He Faked a $1M Offer Letter to Get a Raise [The Bad Hire Ep. 18]

00:00:00 He actually manually edited the salary from $60,000 a year to $1 million a year. I'm on a cross-departmental strategic initiative. Top secret. Top secret stuff. Turns out there was no project. He admitted he wasn't smoking. He was helping a friend stuff. 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 from the wild world of work and what can happen when the wrong person gets the job.

00:00:42 These stories aren't just crazy. They're cautionary tales about lessons learned the hard way. Let's get started. All right. Welcome, everyone. Welcome back to The Bad Hire. Welcome. As you recall, this is the show with the worst stories about the worst or the best. The best stories about the worst employees, I guess. So I know it's a lot of fun. Welcome. What's up, Emma? Welcome. Hi. Hello. Y'all guys ready to go? Yeah. Oh, I'm ready. The energy in here is off the charts. We're ready to go. Yeah. We got Marcus in the corner. It's like post-lunch. We've been videoing all day long. It's 2 o'clock right now. We're going to record at 10.

00:01:22 Yeah. Yeah. We've been busy. Yeah. See if we can't get the energy level up. All right. So you know the drill. Every week, we dive into the kind of wildest, weirdest stories. I've actually enjoyed it. We've heard so many stories, actually, that I've forgotten about the breaking stories. Like, I see them on, we post them like, we post them weeks later after the show, right? Month later. And I'll see, I'll see something. I'll be like, I don't even remember that story. Well, sometimes they start to run together, too. I'm like, have I read this one already? There's so many, so many bad hires. They're also bad. Yeah. It's hard to keep track of it. Plus, we literally, like, I think we're putting out one this week that we recorded two or three months ago. Oh, really? And so whenever I talk to somebody about being a guest on, they're like, oh, when am I going to be on?

00:02:06 I'm like, sometime soon. Well, we started doing something new, too. So we started, we did a lot more proactive reach out to find guests and to get into the HR space and recruiting space to talk to people about their stories. And I know that we've got a big email program going, and we schedule, and then we interview them. We basically record a segment with them, right? One of you guys record it. Maybe I'll record it sometimes. But you record a segment with them, and you get stories from them. And how's that coming along? Because I've seen a couple. I think it's really cool. Yeah. It seems like a nice way to intertwine stories into here. Yeah. Instead of trying to go through the logistic of having everybody get here.

00:02:48 That's right. You know, like, hey, they've got to fly in, or we've got to meet exactly. Like, today would have been a disaster because we went over and this started. You know, we were supposed to be doing this. It's hard as the planning. Yeah. And there's... So now you can just do your segment with them. Exactly. You know, get their stories, and then we can intertwine them, and then they're part of, you know, they get to tell the story. I think it's kind of cool. And there's just, there's bad hires all over the country. They're all over the place. Have you done an interview yet, or has it been mostly Nathan? I haven't yet, but I've, like, watched them. Right. And they seem to be going pretty good so far. Yeah. I'm enjoying it. It's fun. It's just like, yeah, so there's bad hires all over the country. So like you said, we're reaching out. And so it's hard when we find somebody who's, like, a recruiter or a hiring manager, and

00:03:29 they're in Oregon or California or whatever. Or even if they're just down the street, it's hard planning because we record here in the Charlotte area. And so now, just so we can have way more stories that we're going to even feature on the show, so we just kind of record the actual episode, and it becomes a segment on the show. So I think that's the next episode. Well, if you want to tell a story, respond to an email, reach out, do whatever, you might end up on a segment talking to Nathan. Everybody likes Nathan. They like hanging out with him. You can also visit thebadhire.com. And just submit. Yeah. Submit your story. Yeah. There you go. Really, we're just trying to get to the point where there's just no excuse. Yeah. Like, if you have any way of getting on the show, it's here for you now.

00:04:09 You can come in. You can just record virtually. If you've ever wanted to be on a podcast before. This is your chance. We're really begging you. Yeah. The stories have actually been, the stories have been pretty good. I watch some of the clips from the interviews, and I try not to, like, pre-watch them, because I want to, like, watch them and, like, react to them. React to them real time. So it's kind of real time for me, but it's hard not to see some of them, you know? Yeah. And when you guys are working on them, and we're approving them. So, yeah, it's fun stuff. It's been fun. All right. Well, you know, don't forget, you know, one of the reasons we want everybody is to, you know, do, you want to do this because you want to win $10,000. I mean, my gosh, we want, we want to hear great stories so much. We want to hear from recruiters and HR leaders and business owners about, you know, hiring

00:04:54 is so hard, and HR folks and recruiters are such warriors. And so, you know, we're not really making fun of people. It's really just about understanding that sometimes it just doesn't go right. Every employee can have a bad day, and we've heard bad day stories. And then there can just be, you know, bad employees. And then, you know, but what HR has to put up with sometimes, and you hear these stories, you're like, wow. You know, whether you're a business owner, manager, recruiter, HR, sometimes just, you know, people, maybe that's part of it is when you get around these folks who spend their life around the people aspect of the business, they totally are never surprised.

