He Blew $4,000 on the Company Card His First Day [The Bad Hire Ep. 46]

00:00:00 I fire him on the spot and he asks if he can keep the clothes. So, like, what do you think? It doesn't matter at what level. You can still have dummies, you know, not show up. The FBI arrested him as he stepped off a plane at JFK Airport, arriving for what he thought was a vacation with his partner. This is The Bad Hire, the show with the best stories about the worst employees. We fired him, of course. People are crazy. It's like an HR nightmare. Right. One bad hire stole all of it. Crazy stuff. She got what she deserved. Oh. I'm your host, Ken Monroe, and every week we dive into real-life stories

00:00:41 from the wild world of work and what can happen when the wrong person gets the job. These stories aren't just crazy. They're cautionary tales about lessons learned the hard way. Let's get started. Hey, everyone, and welcome to The Bad Hire. This is a show where we've got the best stories about the wild world of work, where we've got some people who send us stories. We love to read them, love to hear what's going on out there in the wild world of work and all the crazy stories people send us. I'm joined today by Emma and Kylie. Kylie, this is your first time. Yes, this is my first time. I love it. Excited? I'm really excited.

00:01:22 Yeah. Do you know what stories you're reading? I did not read them. Oh, you did? Yeah. So you're just like... Real straight out the self. Real straight out the self. Yeah. I wish I didn't get to... You're right. She has to prepare my social. She knows them all. Yeah. Yeah. How you doing, Emma? I'm good. Good stuff. Good week last week on social. Nice work. Thank you. A lot of people know Emma handles all our social. Kylie actually helps in social. She has another role somewhere else, but she comes in because she loves it. Yeah. We have some fun TikToks coming. Yes. Yeah. I haven't edited. I haven't done any editing yet, but I have them.

00:02:02 Yeah. Oh, you guys shot some. Yesterday, yeah. Yesterday afternoon. And there may or may not be one where I am standing on furniture. Yeah. All right. Oh, my gosh. All right. So you guys know how it works. People submit us stories. If you've listened to the show or whatever, you got a story submitted to us. We're giving away $10,000 at the end of the season to the best story of the season or the best story of the year since this. It's coming up at the end of this month. Oh, is that right? So we have to start doing all the work to figure out who it is. Yes. See, that's a lot of stories. It is. I was looking the other day. We created some book called The 70 Worst Hiring Stories Ever.

00:02:46 Yes. And people are downloading that book like crazy. It's great. It's nuts. So it's just a retold the stories that we've told on the show. We just put them in a book and let people. I was thinking about it. You could probably take that and create a book out of it. Just a book on all the mistakes that happened. Because all these stories, you know, there's a lot of learning in a lot of these stories. Right. And so if you took the learning out of it, did the story, took out the learning, took out some themes that you see of what makes people flame out, blow up. You know. Clearly interviewing is one of the finding, getting to the truth and interviewing is one of the issues because people show up.

00:03:29 They just don't know what they're doing or it's a lot of great stories. So I don't know. So listen, I'll get it off. We'll each share. We'll each read some stories today. And from people who've submitted them, I think some of them are from research. Some of them are submitted. Some of these are submitted. Some of them are not. Research. Sorry. On the next episode, we have a lot more submissions on that one, too. I can't remember. Yeah. So submit your stories. Yeah. Those are the best ones. If it's submitted, it'll say it above it before you read it. Oh, here we go. Well, this one's anonymously. We know. I think we know who submitted it, but we'll protect their identity so they can tell the truth. Hey, it says, I'm an assistant store manager for a large retail chain.

00:04:13 Even though the company itself is big, we're a very small store in a small town. So this makes it difficult to hire for management positions. So our recs tend to stay open for a while. Recently, we hired a new manager after having an opening for over six months. She would be the part-time manager, and she interviewed amazing with two different store managers. However, things quickly did a 180. On her first day, her car died and suddenly was out of commission. So day three, carpooling with her husband, she was late 10 minutes because they couldn't find the car keys. On that Saturday, her grandfather died, so she called out for her next two shifts.

