He Jumped Out a 5th Floor Window… Then Quit [The Bad Hire Ep. 6]

00:00:00 Ever made a bad hire? Had an interview spiral into chaos? You're not alone. These stories can be hilarious, shocking, and sometimes downright painful. Welcome to The Bad Hire, the podcast that pulls back the curtain on hiring going wrong. I'm your host, Ken Monroe, and I work with companies every day to help them hire smarter and avoid costly mistakes. Each week, we'll dive into real stories from HR leaders and recruiters and talent pros who've lived through the worst of the worst, from nightmare interviews to first-day disasters. You'll hear it all, because behind every bad hire,

00:00:41 there's a lesson worth learning. Hey, everyone, and welcome to The Bad Hire, the podcast where hiring disasters meet guaranteed firings, and we've seen that time and time again. I'm Ken Monroe, and I'm here with Emma and Morgan. How are you guys doing? Good, how are you? I'm good, how are you? Good, awesome. Every week, we dive into the wildest, weirdest... I'm really excited. You're doing great. Good to hear. There you go. I love it. Every week, we dive into the wildest, weirdest, the most jaw-dropping hiring fails from offices, job sites, organizations all over the country. Quick reminder, we've got a $10,000 contest running right now.

00:01:23 All you have to do is send us your best bad hire stories, and we've seen some bad ones, some good ones, some tragic ones, and I think we have some good ones today. And if it's the funniest, if it's the craziest, or maybe it's the most outrageous, could be the most touching, whatever it is. This is literally the best story. You'll take home the $10,000 prize. So visit thebadhire.com to submit your stories for a chance to win. We'll look at the stories and go through all of them that are submitted, and we'll read the ones on air, and we'll pick out the very best one for the season and choose a $10,000 winner. We'll also, most likely, we'll certainly read that on the air,

00:02:05 but then you could end up being a co-host on the show for a couple episodes to read your story and tell your story and talk about it, which could be really fun. So we're talking about resumes that are full of lies, so we've heard stories like that, that somehow slipped through, background checks that were missed, maybe a hire that cost your company a lot of money, some sanity, maybe even some reputation, whatever it might be. Recruiters have seen it all, and we want to hear those stories. And just a reminder, you can change the names of the people, make the story anonymous, those types of things to make sure that we're not throwing anybody

00:02:46 publicly under the bus over a bad hire situation. So, all right. So have you guys got good stories today? You happy with what you found this week? Yeah. Sure. A lot of short and funny ones this week. Yeah. All right. They're a lot shorter than the one. I've got one of my favorite ones that I've heard. It's a story maybe a lot of people have heard about, but maybe we'll start with you, Emma. How's that sound? That's fine. That's good. All right. Let's rock. I'm going to do probably two. They're relatively short, definitely not as long as the ones that I've been reading, and they're not as tragic as the ones I've been reading either. Okay. Good. Good. Good. So you'll... You mean something heartwarming.

00:03:28 Yeah. I wouldn't call this heartwarming, but I guess it's kind of funny. Okay. All right. That's good for the heart. All right. I once had to fire a guy for bringing his ninja weapons to work and showing them to everybody. It took over two hours to fire him because he got progressively more distraught and started spouting off crazy things like I've always tried to have a heart because my sensei says that without heart, you're nothing but a killer. What belt was he is what I want to know. I'm assuming a yellow. At the end of... Without a heart, you're nothing but a killer. A killer. At the end of the two... Oh, am I not supposed to say that?

00:04:08 Probably not, but... You're nothing but an unaliver. Yeah, unaliver. At the end of the two hours firing, he asked if he could use the phone. All I heard was his end of the conversation, of course, but it went something like this. Mom, can you pick me up at work? Yes, it happened again. Mom, I don't want to talk about it. Mom, can you please just come here? He spent the next two weeks standing outside the front door staring at us. I had to get the security guard to remove him and give him the old, if you come back, the cops will arrest you for trespassing talk. Oh my gosh. You know his mom also drops him off for his credit lessons too, right?