00:05:38 Yeah. Right? They just, they're just like, it's just. It's like, oh, I've been there. I've been there too. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of like with other things in life. It's like, you don't really need the training or the encouragement when everything's going great. Yeah. You know, but it's like, you need to know how to handle when stuff is bad. It goes off the hand, it goes off the rails and things like that. And so that's, what's been so relatable about the show is when you just get the stories from the people and they're like, oh yeah. Okay. I had a crazy experience. I thought I was the only one. Yeah. But I guess there's people all around the country who are trying to build a team and they have something go way like offline or something crazy, some kind of bad hire, a bad interview and okay, I'm not alone. And here's what somebody else can learn from it. Well, I'm happy.

00:06:19 Yeah. The show's doing good. It's fun. We keep getting traction. And you know, people don't go to the show and watch it on YouTube. I don't think it's like what you hope you do. But I mean, that's, I think really the purpose for us is to create a lot of the social media and we are getting a lot of traction with social media and it continues to grow. Great job, Emma. Yeah. Thanks. Emma runs our socials. She's your own store on our socials. I do. So if you see our viral clips, it's all because of Emma. All right. Here we go. This story, this story of the guy who's always really busy on high priority projects. Okay. All right. The new guy at my job started telling everyone he was working on a confidential project with upper management, confidential. Anytime someone asked him to help with something, he'd say, can't right now.

00:07:04 And I'm on a cross departmental strategic initiative. Top secret. Top secret stuff. Right. And honestly, everyone, you know, they just let it go. When you use words like strategic initiative. Yeah. Sounds good. Right. People stop asking questions. Right. Clearly sent from the CEO. This went on for months. He wasn't doing any of the normal day-to-day stuff. No updates, no reports, nothing. Just walking around looking important. Then one day, a director asked why he hasn't updated a shared tracker in ages. And the guy goes, oh, I'm leading a new data integration pilot. The director just stares at him and says, what pilot? What are you talking about? It turns out there was no project.

00:07:45 He made up the fact. Why would you tell your director that? There was no project. He made up the fact that he had these top priority projects to get out of doing any actual work. HR, it's amazing he didn't get promoted. Yeah. Right. John's always, look at this dude. He's always on these top right. We should promote him. He should be a leader. Yeah. HR found out and now he's on a performance. Okay. Performance plan or something like that. Well, this is the reason you need HR because they, you know, they would have saved me because that one did it kicked him out. Yeah. They're like, oh no, we got to put him on a performance improvement plan. But apparently he's been telling people he's been strategically reassigned. Okay. Okay. Using his own language. Not sure if that's entirely true.

00:08:26 That's good. Wow. Yeah. There's this one, I don't know if you've seen much like Conan O'Brien before, like he's had a bunch of late night stuff for a while and he has a couple of videos where he's doing stuff with his staff that he, you know, quote unquote manages. Right. And there's one or two guys who he'll get on because when he asks, what do you actually do here at the office? They'll always say, oh, I have like various duties and responsibilities. And he's always like, I've noticed that the more people use various responsibilities and vague terminology like that, the less they actually do. Have no responsibilities. Yeah. They're like, oh, I do a bunch of stuff. It's all strategic and it's all these various projects. Well, I used to work, I used to work with this guy who had two kind of two bosses, you

00:09:07 know, he had to, you know, work over here and he had work over here and I was one of them. And whenever I would try to get something wrong, he was always like, you know, I just got so many projects. I got this separate task list over here that's confidential. And so nothing would ever get done. And then he would, and then he would do this other stuff. Right. And, and then, and then, then I later found out he was telling the other person, oh, I'm really busy doing, you know, this other stuff for, for, for me. And, you know, he was just really not getting a lot of stuff done altogether. So I think this strategic initiatives approach here, I think this is, I think, I think this