00:04:56 And then while dealing with the funeral, she has a gallbladder attack from stress and spicy foods. So her husband calls my personal cell phone to call out for her the morning of her next scheduled shift. So this is not a good opening. She works her next shift where she is warned by the store manager that if she's late or absent again, she will already be put on a write-up. While the next day, there's an accident on the highway causing her to be 30 minutes late. And her mother had a heart attack earlier in the morning. Now she called the day before her next shift to let us know her husband had a stroke. I'll just wait till the story's over before I start talking.

00:05:38 It's like you have so many questions. Yeah. But would still be in for her next shift. So he had a stroke, but I could still come to next shift. She's only been there three weeks. I don't know what to believe anymore. It is extremely bad luck. Or is this going to be a trend? I was just about to say, it gets to a point where you have to wonder, is her luck really that bad? Or you just say it. You got to believe that the going to the well of the really bad stories. You got to think you've, I've been there. I just can't. I just can't go again. Yeah. I would Google in the news if there was really an accident. Like that's where I'm going. Like, is it really a car accident? Because I love to give people the benefit of the doubt.

00:06:21 But if we get to this excuse, I'm kind of like, eh. I called the police department. At the police department right now. There was no accident. That's crazy. Remember, they have the husband's cell phone because he called to call out for her. So a quick call out to the husband's, a quick call back to the husband's cell phone. That's true. Hello? Hey. You can hear him. For your wife. He's like, hello? Yeah. Yeah. What are you doing? I'm on the golf course? What's going on? Yeah. Or like, have you guys seen when people press on the microwave to like sound like the beep, beep in the hospital? So just like, I'm in the hospital right now.

00:07:05 Oh my gosh. Bang. I don't know. When it rains, it pours. Yeah. I think about, you know, the excuses managers in HR hear for people. Well, I would hope for her that this was, no, I don't hope for her that it was bad luck. Well, obviously. Yeah. But, all right. Second story. This is another anonymously submitted, which you can do. You don't have to put your name on it. We'll read it. Thank you. That last story was funny. First job. Here it is. First job I got in staffing was for a company formed by a former top recruiter for a big name staffing company. Um, so person used to be a big time recruiter for a big name staffing company goes and starts

00:07:45 his own deal. The friend brings me saying he feels I would be a good recruiter interview with the owner and I'm offered the job interview with the owner and I'm offered the job first day on the job. I'm training with another recruiter and owner Steve comes in and says, Hey, landed a new account needs ones and threes having been brand new in staff. And I asked what are ones and threes? My trainer laughs and explains to me that in this office, we refer to racial demographics by numbers or even sports metaphors. No. Okay. This is going south. Fast forward down the road. Owner comes in the morning and goes to our, to our big whiteboard on the, on the, out in the pit and starts to write in big letters, F U Steve, his name.

00:08:30 He then gathers us around and proceeds to tell all of us that if he asks anyone, if their openings are filled at the end of the day and the answer isn't a yes, he does not want to hear excuses. He, instead, he wants us to just say F U Steve. He begins to explain that is basically what we're saying to him when we cannot fill an order. Oh gosh. One of the most toxic work environments I've ever been a part of. So not only, okay, not only is he racist, but he's also just a chump when it comes to running, managing people. Yeah. That's, I don't think we've ever gotten a story like this before.

00:09:10 I, I'm surprised we don't get more like horrible manager stories or like. Yeah. People submitting going, no, I quit. I wasn't, the, the bad hire was the guy that was managing me. I quit because of him. Right. Right. Yeah. Cause that's what this is. That's terrible. That is shocking. I think bad managers and are, are just so commonplace. I mean, we hear stories all the time. Um, you know, I spent a lifetime around, you know, really, really poor, uh, leaders and managers. And so, but yeah, one of the most toxic work environments I've ever been a part of in staffing. So. Wow.

00:09:52 Before we dive back into the chaos on the bad hire, this episode is brought to you by B-Checks. Hiring shouldn't feel like rolling the dice. Background checks should come with great tech, seamless integration and customer service that delivers. That's B-Checks. Lightning fast results, unmatched accuracy, built in fraud prevention. We help you hire the right people. Now B-Checks plugs into over 100 HRIS and ATS systems. So your background checks run smooth, fast and backed by top level service. Protect your team. Protect your reputation. Protect your sanity. Go to B-Checks.io. That's B-C-H-E-X.io.