00:04:50 What kind of ninja weapons? Are we talking like... What are those called? The throwing things? Throwing stars. Throwing stars, yeah. His... It didn't say... His katana out of... Yeah, nunchucks. Gotta be, yeah. Did he have like... Stuff you probably... Stuff you shouldn't bring to work. Yeah. Oh gosh. It did not say the kind of weapons. I think the... The spookiest part of the story is that he came like and stood outside the building for the time after. So creepy. That would be creepy with someone who just got through showing you a bunch of... Yeah. Ninja stuff. Yeah. Wait till his sensei finds out about that one. Yeah. I'm gonna call your sensei

00:05:31 if you come back again. Probably would have been... Sounds like someone young though who's got a lot to learn. So, you know, you learn from your mistakes. You learn how to behave. I mean, he's him on the phone with his mom. Yes, it happened again. Right? Just come get me. It's just part of the learning process for him. Right? Everybody goes through it. Okay. I'm gonna read another one. I worked for a big company years ago as the shipping manager. One of the guys I hired was an ex-army guy. He was pretty good, hard worker and all that. Still a little off, if you know what I mean. So one day, he doesn't show up. No phone call. The next day, he calls me and he sounds like he's high. He's in the hospital.

00:06:11 After work, I go by the hospital. We were kind of friends and his whole right side of his body is bruised. Like, bruised as I get out. Okay. Serious bruising, broken leg and arm. I asked him what happened and he told me that him and his friends were having a party in his fifth floor apartment. He was having an argument with one of his friends. His friend was saying that he never follows through or something like that. So my friend stated that he, so his friend said, oh, you never follow through, whatever. And he fires back and says, yes, I do. And he says, if I told you I would jump out

00:06:52 of that window, I would. Oh, God. I know where this is going. His friend says, ha ha, you wouldn't dare. So he leaps out of the window, down onto the parking lot below. He spent over a month in the hospital to prove a point. And then he quit and I never saw or heard from him again. Now that's a stubborn person. That's amazing. He like called his friend too. Yeah. Like, oh, never saw him. Hold on, Emma, I'm going to go jump out that door. Yeah, this is a great buddy of mine. You won't. I didn't see him again. Yeah, I never saw him again. Oh, goodness. Well, thank you. Those are great. Nice and short. Yeah, short. It's sweet. You know, you're welcome. All right. Again, though, you end on somebody.

00:07:32 Yeah, dying. We're not dying, we're getting hurt. No, we did not. Just jumped out a window. Right. Again, I don't know what attracts you to these stories that where people are harmed. Fine. I'll do better next time. Take it away, Morgan. All right. So this is from Reddit. I had one guy that was asked that had asked about background checks because he was previously a government employee. He went to a happy hour and while he was lacking better judgment, he indulged in one too many cheesy appetizers. Turns out he's lactose intolerant. And his closest medication was in his office. Drunkenly, he broke into the federal facility and a security guard found him and he was fired.

00:08:15 I really appreciated the honesty. I feel like that's a crazy roundabout story for somebody who broke into a federal facility. Did he get fired because he was lactose intolerant? No. He got fired because he broke into a federal facility because he had too many cheesy... What did the lactose intolerant... Wait. So he had... To get his medicine. To get his medicine. Yeah. So he did get fired because he was lactose intolerant. Pretty much. Yeah. In a roundabout way. He can't help it. No. Like, he just needed his medication. Like, I mean... Dang, that's sad. Anyways, that was... That one was crazy to me. All right. Here's another one. We did panel interviews and selected this one guy. He was a great fit, lots of experience, etc.

00:08:57 So I inform our company's HR department and wait for the okay to inform him. I think it had been two days since his interview when he called and asked, why the F have I not heard anything yet? In those exact words... This isn't even a blow it up in the interview. This is the post-interview blow it. And he's going to get hired. Right. In those exact words, he said that. I'm betting that... Why? I am betting that recruiters get this all the time. Yeah. They probably do. Yeah. I guarantee you they get this all the time. Where someone follows up... And what makes you think you're getting hired after this? Right. Oh, that's what happened. They said, we chose someone else after that.

