is kind of a newer thing for us. And so it's nice to be on the podcast and be able to produce it. And well, I hope we get some good stories. Hang out with you guys. I hope we get good stories. We run that $10,000 contest and people submit it. And I hope that we get some really cool stories and we get to read some fun stories. I know you guys will enjoy reading, I think, them as they get submitted and recommending which ones to put on the show.

00:02:06 So I think that's really cool. So here's one from Reddit. OK. OK. You ready? We're going straight into the Reddit ones? Yeah, right into the Reddit ones. OK. Let's go. All right. So you'll have to tell me if you think these are good stories, you know, bad stories or just whatever. A lot of them would be bad. So that's why we're here, right? Right. OK. We hired someone who is not the person we interviewed. Oh, OK. What do you mean? My CEO and his influential friends researched and was able to confirm this was a different person. Before the end of his first day, he fired him. Oh, God. Fired the first day is crazy. How does that happen? I don't know. How do you like – we hired someone who was not the person we interviewed.

00:02:50 Like it wasn't the same – like the same person they thought they were bringing in. Like it was a completely different human being. Like they interviewed, I guess, went through the whole process and then came to the job. And some other dude shows up. Oh, oh. He was like, here's my filler. Yeah. Maybe you paid somebody to go to the interview for him. Can I get one of those? Dude, do my interview. You're really good at it. Then I'm going to show up. They won't know a thing. I mean that's like sales. You have your SDR and then you know the person who's actually going to demo you is a completely different person. Right. Sounds like a teacher. Yeah. That's true. All right. Here's one. I hired a tech one for IT. Guy spent his time walking around and talking about how poorly he was paid.

00:03:34 I have one like that actually. And how he didn't want to be there. Yeah. Like two weeks into the job, I let him go a month in. Probably shouldn't talk about how poorly you're paid right after accepting the job. Why would you accept it to begin with? Yeah. Complaining does not help. Right. Lasted a month. I don't get this one, but we'll do it. Okay. I think interviews are actually really hard to do. This person is talking about being the interviewer. Yeah. I think interviews are actually really hard to do since they seldom correlate to how they'll actually function at work. Yeah. And it's two of them were laid off.

00:04:14 I guess this person is talking about they hired two or more. Two of them were laid off. And one of them, I'm actually putting on a PIP. What's a PIP? Personal Improvement Plan. Oh. Yeah. It means you're in trouble. Okay. They put you on that to tell you what you got to do to not be in trouble because your performance isn't good. A performance improvement plan, personnel improvement plan. That's what PIP stands for. People can interview very well but end up being a fraud. I wish I knew better questions to ask to weed out someone who actually knows what they're doing versus not knowing what they're doing. Okay. Okay. Okay. I see. Like on the job or just in general? Maybe both. I don't know. That's great.

00:04:54 Probably. I would hope that. Yeah. I don't know. Can you imagine putting someone on a PIP week two? We fired somebody week two, I remember, not that long ago. True. I was a part of that actually. Yeah. That was pretty brutal. Open up the interview. Committing any crimes lately? Yeah. Literally. This came in a dream employee. After probation, literally the day after probation, they're talking about their employment probation. That's like the 90 days of probation you have when you first get there. I guess follow the rules in probation or you're gone. Okay. So after probation, literally the day after probation, they became a nightmare. Argued about their starting pay. Stated they don't get paid to do most of the stuff we're asking them.

00:05:37 They lasted a year or two because they repeatedly argued with me. Refused a lot. Tried to get his teammates riled up. It was a lesson though. Sounds like a toxic relationship. The lesson was you went two years? Yeah. Like 90 days in. Why did they even stay for a year if they were miserable? Yeah. This is apparently the person who hires them and they're like, they know on the 91st day that it's a nightmare. And two years later, they're. Yeah. Yeah. That's all it was. It was just a bad hire from the beginning. Sounds like a waste of time. Yeah. I hired a person who had the qualifications I was looking for, the experience I needed,

00:06:21 the certifications that were the bonus on the job listing and had an amazing three interviews and got along with everyone. It seemed so great. I was so excited. First day arrives. He's 15 minutes late. No biggie. Yeah. Okay. He got caught by the train right by our office. He had no way of knowing the train schedule. Yeah. Couldn't have checked in advance going on the internet or. He had a free pass on the board. Yeah. The first. Yeah. The first day. He had no way of knowing the train schedule. Yeah. But then he came in and was ranting about the incompetent train conductors, not knowing how

00:07:01 to navigate a switch, saying how he could do it better. And I asked him if he was a train conductor in a previous life because it was nowhere on his resume. That was our first clue. Oh, God. Then while he was supposed to be watching those stupid onboarding videos, he was walking around telling people about all the changes he was going to make to make things so much better, like his old company. Then he proceeded to talk about how great their systems, et cetera, were compared to ours. Second clue. Next, he went into the chemical engineering department and told one of the engineers that he was there to shake things up and started telling him how to do things differently.

00:07:42 Uh, sir, you're here to be a chemical analyst. Sit down. What position is this guy? I don't know. I can't tell. Apparently the secret CEO. Then he decided his lunch should be over an hour because he's new and needs the extra time to decompress his brain and relax. Oh, he decided his lunch would be over an hour because he needed the extra time. He came back and went to the quality department and told them they shouldn't be allowed to quality control chemicals. I walked him out after that. He lasted six hours. Six hours at a job? How? Like. Four of those were working and two of those were his decompression lunch.

00:08:25 How do you take a decompression lunch on the first day? I guess when you think you know everything about everything. Seriously, you're, you're, you're, you're about to fix this company. It's exhausting knowing everything. It's exhausting knowing everything. Yeah. It is exhausting knowing everything. Yeah. That was funny. I hired someone remote. Oh God. I hired someone remote who would take team calls shirtless. Oh. Okay. Laying in bed. Laying in bed. Phone down on the counter while he was making lunch. So he was. Like he was on a FaceTime call. He would make all this together. He would make team calls shirtless. He would make team calls laying in bed.

00:09:08 He would do team calls while he put the phone down on the counter and made his lunch, et cetera. Sounds like he thought he was on FaceTime with his friend. Yeah. For real. Absolutely no idea how to present himself. He got on a, he got on a client call while laying in bed and nuzzling his cat. What ultimately was the last straw because the cat wasn't one. What ultimately was the last straw was he was doing bong hits. Oh my God. Own the call? A client call? They're like even, I mean, it doesn't really matter. There's no way. Own the call. Yeah. What job is this? I don't know. Okay.

00:09:51 We had a programmer one time who was a remote worker and I used the word work, not remote, liberally. And he forgot his camera wasn't on and he was laying in bed. He looked like he hadn't gotten up in four days. Oh, I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. Well done. It's like they need to update their remote work agreement. Yeah. They need to lay down some more rules. Yeah. Like, do you really have to put in writing? You must wear a shirt. Apparently. Don't nuzzle your cat in bed. Apparently. We do have a remote work policy though for a dress. Yeah. So, I mean, maybe they need one. Well, I mean, you never think you need to tell them. Yeah.

00:10:31 What gets me about this one is he goes, he got on a client call while laying in bed and nuzzling his cat. But then says what the ultimate last straw was. Like, that wasn't the last straw. Yeah. How many chances did they give him? Like, how many straws? Yeah. How many straws did he use? Right. Here's another one from Reddit. Had a guy interview well and seemed to know his stuff. He did. But his confidence was just the tip of a larger iceberg of arrogance and swagger. Any skills that he had were overshadowed by his grading personality. He referred to himself in the third person. Oh, God. Like he was quoting a greater person. That should have been red flag number one.

00:11:12 Who does that? Whatever he did that in the interview. Yeah. Robert's a great hire. You should hire Robert. Yeah. Can you imagine if I said that? Emma's a great hire. I said that to you? Yeah. Emma's a great hire. You should hire. She's a farmer's daughter. Emma's a great hire. I have to edit these out a lot. I get to see you looking at me going, Emma's a great hire. You should hire her. She's the daughter of a chicken farmer. You know I love that. As this Robert always says, opinions are like butts. Now, this is him quoting. This is him. This is him. Okay. As this Robert always says, opinions are like butts. Everyone has one. Followed by a Harvard-style laughter.

00:11:55 Can you do that for me, Emma? What's the Harvard? Oh, yeah. I don't believe I know what that is. She's from Marshfield. She doesn't know what a Harvard-style laugh is. And a smug head wobble. He was too casual to upper management. He'd invite himself to private meetings acting like some old hat experienced executive. What is an old hat experience? Somebody who's been at the company for a long time. Okay. An old hat? An old hat. Okay. Until he was asked to leave. We got a lot of complaints about his behavior. It was like he assumed being hired meant he had to play the part of some higher-up manager. Only he was several degrees off of reading the room, as it were.

00:12:35 Sounds like he was just socially awkward a little bit. And treated his peers like subordinates. He also started projects nobody asked him to do and wrote in coworkers. This sounds like a rant. This is just now becoming a stream of conscience. Complain about this guy. Yeah. The bad hire. Send in your complaint. Yeah. Yeah. Complain about your coworker. Your coworker. Not even your hires. Your coworkers. Complain about your coworkers. Yeah. And roped in coworkers and random project managers into these projects. Until he was told to stop. Good night. This person keeps going. We worked on his behavior. How long is that? But he didn't stop it. This person is ranting. This is clearly, this was therapy.

00:13:16 Yeah. Just passively complained about it. Like most of Reddit is. Yeah. Jerry, I need you to send out some emails on behalf of the team. But, oh, get our boss's approval. I guess because he'd do air quotes. So he made other people do his dirty work for him, pretty much. Definitely wrote this down in his notes app. Yeah. Waiting for the day he got to use it. Yeah. You're talking about whoever wrote this story? Yeah. Yeah. He just kept going back to different things. Yeah. You know, and I don't know. I hope you don't do that at work. Let me add that. Do that at work? Yeah. I hope you don't do that at work. I hope you don't have a running notes pad. Do you have that, Emma? Do you have like a running notes thing? No. No, I don't complain. Where you just go there and write bad stuff? No. Never even thought of that. Maybe I should start. I was kidding. Well, I mean, she mentioned it like. I just think about how I use my.

00:13:57 Yeah. My app to write down random thoughts. Write down your thoughts. That sounds like what that is. Yeah. This sounds like a collection of random thoughts. Yeah. That they just keep adding to it. A little bit. Most likely not the $10,000. No, I don't think so. Award winner. I will tell you that. That's just a diary. Very, very. I would love to find out more. Very good writing style though. No. Yeah. Yeah. If they need a copywriting position. Yeah. Stream of conscious. Write any thought. Forget about sentence structure. We need to turn this one into a video. I hired someone remote who took his team call shirtless because that would be hilarious to see the video of some shirtless dude on a Zoom call. I wish we had the video. Yes.

00:14:38 Be a great commercial. Can we send in like your worst bad hire videos? Like people who just did horrible at their job too? Like on footage? Security camera footage? Yeah. All right. Laying in bed. Phoned down on the counter while he was making his lunch. Absolutely not. He got on a client call. This is the scene I want to shoot. Okay. Right? He got on a client call. Laying in bed. Nuzzling his cat. Right? I think that would be good. And then it just comes up at the end. I just want to know how he was nuzzling his cat in bed though. Like was it on top of him? Was it like because you have your computer. It's not that big of a screen. Like it had to be like on like right here in the chest.

00:15:20 You mentioned it a while ago. You got to tell your story. Oh. You want me to tell my story? Yeah. You were talking about it a while ago. Okay. My bad hire? I don't know. I think. This isn't even my story. It's the company's story. But it is a bad hire. Yeah. No. What happened to you? I was involved. Yeah. What happened to me? What happened to her? Yeah. I was a part of the hiring team. Yeah. So I'm super. You did this to her. Actually. Well. The same person who hired you is the same person who hired this guy. So. This is somebody else's. Really? And I'm going to turn into a bad hire. Oh. Oh. Yeah. No. No. No. I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. So. Because it was. Yeah. Because Emma started in tech. Mm-hmm. So do you want. Oh. Then we roped her into marketing and production. So yeah. Yeah. Do you want me to tell the story? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So there is this IT guy who started and I want to say it was his first week.

00:16:05 I want. Yeah. Yeah. It was his first week. I mean it started right away. And like immediately he tried talking to like all the women in the office which was like I mean obviously just a lonely guy 45, 50 years old. He was newly divorced. Newly divorced. I had learned that. So he just. I was about to ask him. Would refer to his wife but then remind you later on it was his ex-wife but would call her his wife still and would try and talk to people in Spanish and would try and say things that you thought oh they don't know they don't speak Spanish because his wife spoke Spanish originally right. And so anyways he was IT and you heard stories throughout the office like people complaining

00:16:45 about him just him being kind of creepy and he would like come over and I mean talk to me a lot but talk to like our side of the office and be like yeah I'm on I'm on Hinge I'm on all these dating apps and then I think he even mentioned. If he's handing out. Grindr like just all these crazy things and you're just like okay well you're just telling me these things I don't need to know about you right. And so immediately that always made me uncomfortable. He wore a t-shirt with his. Yeah. Ginge handle on it. Yeah. Literally yeah. It was like you know the guys who have their like Instagram handle on their car. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But anyways so one day I asked for help with my computer as one does with IT you need your help you know whatever.

00:17:26 So I teams him and say hey come help me like I you know need help with my computer. And so he says okay I'll come right over. So I'm sitting I'm you know working at my desk typing and everything and he comes up behind me and next thing I know his like nose is literally on my neck and he's sniffing the side of my neck all the way up to like my ear. Uh uh. And I immediately was just like okay. And he in my ear goes you smell so good. Like that right. And I internally died. I'm like I just need help with my computer. And so I immediately like push back my chair. I'm like no way that just happened. And so I just get up and I leave. And I like go ask somebody I'm like what am I supposed to tell somebody this?

00:18:09 Like do you tell somebody? Yes. You are. I don't know. Never happened. Nothing had ever happened to me. This is a really bad hire. Exactly. And I didn't know that you'd go tell somebody these things because I'm like this is the first time it's ever happened to me. I'm like you know young in my career. 20 years old. Yeah. And I only worked for women led companies before. Especially if it's like his first week there. Yes. And being weird already. No. Yeah. No. Exactly. And so I start I go and I hide and I ask somebody what do I say? Who do I tell? Yeah. What are you told? And then. He got fired that day. Yeah. Luckily. Nope. I was like do you want to like put him on a probation? And they were like no. We'll just let him go. No. We don't mess with bad hires.

00:18:51 But it was funny though because he was looking for me after. I don't know if you know this. No. I tried hiding and he was searching for me in the office asking people where I had gone. Oh. Right. And so. I always want to apologize. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe he knew. And then he wouldn't. I had to know about it. Yeah. Emma do you have any like have there any been any helpers at the farm at the chicken farm that were bad hires? Her dad or her brother. Would your dad have a really good bad hire story? We had a guy steal from us once. Oh. Steal tools from us. Tools? Periodically. Yeah. Your dad a big guy? Like what kind of tools? My dad. You met my dad. I think so. Is he a big guy? I don't know. I just picture him as like. He's lanky. He's like. He's like. Like tough farmer. Like really rough hands.

00:19:32 He's a tough guy. Yeah. He's a tough guy. Yeah. He doesn't hire people very often. He's very particular about his work. Oh. Yeah. So he does it all himself. And me. And my brother. Yeah. He had you. The family. Were you the bad hire? No. The family are great helpers because we do the work the way it's supposed to be done. The way he wants it done. Oh. And that became a big issue whenever he would hire help. Doing things halfway just don't. Right. See why I hired you? You had a ton of experience doing it the right way. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I knew that was the deal. You were either going to be the daughter who never came outside and never helped because

00:20:13 you were like not doing it or you were going to be the daughter who was just out there in the grind every day doing it because it's a tough job. Whether I wanted to or not. He's going to put me to work. Right. Okay. I love it. That's the reason I heard that about you. How about you, Ken? How about you? Do you have any bad hire stories? I got like 40. There's 40 in the chamber right now. Give your top. Give your top one. You got to spread them over the episode. So tell us like. Give your top one right now. Yeah. Episode two. Top one. Tell us your like worst one of all time. Worst one? Funny one. Yeah. No, I'll tell you. I'll just tell you a quick one. Okay. So we did hire a guy in sales one time and he was, you know, had this big, long resume

00:20:55 of excellence and was going to be awesome. And like in day, like day two, someone said, I came to me and said, he smells like alcohol. Oh. Yeah. I was like, oh, okay. You know, maybe a celebratory drink. You got a new job. And then I think probably it was the next week when I was, he came back. I was told he came back late from lunch, like really late in his first week. Like, how do you get there in the first week? And you like, you're already coming back, you know, they're taking a three hour lunch. Yeah. And so, and he was coming through, I was walking through the parking lot and I walked past his car and I looked down and he was just like two 30 in the afternoon and he was completely