00:10:34 All right. So, Hey, we've got, um, somebody, um, Bryce Clark. Yes. I think I remember Bryce from a previous, he's a business owner, founder, product design director. Uh, does, does, does, does he make the headphones? I didn't, I'm not sure. I didn't meet with him. I think Nathan met with him. They had a very long conversation. Yeah. He had a, he had a bunch of, he just, he's had a lot of fun. It was great. He's had a lot of fun hiring people over the years, but, uh, he's, he's, he's a great guest. Love his story. So let's, uh, let's check him out and see what he has to say. This one kind of blew my mind because we have people sign an NDA before they start because

00:11:17 we'll get government contracts and the cost will be a subcontractor for a company that's working with the government. And they'll flow down these clauses to us that like, you can't even tell your vendors what thing you're buying this from. So oftentimes our purchase orders will have the name of the, the company that's buying. That's how we track our purchase order. It'll be part of the number. And we can't even do that because it's got to be all very like hush hush. And the business partner came to me and was like, Hey, look at this, uh, Instagram post. I'm like, I guess like it was, this person had recorded their work and they had showed a time-lapse of them doing the work, which looked really cool to their credit. It was well done. It showed them doing the job wrong. It showed work that we weren't supposed to share that we were doing.

00:12:00 Uh, we have a few techniques that our competitors do not use that were included in the imagery. Oh, and there was no permission asked. You know, there was like, there was no, it was just like, here's a post of all the internal secrets that you're not supposed to share. So that one kind of like, I was super nice to her and, but she took it right down. And thankfully she wasn't connected to anybody in the industry at all, but what a heart attack. Wow. Um, I think this happens. Yeah. Yeah. It's just something that you don't really think about sometimes. I mean, there's just, there's creators, right? Yeah. There's a lot of people who are creators and just having fun. Mm-hmm. And so she's just doing my work, my work life.

00:12:41 This is what my day's like, you know, and I get it. Yeah. And she just doesn't, you know, just doesn't dawn on her some, you know, that she's in a secure environment that, that, that she's under a, an NDA kind of. It's kind of like when we do like walkthrough videos of some of our tech and we have to like obviously bore out all the PI and stuff. And I mean, sometimes it's easy to. We have people, we have people here that do. Yeah. TikToks like their creators. They do then sometimes during the day, they'll go do their stuff. And we, I think we've even had a similar situation to that where they weren't in a secure, one of our secured areas where there was data, but you know, they, they just didn't, you know, they just, you know, you knew in, knew in their career.

00:13:26 Yeah. Yeah. Your intentions are good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in fact, there was, um, one of our, one of the teammates we have, he, he did a, he did a great TikTok on his, one of his, maybe his first day of work. Like, oh yeah. And I, and I, and I, someone showed it to me and it was really good. I mean, it was like day in my life. Well, he was just like, you know, he's graduating college. Yeah. He's fired up. He's got a job. We're super excited to have him. Right. And so he starts to, if I remember he started the video, like all the way back at house, getting like coming out, getting in the car, making the drive, getting here, you know, the whole thing.

00:14:08 And, which was pretty cool. And I actually loved it. Yeah. And, you know, we, we ended up having to say, you know, talk to him about, Hey, if you're going to come in to the facility and flip your phone on. Right. You know, this is a secure place. So you can't do that, but you know, you can talk to us if you want to do something. Yeah. And we'll provide space for you. Yeah. You know, I want, I want to, you know. Like you said, like the intentions were good. Yeah. Just like I said, it's something that you just don't really think about. Yeah. The security of it. Yeah. It just comes, that comes with some maturity inside of an organization that does have a level of security. It's kind of like somebody giving like, like an Amazon haul, for example, and like forgetting to blur out their address on the package.

00:14:52 Yeah. You know, it's kind of like that. Oh. Yeah. Something, just something you don't think about. Like, oh, they won't zoom in and look at the address, you know. Yeah. No. But they will. Well. They're like, oh, she has good stuff. Yeah. So if you go hang out on her porch. Yeah. Porch pirates. All right, Emma. All right. What you got for us today? Did you find anything fun? Maybe. We'll see. Just kidding. Of course I did. All right. Here we go. So I manage corporate orientation for a financial services firm, and we run big cohorts, sometimes a dozen new hires at once. The day I'm thinking of, we have 12 people in the room, 12 people who made it through multiple rounds of interviews, background checks, all of that.