00:09:37 Best part. HR called 30 minutes later. Crazy stuff. Wow. Wow. So he really shot himself in the foot on that one or, you know... Anyways, this is another funny one. Another interview. Some of these aren't even making it to a higher standpoint. But this one is, I interviewed this lady and she brought up how she had an issue with an old co-worker. And at the end of it, she said that that co-worker died of cancer. Of course, they said, oh, I'm sorry. Or something similar to that degree. And she responds with, she got what she deserved. Oh. The person said, yeah, no thank you. Was that a... There were...

00:10:18 Okay. Was that in an interview? Yeah. Said that in the interview? Can you imagine if somebody said that to you, Ken? Hmm. No. I don't even know where to go with that. No. I was like, I... Yeah. You may leave. Yeah. For real. That's all... I don't need to hear anything. Well, you care about your co-worker in the same loving way you do about your... I don't know. Yeah. Imagine. Yeah. Definitely not a cultural additive person. No. All right. This is my last story for this episode. I had a hiring manager call me after a Zoom interview he had with a candidate to tell me that he couldn't keep his eyes off the bong in the box of Cheez-Its on the table behind

00:11:00 him. So... At least he was honest. Yeah. I don't know what it is about people taking calls. Like a cat, a bong and a Cheez-Its in the background. Like... I think there... I think... I think there are... Wasn't there another bong story we said too? It was the same cat story. It was. So maybe this is... Yeah, it ended up... Maybe that was his interview. That was his interview. That was his interview. Into the company. Yeah. And then later on he used it. Yeah. And during calls of customers. Yeah. That's all I have to do. What is that gurgling, bubbling sound I hear? Yeah. Like, don't you look behind you? Like, normally I'm like, oh, even if I'm in my office, I'm like, oh, there's like something

00:11:42 behind me. I'm going to go move it because it doesn't look like professional or something. I do think that Zoom calls and Teams calls and all these video calls are now getting... You know, it used to be... You know, I remember when COVID first happened, it just exploded. Everybody was still showing up like, you know... Yeah. Dressed and looking sharp and everything. And then over the course of COVID, it was like two months in, five months in. Sleep on the call. Yeah. Yeah. Soon people are just saying... Yeah, literally. Muted. You know, I saw a TikTok one time and it was of like managers on first day of COVID. And, you know, she was just dressed totally like she would be in the office. And it's like six months, 12 months into COVID.

00:12:23 And the last one, she's late to the meeting. She's, you know, hasn't showered or hair's a mess. She's, you know, it just... But it's really gotten that way where people will flip their phone on or do anything, just jump on and not really pay attention to... At least blur your background. Yeah. Yeah. What's beside them? It's just one little button you got. I could see that happening in interviews, like, all the time. Yeah. With the interview and you're just like... What's behind you? Here, there's... We're looking at you as like, we want to see some attention to detail. Yeah. Right? Like, and you can't even handle a Zoom call without looking behind you and noticing that, you know, you've got trash in your yesterday's lunch to land on the counter or

00:13:07 something. Yeah. It's crazy. All right. Wild. Wild. All right, Ken. How about you? What's your story today? All right. Well, before we... I've got one story I'm going to tell today. It's kind of a long one. I love it. I think it's a really, really... I mean, it's an interesting story. I don't love the story. Yeah. I do. I do think it's an interesting story. But before that, I want to talk about our podcast being sponsored by B-Checks. So let's take a moment for that. Don't ever hire someone who looked great on paper, but turned out to be a walking HR nightmare. That's where B-Checks comes in. With incredible accuracy, lightning fast results in under 20 hours, and fraud catching tech that

00:13:49 other screeners miss, B-Checks helps schools, cities, dioceses, and businesses hire the right people the first time. Switch now and get up to $2,000 in account credit. Don't let the next bad hire be your problem. Visit B-Checks.io and protect your team, your reputation, and your sanity. So thanks so much for B-Checks for sponsoring the show. It's really awesome. All right. So let's... Let me find this real quick. All right. You ready? Mm-hmm. Love this one. I think we talked a little bit about it this week. Yeah. But it is a bit crazy.

00:14:30 So... All right. His name is Winston Niewin. Niewin. All right. Winston Niewin. And some people are already going, I know this story. And before I dive into the details, let me say this. I think I pronounced his name right. Now, Winston wasn't just some random teacher. He was a Jeopardy! champion. Yeah. You know the show. The music, the buzzers, brilliant contestants, rambling off answers. Most of us, you know, I know me, can't even dream of answering. I'm like, how are these people so smart?