00:09:52 is like, it's gotta be in some code book somewhere for people. To me, it also kind of sounds like the way that he's wording it, he wants to make himself sound super important so that people will like ask more questions about what he's doing. Like, oh, I'm working on this super top secret confidential project. Cause he wants somebody to be like, oh, what is it? So that he can talk about it. It is. It just basically didn't lead to him being promoted. And that's an okay plan up until you're telling the guy who's above you who knows, who knows what your actual responsibilities are. It's like, I think this sounds really important to your peers, dialing back here when it's your boss. Doing something super important. Like it's really, really important. Oh my gosh. I'm in charge of your responsibilities. I can tell you. Before we dive back into the chaos on the bad hire, this episode is brought to you by

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00:11:20 So y'all focus in on, try to find your like favorite story today. I'll take a look. I've got this coworker who's always had access to the company. Oh no. Who's always has access to the company's finances. Super friendly, super dependable, or at least that's what everyone thought. This isn't going to go well. This is how every story starts. Yeah, just like, eww. And then one day my boss pulls me aside and says, a client's missing some money. He asked me to look into it. So I start digging, invoices, receipts, logs, all the details I can dig up. And the deeper I go, the more things stop. You know, they just don't add up. The money moving at odd hours, some duplicate charges, transfer labeled, or some fake vendor

00:12:02 names or something. You know, I put it all together in a folder, every piece of proof. And when I finally bring it to my boss, he just sits there silently. Then he looks at me and says, hey, you know, all this stuff, it looks like it points back to you. Like, apparently the guy was using this person's sign-up, his like credentials to get into something, which. Wow. Okay, sharing credentials. Yeah. Turns out every login I used to check, her work was already compromised. Sketchy. So, um, when they confronted her, she started crying and admitted she had a gambling problem. Oh, no. Instead of being let go, they let her stay. Why are you laughing? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, wait. Wait, you have to hear. This is, this is clearly a boss like me who just got a heart for you.

00:12:45 I'm sorry. A boss like me who's got a heart for miles, right? That just really made me laugh. It just hit home. Yeah. We all know that one person. When confronted, she started crying and admitted she had a gambling problem. Oh, man. So instead of being let go, they let her stay and hired her mom to help her. Oh, wow. Strategically reassigned. Your mother was. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Man, that's crazy. Why the mom? That was a twist. I don't know. I just, it sounds like something I would do. It's like, I feel, I have such the soft heart for people who got challenges. I'm like, no, man, we can help you. You know. That is good. Yeah.

00:13:25 And it's good to like offer second chances, but that's, that's crazy. Cause it's like, you know, starting to be like fraud and theft and things like that. And uncovering a problem, you know. I'm sorry. I can't help with something's funny. That's a lot. That stuff gets me though. I mean, like. I get, it's kind of sad in the way. If we put like. I remember one company had like today we get all the foods for a year. Right. But it used to be, you know, and y'all before your time, there used to be like honor boxes. You ever seen one of those? I don't think so. Okay. So. Oh, what? It's like an honor box system. Some company come in and put a bunch of candy or snacks or whatever in this thing. And when you took one, you had to put some money in a little box. Oh, yeah, yeah. Then they would come by and pick it up. Right. And then they would, you know, they let you know, hey, there was, you know, $42 worth of stuff gone and there was 15 cents in the box.

00:14:14 Yeah. Right. The honors is a job. It's just right. So you would have to make up the differences. You know, you just say, okay. And it was, you know, it was like, it was like, it was like somehow like this measure of like a company's like culture. Yeah. How good is the culture? Like. How much are people actually paying for the chips when they could be? Yeah. As a relative to how much? Is like 90, did they get 90%? Interesting. I think they could probably do a whole study on that. It's just like, I don't know, what, what, what company had the best employee? Yeah. That's interesting. Nathan, what do you, what do you got? Have you got one cooking up here? Yeah. Okay. So I have a short one, which I thought was funny. I don't know if you guys have actually read it yet as we've been preparing these stories. This one was actually submitted.

00:14:56 So here's another reminder that you can submit stories. And so this person's already entered for our $10,000 contest. So here it is. We interviewed a guy who seemed perfect for this job. We had a great interview. He had solid experience, no red flags. And it was one of those moments where we all look at each other and we say, yeah, this guy, this guy's the one. Double thumbs up. So we actually gave him the verbal offer on site and he accepted. Then things moved along. We sent him the written offer over, I guess, over email for him to sign. Very standard stuff. The offer was for $60,000 a year. The next day we got the offer letter back and it was signed. But we noticed that there was one small change.

00:15:37 He actually manually edited the salary from $60,000 a year to $1 million a year. I started laughing because I remember the story like right when you got to that part. Let me just make this one big edit. They'll never notice. On Adobe. They won't notice. The fact that it's not $62,000. And I'm going to hold him accountable. Yeah. Right. Just the fact that it's not $62,000 or $63,000. He went from $62,000 to $1 million. It just kills me. So after a couple of calls back and forth, we decided to rescind the offer. And that's how he went from $0 a year to $60,000 to $1 million and then back down to zero. So that was funny. I love that. That's not very subtle of a change, but he went for it.