00:15:36 I stand at the front of that conference room and tell them they are the best and brightest of 900 applicants. I meant it at the time. Uh-oh. Foreshadowing. Oh, no. We hand out the access badges, then we hand out the corporate American Express cards. I want to be clear about what those cards are for. Travel, client entertainment, pre-approved business expenses. We explain this. It's in the onboarding packet. It's probably in the offer letter. It is, I wouldn't argue, self-evident. One of them, well-dressed already, which in retrospect was a sign, goes to lunch and doesn't come back when everyone else does. He shows up about 40 minutes later carrying bags. Shopping bags. He sets them down in the middle of the conference room and starts pulling things out.

00:16:20 Suits, ties, multiple pairs of shoes. And he's just grinning, genuinely proud of himself. And he tells them, guys, you will not believe the sale they had. He had walked two blocks to a high-end men's clothing store and spent $4,000 on a personal wardrobe on the company card on his first day during orientation. And then he bragged about it to 12 of his new colleagues and to me. I pull him aside and ask what he thought the card was for. He says, well, it's a job perk, right, for looking the part. And I fire him on the spot. And he asks if he can keep the clothes. So I'm like, what do you think? What do you think, my answer for? $4,000.

00:17:01 That's crazy. On the first day, too. I understand if we tell them, like, hey, because we do that here sometimes. We're like, hey, you have a budget of this amount to get clothes for sales conferences, whatever. And then we'll get them embroidered for you with, like, our business logos and whatever. But the fact that it was already laid out what the card was for. Yes. That, yeah. It's very interesting. Wow. I would assume this was, like, you know, maybe first job or something. I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. It doesn't say. But very interesting. I would have requested a fashion show. Give me a show that you got.

00:17:41 I mean, come on. Okay. Kyle's like, we ought to make the best of it. Well, since you're here. On your way out the door. You should just try those on. Yeah. So we can see them all. We'll rate it. One through ten. Before she tells him she's going to fire him, she goes, can we see the stuff you got? I mean, the other guys would like to go down to the. Oh, my gosh. I said it's hilarious. All right. Here's my second one. So this one still doesn't fully make sense to me, and I was standing in the room when it happened. We had just hired a new president for our live entertainment division, a serious role with real responsibility, real authority, and by any estimate, a salary somewhere in the seven figure range. The kind of hire that takes months of recruiting and multiple rounds of interviews with people

00:18:25 at the highest levels of the company. You don't make that hire casually. The owner throws a welcome event on his first day. Big lobby, breakfast laid out, the whole team assembled and dressed up a little. The idea is to make a proper introduction. This is your new president. Get to know him. This is the start of something new. There were pastries. This person thought they needed to include. There were pastries. Pastries. That's how fancy this was. Oh. I guess that's telling him how fancy it was. And he never showed up. No call, no email, no message through his recruiter, nothing. He simply did not appear. We waited. We made small talk. We looked at the door. We ate the breakfast. We kept looking at the door, and he never walked through it.

00:19:07 Nobody could reach him that day. As far as I know, nobody has a real explanation since. And to this day, I generally don't know what happened. Whether he got a better offer that morning, whether he panicked, whether something happened to him personally, or whether he just decided not to come. But he became a running joke at that company for years afterward. The president who wasn't. Wow. That's crazy. I know. To accept and then not show up is wild. Well, he threw the thing for them, right? I'm pretty sure he threw that party for them. Yeah. The owner throws a welcome event on his first day. Yeah. So the party, the owner's not the president. Oh, right. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Myth read that.

00:19:48 So the owner throws this huge party for this guy. They're all sitting there waiting for him to walk in. I mean, I'm assuming they told him about it, the president. Like, hey, we're going to have a huge thing. Yeah. I mean, it's his first day. I'm assuming he knew. He wasn't showing up at the event. Well, I know. But, wow. He missed out on the pastries. They should have told him the pastries. Yeah. The pastries? No, thank you. Hey, I'm more of a bacon, egg, and cheese. Yeah, I'm out. That's what he heard. He saw it on the email. There'll be pastries. He's like, bruh. I'm so not doing that. Oh, my gosh. Oh, me. All right. My last bit. That just goes to show you, though. Right? Yeah. The story's true.

00:20:29 It doesn't matter at what level. You can still have dummies, you know, not show up. Absolutely. And it's crazy that no one figured out why. That's just... The humiliation of not showing up. I got to believe the owner went and tracked it down and like, maybe it got solved at that level, you know. Hopefully. I mean, your reputation. Yeah. I just... That's what's crazy to me. It seems to me to be... It would be harder to deal with the aftermath of that, the carrying that, that it would be just to make that hard phone call and be like, hey, I've changed my mind. I can't be there. Just to ghost someone. It's... Yeah. I just... I don't...

00:21:09 I don't get it, but... All right. We got... My last clip is another clip from Bryce. Oh, okay. Good price. One worker, I noticed she was working past her lunch break. And so I said, hey, you hungry? You want to grab your lunch now? There's no pressure. You don't like have to work extra, you know. And she's like, oh, yeah, I think I'll go get a sandwich. And like an hour goes by and she typically just took like a half hour lunch. And I thought, this is interesting. So I went downstairs to the break room and my business partner's like, oh, her? No, she left. And I'm like, is she okay? She's like, oh, she told me she was just going home for the day. I'm like, what? Okay. All right. Interesting. I still don't know why. I have no idea. And like a few days later, she just showed up again.

00:21:49 And she just like, like it was a regular day. Just showed up and started working. Okay. All right. We get these all the time. I know. Where these... They leave for lunch and never come back. Or there's these stories where people just come in and out of the job. Like, there's no structure. Yeah. You know, like I was here today. I didn't show up. Didn't show up this day. Didn't show up that day. Like came back. Right. How's that happen? People interpret some of the things that their manager tell them. Like, oh, hey, you want to take your lunch now? Like to them, that's like, oh, I can leave for the day. Yeah. But no. She wrote that story we had where the guy was like, he didn't show and then didn't show. And then he like on his first day of work. And then he turned and was like, hey, is there any way I could just work remote?

00:22:30 Coming in is really not going to work. Oh, yeah. If you're just like, what? Yeah. Or the, I love the one that was like, sorry, they were super late that day and they're like, sorry, I'm just not used to getting up. This is insane. Wow. So funny. Yeah. This is. You might want to. I don't know. I'm not shocked by someone who disappeared at lunch and didn't show up for two days anymore. Yeah. You know, after doing this show. But what do I know, really? What do you what? But what do I know, really? No. Really. All right, Kylie. What have you got? Yay. Okay. So there's a rights coordinator working at a major publishing house in London, a low level position in the foreign rights department.

00:23:14 His job gives him an insider's understanding of how the publishing industry works. The people involved, the processes, the language, he knows it all. Starting in August 2016, he uses that knowledge to start stealing, not money, manuscripts. He begins registering fake internet domains, over 160 of them, designed to look almost identical to real publishing houses, literary agencies, and talent scouts. The trick is subtle. He replaces letters and email addresses with combinations that look the same at a glance, swap an M for RN, and most people won't notice.

00:23:56 Then he sends phishing emails impersonating real editors, agents, and publishers. Publishers, asking authors to send over their unpublished work. And they do. Because why wouldn't they? The email looks legitimate. It sounds like someone they know. Over five years, he steals more than a thousand unpublished manuscripts. His victims include some of the biggest names in contemporary literature, along with up-and-coming writers who had no idea their work was being taken. Wow. Among them was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who sent over their manuscript, believing they were emailing a well-known editor.

00:24:37 For years, nobody could figure out who was doing it. The publishing world knew something was wrong. Manuscripts kept going missing before publication. But the perpetrator was invisible. He was hiding in plain sight inside one of the most prestigious publishing companies in the world. He was finally caught in January 2022 when the FBI arrested him as he stepped off a plane at JFK Airport, arriving for what he thought was a vacation with his partner. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud and was ordered to pay $88,000 in restitution. The publishing house said they were shocked and horrified.