00:15:11 That's Winston. So he's that kind of smart. He had charm, a quick wit, the kind of intellect that made other people go like, wow, that guy's a genius. Yeah. And he won big on national television. And that kind of spotlight, it sticks. People remember you. You're like, hey, that guy won a lot on Jeopardy. Yeah. You know, people remembered him. And parents, you know, remember he's a teacher. Parents saw that name on a resume, you know, or heard about him and thought, oh, yeah, my kid's teacher was on Jeopardy. Yeah. That's incredible. He's really smart. Yeah. Right? It gave him instant credibility, instant trust.

00:15:58 That's always. A red flag. Right? Yeah. So in 2021, Winston was hired at one of the most elite private schools in New York. On paper, he looked like a superstar. Parents were impressed. Students admired him. But here's the thing. The school skipped a full background check. Right? And we see this, like, we see this happen in our industry. Yeah. When there's an implied trust on someone, a lot of times they either see something in a background check and look past it. Yeah. You know, maybe you see this a lot in coaches. Mm-hmm.

00:16:38 Where there's like a super winning coach who applies and they get the background check and they're like, you know, I know one of the most horrific cases I know of, they saw the background check and it was not good. Yeah. And they looked past it. No one wanted to be the person who brought it up. Yeah. That because this state coach came and he was later, he was winning championships and no one wanted to be the bearer of bad news. But in this case, what they missed in 2019, Winston had already been convicted of stealing $300,000 from an elderly couple. Mm-hmm. Like, in their house?

00:17:20 I don't know how he stole it, but that would have been, because he had been convicted of that. That would have been on his background check. That would have been an absolute, for most schools, that would have been an absolute no. So he is, yeah, that he stole from the elderly couple. Those old people, like, they get taken advantage of so bad, right? That is, like, probably the worst type of moral character where you would target someone like that. It shows a willingness to attack a vulnerable population. Yeah. Right? So that's what you would learn from that. It wouldn't be that he couldn't do a financial crime in the school. It's that he was willing to do it to someone vulnerable, like children. So a convicted felon walking into a classroom full of kids because no one bothered to double check his past to do the background screen.

00:18:11 Right? Right? And that wasn't even the darkest part. So it wasn't that he just had done that crime. By day, Winston was teaching middle schoolers. By night, he was online pretending to be a teenager. Ugh. He used Snapchat to manipulate his own students. That's gross. That's so gross. That's disgusting. Into sending him explicit photos and videos of themselves. For two years. Two years? He lived this double life. Oh my gosh. Showing up every morning in the classroom like nothing was wrong.

00:18:55 It all came crashing down because one parent, just one. Yeah. They noticed something off about him. Hmm. And they spoke up. Good for them. Yeah. Because, yeah. In 2024, Winston was arrested on campus. Oh. They came to the school to kid him. Then those poor kids too. Seriously. Because then they have to find out that they've been communicating with him and sending him those things. Yes. Those are wrong kids. Middle school. Yeah. Yeah. Imagine the trauma of them realizing that some of what they sent. Yeah. What they sent him when they figure out what the story is.

00:19:37 Very bad. And in 2025, he pled guilty. Seven years in prison. Registered. Seven? I thought the same thing. Seven years in prison. Registered sex offender for life. Oh my gosh. As he should be. You know, and what gets me about the story is like, you know, there's this man who stood under the bright lights of Jeopardy and everybody loved him. Yeah. Winning, smiling, celebrated as one of the smartest people in the room. You know, just a few years later. Yeah. You know, he's behind bars for preying on children. That's horrible. Yeah. And so, but it is that those bright lights and the credibility that make not doing the background check.

00:20:22 You know, somebody could say, well, that's an easy decision or we know them. And we hear that a lot from talking to some organizations where they say, oh, yeah, we don't screen everybody. Or we, you know, we. It's a small town. We know everybody. We've heard that before for sure. Right. You know, so it's like, so just a few years later, he's behind bars preying on children. It's the kind of fall from grace that makes your stomach turn. Yeah. And here's the bottom line. All of it. Every single part of it could have been prevented with one thorough background check. Right. Yep. So this, what I get out of this story. So I want to, like when I thought about the end of the story, what I, it's, it's easy to think about, wow, that HR person really messed up.

00:21:10 And HR people, you know, bad, bad, bad kind of, you know, mistake, mistake. But the reality is to the HR pros who do do the hard work, right, who do do the background checks, who run those checks, who take the time to make sure, who do the resume matchups, to make sure that they're talking to the same person. That all the things we hear about on the show, all these bad hires with mistakes are made or people lied, who do the work to actually vet all that out. You know, truly, truly, truly, like, thank you for the work they do. It is unsung. They are in the prevention business and there are no awards for prevention because nothing happened.

00:21:51 And in the case of this, had they done the background check, they would have just done it. It would have been another, we can't hire this person and nothing would have happened. And there would be no award for preventing this. Oh, yeah. I was just about to say, it's stories like this that make you realize how important it is. Yeah. And so to those HR pros who do do it and who do it every single day, they're holding the line. They're preventing things like this from happening. I think about this story and go, hey, thank you. You will never be rewarded for how you should be because you prevented this from happening.

00:22:33 Yeah. And so nothing happened. Right. And it seems so mundane. Yeah. But that's it. So props to that person who spoke up about, like, their suspicions. Yeah. One parent. Yeah. One parent. I mean. So because you're, you know, thank you to those, the HR pros, recruiters who do that work because they're not just protecting companies. You know, it's not just trying to keep the company from getting sued throughout. It's to protecting, in this case, children. Yeah. You know, too. So students. So anyway, that one hits a bit different. It's not just a bad hire. It's like a complete system failure there. You know, you're talking about parents trusting a school with their kids. And, you know, just one skip background check lets someone like that through the door.

00:23:16 Yeah. It appeared to be so awesome. And this is why we hammer the point of background checks aren't, you know, they're not red tape. You know, they aren't. And it's easy to think they are. It's easy to fall into that trap. But this stuff happens. So, you know, background checks protect organizations and their reputation, but they protect people, too. So skipping them isn't cutting corners. Like, really, it's you're gambling, really, with other people's lives. So that's all I had today. I just wanted to read that one story because it really touched me this week when I was reading stories. And, you know, the big message for me was just I just felt thankful for the amount of people who do the work,

00:23:57 who are in the prevention business, that never win any awards. And so, I don't know. That's it. All right. So that's it for this week's show. You know, you guys like, follow, share the show. We need that for you to grow the show. We want to talk to more people. We want to listen to more people. And remember, we have the $10,000 contest to submit your story. Go to the backgroundchecks.com or the bad, the badhire.com. So all background checks right out. Yeah. Thebadhire.com. Go to thebadhire.com. And you'll find a page there where you can submit your story, sign up. If we select your story, we'll select a lot of them to read on the show. So you'll hear your story on the podcast.

00:24:37 But also, if you're the top story of the season, you could win $10,000 or you will win $10,000 if you're the top one we choose. So, and we'll go through all of them and choose the very best. Now, these stories can be wild stories. And I like fun, wild stories. As you've already heard. I like wild ones, crazy ones. But there's also tragic stories like this where, you know, they really hit home. And we understand, in that case, the real cost of a bad hire. So they can cover all of that. We change the name of the people if you'd like. In this case, this was a national news story. So safe to use it.

00:25:18 But you can change the names and submit it. And, man, we look forward to getting stories and telling them. So that's all I have for today. What about you? Thank you very much, y'all. Please tune in for more. Yeah, thanks. If you want to be a guest, let us know. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be cool too. Yeah, let us know. If you've got stories to tell, we'd like to listen to them and tell them with us. We'd love to have you on the show. So thanks so much. We'll see you next time. Thank you. Bye. Thanks for tuning in to The Bad Hire. Don't forget to follow, rate, and share the show. It really helps us grow the podcast. Got a story of your own? We'd love to hear it. Visit us at thebadhire.com to submit your story or connect with me on LinkedIn at Ken Monroe.

00:26:02 Until next time, remember, don't make your next hire the bad hire. Bye.