00:16:20 That's funny. Yeah. So that's my story. I guarantee you that's not the first time this happened to someone in recruiting. What made him think that like a million dollars was the right amount to change it to? Seems like a lot. Like if I were to do that, which I wouldn't, by the way. But if I were, I would up it by like not that much. Not to a million dollars. Maybe $5,000, $10,000. I love listening to him talk about how she would commit this crime. Here's how I would commit a crime. I wouldn't commit a big crime. I mean, you have to be a million dollars, maybe like a $10,000 crime. For lack of a better word, you have to be strategic. There you go.

00:17:00 You got to strategically reassign that salary. It's like you can't just go from $60,000 to a million. You got to make $160,000 at most. Yeah. Oh, my God. $62,000, $67,000. I don't know. That's funny. Not very smart. But anyways, he's a good one. Oh, jeez. But that's my only story. I don't know if you have one. Oh. I loved it. That was a good story. That was it? Have you got another one you want to do? I'll save mine for next time. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I got a bunch of random ones that have been submitted, but I'll save them for next time. I think I have two. That's fine. They're super short, though, but these were also submitted to us, so these are also submissions. I think they submitted it through the form on our website. Okay. Oh, nice. Thanks for submitting.

00:17:41 All right. So here's the first one. Thank you. Yeah. Your name's in the pot for $10,000. Yeah. Hope this is good. All right. Here's the first one. A few years ago, as a store manager, I hired college students for early shifts unloading trucks. One day, a seasoned employee came to me and said, your new guy just offered me a joint on break. I called him into my office. Yo. I called him into my office. He told me he was a psychology student. When I asked about the incident and reminded him of our drug-free workplace policy, he admitted he wasn't smoking. He was helping a friend. Oh, he's just dealing. He's not doing it. Then, with a straight face, he said it was teaching him people skills, how to approach

00:18:22 strangers, sell products, and be more outgoing. I can't believe what I was hearing. I love that. Yeah. It's like on-the-job training. There you go. I told him he was fired immediately. He exploded, stood up, got in my face, begged for another chance. I stayed calm, asked him to sit down, and eventually he did. Then started crying, insisting losing his job would ruin his life. I encouraged him to speak with a school counselor and escorted him out. This guy's on a roller coaster. So he got in his face, got angry. Clearly, he begged for his job back. I could change. Right. It's like up and down. Wow. Clearly wasn't smoking because he got all irate and got in the guy's face. He wasn't very chill. Yeah, he wasn't very chill. I love how he's like, relax. I'm drug dealing to work on my people skills.

00:19:02 This is helping me learn how to approach strangers and sell. Yeah, he should be in sales. And sell, yeah. Wow, that's crazy. Well, I just took him the first day, I guess. There's a lot of first day behavior in the podcast. He's real young, right? Yeah, college students. Yeah. A little bit younger than me. I've never really hired a bunch of people after. First job kind of stuff, but not in college and younger. So I think that's a whole other level. I did own a business one time that employed some 17-year-olds that worked there at a little retail store.

00:19:45 And yeah, that was a disaster. Yeah. It was just constantly fixing whatever drama they created. Like the maturity difference between age 18 and age 22 is like a pretty big gap, I guess. Yeah. Especially in a workplace. God bless those who have to hire like that on a regular basis to fill lots of spots. Yeah. And the managers who – because it's just – it's not that they're like bad people. It's like clearly the kid just doesn't know any better. Yeah. He's just like – I don't know. It sounds like he's smart. Yeah. No kidding. He had some really good comebacks. Yeah. He had some good points. Yeah. Yeah. In the wrong place, but yeah. All right. This will be my last one for today probably.

00:20:28 This one is super, super short, but I had to do a little bit of research going into this one because I was unfamiliar. Do y'all know what a true colors personality test is? I don't know if I've done that one. I've done similar ones I think. I've done like – there's one that's like numbers. Okay. I don't remember what it's called, but I've done that one. But this one is called True Colors Personality Test. Okay. For those that are listening and don't know what that is, it's a test you can take that asks you questions to help identify people's traits and understand their personalities more in depth. And then at the end, it gives you a color, and each one represents a different collection of overall traits. So like there's four of them.