00:25:17 The FBI's assistant director put it best. He wasn't creative enough to get away with it. Wow. Whoa. Here's what struck me in that story. That was complex. And he got $88,000. Also same. I was like, where's the one in front? Right? Yeah. Like $88,000. Wow. We did all of that. It runs for the super long time. You're super. You got all these websites. It's meticulous. These email addresses. Turns out you got to pay $88,000 in restitution, which means there was $88,000 in damage. And he stole a thousand manuscripts.

00:25:58 Right. So they were worth eight bucks each. $88 each. Dang. That's a long time to be able to. Run a scan. That up. Yeah. So I'm thinking that maybe we don't fully understand the whole story. Like how much damage was done. Maybe, you know, I don't know. But I was curious that the whole time he told me the story, I was like, but what do I do with the manuscript? Like, how would I? Like. Wait a second. You know what I mean? Yeah. I don't know. He was looking for ideas. He wanted it. It was a wannabe writer. He was hoping one would come when he'd be able to. Yeah. I guess he wanted to pass someone else. I'm not creative enough to understand why he would even do it. So. Yeah. Backfire.

00:26:40 Okie dokie. Story two. So two employees at a discount retail store in Toledo, Ohio spend the better part of a year stealing from the place where they work. And I want to be clear about how they do it because it takes off. It takes some actual coordination to pull off. They set up a system. Co-conspirators come into the store posing as regular customers and go through their checkout lanes during their shifts. Instead of scanning the items, the two employees go through the motions, picking up the products, moving them past the scanner, setting them down while actually hiding them in bins under the counter. The items never ring up.

00:27:22 The customers walk out empty handed and the employees hold on to the goods. Then they sell everything on Facebook. I can't please. This goes on for the better part of a year. The store manager eventually catches on when she notices the two of them going through the checkout motions without actually scanning anything. Items disappearing into bins that shouldn't have anything in them. She puts it together, contacts the police, and both women are arrested and charged with grand theft. The total value of stolen merchandise comes to just under $44,000. I think about the audacity of this one a lot. This isn't a one-time impulse decision.

00:28:04 This is a coordinated, ongoing operation that required recruiting outside accomplices, maintaining a fake checkout routine, convincing enough to fool anyone watching, and then managing an active resale operation on social media. That's a significant amount of effort, and planning that could have gone literally anywhere else. What store was this? Wow. You know, it's one of the discount stores. But what happened when you scan stuff? Doesn't it go beep, beep? Yeah. Where's the... No, I don't get it. I guess the manager... I was trying to figure it out, too. I was like, why wouldn't they just hand it to the person in a bag and let them walk out? I mean, it was a person in a bag.

00:28:45 It was just a lot of... It just sounds like a lot of work to steal. Like, I don't know. I don't get the... I don't get the strategy of how they did it, right? I don't either. Like, it doesn't make sense. Maybe the story's not being told right, but at the same time... And so are they just walking out with big bins full of stuff at night and nobody's seeing them? I don't know. It would be so much easier just to... That's weird. Anyway, I'm not going to try to figure out how to do the theft better. Right. Right. Seems weird. That's where I went. I was like, oh, wait. I would have done it differently. Yeah. My way's better. No. But the point in that story was kind of the truth. It was like, this was pretty... If you think about all the complexities of it, if you just put that same energy into like,

00:29:28 I don't know, being a... You know, being a... Do affiliate marketing or something online or something. I don't know. Seems like it would be... Yeah. ...about as hard. And you know, you don't go to jail for that. Right. Yeah. Jeez. Okay. Story three. All right. Here we go. So I start a new position and get promoted pretty quickly into a management role. I've got a solid supervisory background so it feels like a natural fit. One of my direct reports is a conscientious, ambitious young guy pleasant to work with seemed like a good addition to the team. About a week in, we're having a completely normal conversation about a project when he

00:30:11 mentions, almost casually, that he's been doing some research on me and wants to clarify something he found out. So, specifically, he wants to know about an arrest on my record, an insurance issue that snowballed into a driver's license issue, and when I got pulled over during a routine traffic stop in a conservative county, I spent a night in jail. Wow. It was humiliating at the time, and it happened more than a decade ago. Now, this is not something you'd find with a basic Google search. The specificity of what he knew made it clear he had paid for one of those background report sites, the kind where you put in a name and a few bucks and get a detailed breakdown of

00:30:55 someone's public records. He framed it as just wanting to clarify which state it happened in, like he needed the paperwork tidy. I answered him honestly. I'm shocked. Excuse myself from the conversation and went back to my office. The longer I sat with it, the more I realized how completely out of line this was. He had paid money out of his own pocket to run a background check on his manager, and then, and this is the part I still can't fully get out of my head, he told me about it. Like, he thought that was a normal thing to do. Like, he had every right to go digging through my life and then ask me to account for what

00:31:36 he found. HR wanted to fire him on the spot. I pushed back at the time, gave him the benefit of the doubt. Looking back, I should have let them. Oh, wow. Is that legal? I could tell you there's going to be the clap back on this. Oh, I know. It's going to be, people are going to be like, oh, you can run, you can run background checks on us, but we can't run it on you? Right. Right? Right. Right. Yeah. Is that legal, though, to do it without his consent? Can he do that? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. You can run, yeah. If there's, yeah, it's public information, so they could go and do that. Yeah. As long as it's not for employment purposes. So, or tenant, any FCRA purpose.

00:32:16 So, any regulated purpose would require letting them know in advance and giving your acknowledgement. But, in this particular case. Like, what would the goal be? To, like, find your manager in a pickle and just embarrass them? Yeah. Leverage? I don't know. It's just very, it's just like, if I did the check or whatever and found that on him, I just wouldn't go into the interview. Like, if I had decided to hire somebody that I didn't want to work for, then maybe I just don't show up to the interview. But, walking into the interview just to, like, call them out, I feel like it's a little exciting. Wait, what? No, I think they hired. It was after the hire. Oh, it was after the hire? Yeah. Oh. Okay. Yeah. So, they hired? Yes. Sorry. Sorry. It was one of his direct.

00:32:57 Sorry. I'm struggling today. It was one of his direct reports. Okay. Okay. I got you. That's. But, why wait until after you're hired? This happens. I think this happens. People try to dig up dirt on other employees all the time, and probably managers who they don't like. I don't fully understand why someone would do this so early, like, before, you know. Yeah. He's like a weekend. Yeah. Interesting. It's like, you usually think when they've had time to come to dislike someone and say, well, I'm going to try to dig up some dirt or something on them. Interesting. Yeah. Well, I had fun. Those were good today. Yeah. Yeah. They were. Yeah.

00:33:38 So, you had to. Yeah. Those were good today. Have you told so many stories? You remember them better than I do. Mm-hmm. We've told so many stories. Sometimes I watch them online, I'll be like. I don't remember. I hardly remember that story. It takes me a minute to, like. And then, yeah. We get on here, and every story we read reminds me of another one that we read. And I have to bring it up. Oh, there's just themes. Oh, you're trying to say. There must be. And behavior, right? You know. And so much of it completely avoidable. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know. Totally. You could write a book on it, on what not to do or what you should be looking for in an interview. Because here's all these stories where maybe just a little more digging would have helped you get to the place.

00:34:25 We've had so many stories where people just aren't who they said they were. Yeah. And then, yeah. So, anyway. Well, that's it for us today. So, thanks for listening to The Bad Hire. And please subscribe. You know, review us. Share it with somebody. We love it. Comment on our stuff. We love it when you do engage with us. We'll talk back. We're listening. It leaves a lot of comments back at people. I do. And. Whether they're nice. Yeah. Well, I told you you have to be. Yeah, I know. I got in trouble. Yeah. You had to be. You had to be nice. But.

00:35:06 But they're not always nice to me. Yeah. You got a tough crowd sometimes. I do. I do have a tough crowd sometimes. They get on me sometimes. But. Oh, well. Yeah. Decided to get. You take it like a champ. I would cry. Yeah. So be nice. So submit. Yeah. So do it. Submit your bad heart story. At the bad heart dot com. And you look at. You can either submit it in writing. You could do a guest segment like you saw today on the show. And we would love to have it. So. But thanks for listening. And we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

00:35:47 Bye.