00:21:39 passed out with a bottle of bourbon, like in his lap where he had just been drinking it straight out of the bottle until he just completely passed out and went to sleep. Is that where he was the whole three hours? Just out in the parking lot? Just drinking. He would just go out there and drink. Yeah. It's five o'clock somewhere. That's what they said. Well, I mean, it could, it could happen, but it, you know, at work, it was hard because, you know, when you, when that happens, right, you want to just be like, hey bro, you know, you're fired. Yeah. But then, you know, legal shows up and HR and they're like, well, you can't, you know, you can't fire him because you know, he's been drinking. Yeah. Like you can't send him home. You can't tell him to leave.

00:22:19 You get, get a DUI. Cause now he can get stopped and get hurt. And so, you know, we ended up having to keep an eye on him and, and then, but you do it, you know, in that particular case, we offered him some help, try to get him into an employee assistance program and. Like help just for that day or help for a longterm. No, no. Just trying to recover from drinking. Okay. I was like, what's your hangover at the office plan? I don't know that we've, I don't know that we've even had to fire him. I think it was kind of a mutual decision and he was pretty embarrassed, you know, he'd let it get out of control. You must be breathalyzed. Yeah. Well, that's what they have in their car. He can't start his car without a breathalyzer. We should have checked. Yeah. Maybe that should be part of the interview process. You got to work this morning so you breathalyzed yourself.

00:23:02 Do you have an ignition starter that's a breathalyzer? Yeah. It's like when Randall was like wanting us to take pictures of inside people's car to see if we could guess who was whose car. It's like, oh, they have a breathalyzer in their car. Oops. That was confidential information. Yeah. Yeah. For real. All right. How about like smoking marijuana? Like, you know, I feel like we've had some people come through who like ask you up front. I used to have one of the, my, um, yeah. One of my best employees was smoked every single day. Yeah. You know, which is crazy because we're, you know, we're in the drug testing business too.

00:23:47 But she was, uh, she was a cancer survivor and, um, she, she began doing smoking, I guess, uh, to help with pain and with rehab and all that. Yeah. And, um, so she was a cancer survivor and she was incredibly thankful for it. So I think after that she, she just continued to use it, you know, a bit. She, I think she felt like it saved her life. So I can't argue with that. But for somebody like that, it's like that, that could have been a bad hire. But for you, it was okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not anybody, you know, called anybody like hidden the bong in the parking lot or in the bathroom or anything like that. Or on the, or on the team's call.

00:24:27 Yeah. Or on the team's call. Hopefully not on the team's call. I don't know. I think my favorite one today was on the phone, on the team's call with nestled with this cat. Yeah. You know, on the customer. As one does. I mean, my cat's accidentally been in a team's meeting before. I'm not going to lie. True. Yeah. Your cat? In a company-wide meeting. Yeah. Oh my God. Watch across. You were in bed though. I wasn't in bed. You were in bed before. Yeah. Okay. My cat walked across the screen. No, I get that. Yeah. If you're at your desk and your cat comes by at home, I get that. Yeah. She just likes to be on the camera. All right. Well, I just want to thank, I want to thank B-Checks for being our sponsor. Yeah. If you're going to hire somebody, make sure your next hire is not a bad hire. Screen them with B-Checks.

00:25:09 So thanks to them. And submit your stories. Look for our next episode. Submit your stories. Go to thebadhire.com and you'll see how to submit a story there and you'll see how to enter the contest to win $10,000 this season. We're looking forward to that. Make sure they're entertaining because they come to us and we're like pretty hard to entertain. Yeah. Yeah. We don't want to read anything boring. Yeah. Right. Spare us. I don't want to read anything boring. No ranting, please. Yeah. No ranting. Don't write it in rant style. If you want to, if you want to win $10,000. Do not copy and paste from your notes app. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. All right. So send your stories in. We'd love to read them and we appreciate you and we'll see you next time.

00:25:49 Thanks for tuning into the bad hire. Don't forget to follow, rate and share. Got a story of your own. I'd love to hear it. Email me at Ken at the bad hire.com or find me on LinkedIn at Ken Monroe. I'll see you next time.