00:21:09 Gold means you're loyalty driven. You're punctual, organized, all that stuff. Blue means you're emotionally driven, empathetic, compassionate, those types of things. Green is logically driven. You're analytical. You're intuitive. And then the bottom one is orange. You're short-term driven, energetic, spontaneous. Like I guess typically not the color that a leader, like a big leader would have when taking this test. Gotcha. Okay. And so now knowing that, let me get into the story. You know, I like that – I love that you went out and did research. That's really awesome.

00:21:49 Nice work. Because otherwise we'd have just been – Well, I read the story and I was like, I don't even know what that is. So it made more sense afterwards. I'm sure I'm not the only one that doesn't know what that is. Nice work. Nice work. I don't know which color I'd be or any of us. It's hard to like assess. I feel like I'm always in between one or the other with all those tests. I guess after this we all need to go take this test. Yeah, we'll do it. So this was sent to us as well. This person hired a strong tech person who did a great job at school and they did the true colors personality test on them and they were in orange. Okay. But they moved them into the job of a principal and it was a train wreck. Orange is the non-leader one.

00:22:30 Yes. That's what you think? Yes. Right, short term. Yes. You're spontaneous. You're competitive. Like not – like you're very energetic. Just not very – Like calculated? Yes. Yes. I'm waiting for the comments for people who know this thing. Yeah. Who are just going to come back and go, that's totally wrong. Orange are really – Orange is great leaders. Yeah. You know we're going to get – That's totally not true. I'm orange and I lead just fine. Right, right. And I'll be in the comments saying, great. I'm so happy for you. It's fine. So sorry. It made the story funnier, okay? But what's funny about this story is that they capitalized the certain words. So orange is all capitalized.

00:23:10 Okay. Train in train wreck is capitalized. Oh, okay. And then orange is capitalized again. So it says an orange personality just could not lead a group of golds. Okay. And gold is in all caps. This person is a gold person submitting the story. Clearly. Yeah. They don't go into any – I love it. They don't go into any detail about what they did or like how they showed this orange personality. But apparently it was so bad that the color orange just gave them PTSD. And so every time somebody would just walk in wearing orange, it would just remind them of the services. Another anti-orange. Okay. Yeah. But yeah. So that person said, I have the degree, but that taught us that paper does not lead.

00:23:51 There you go. I love it. So they're pretty much just like basing all their decisions on this one color personality test. Yeah. That was really driving me. I guess so. I don't know why the true colors personality test would be something you would take for the position of a principal. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, everybody has their ways. I like – well, I'm a big fan of assessments and I like personality deals. But it's not about like setting the thing like who can do what. Like you can do this. Yeah. And maybe don't base – Because everybody can do everything. Yeah. And maybe don't base your whole decision of hiring that person off of that personality test. That's what I don't like about assessments like that is I feel like sometimes people get boxed in.

00:24:33 They're like, oh, I'm only gold and that's who I am and I can't have any behavior outside of that. And there's – You get drivers, expressives, you know. Yeah. It's more like kind of a – They're all different types. Yeah. And the training for all that is like how to work with the other ones. It's not like you can't lead them or you're incapable. It's just understanding them. So, yeah. Yeah. But I think they're cool tools. Yeah. Clearly this one is – I can't imagine having PTSD from – can you imagine like all the bad people you associate with the color? So you're like – No. Every time I see blue, I just – Come over with a gold shirt, take it off. Yeah. That's funny. That's all I've got for today. I love it. Yeah. All right. I thought that would be a good one to end on.

00:25:13 Well, that's it for today. So, man, enjoyed it. That was good stuff. That's fun. You know, thanks for listening to The Bad Hire. You know, subscribe, rate, review, share. You know, we've had really good engagement actually with our engagement rates with our posts. I think our Bad Hire posts are some of our more interactive posts. We encourage you to comment on it. Talk to us about it. We loved it. Find it not funny, tell us. Find it funny, tell us. Tell us. Yeah. And it's been a lot of fun recording all the virtual segments, which I think we're premiering like the first clip on the show next episode. Yeah. And so, yeah, if you want to come and talk to one of us, one of the producers. Hopefully after seeing a couple of them, people see it and go, yeah, that'd be cool. I could do that. Yeah. Yeah. So, and don't forget, your story could win $10,000.

00:25:57 Yeah, exactly. Right? We'll give away $10,000. And this is not a scam. We are real people. We really are. We should bring the $10,000 in and just leave it on the table or something. Yeah. Yeah. Decorations. So, you know, submit your bad hire story at thebadhire.com and, you know, we'll get it featured on the show. You're going to see that next episode. It'll be cool. So, and if you want to be a guest, that's how you do it. You can also email producers at thebadhire.com. All right. We appreciate you guys. Thanks. Thanks for listening. Thanks, everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye.