He Lied About Getting Into MIT to Get the Job [The Bad Hire Ep. 11]

00:00:00 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. These stories aren't just crazy, they're cautionary tales about lessons learned the hard way. Let's get started. Hey, welcome back to the podcast, The Bad Hire. Emma, Morgan, glad to have you guys with us. Glad to be here.

00:00:40 Good stuff. I always like it when you guys are here. You make me laugh. Good. Emma brings me stories that are heartbreaking. Not today. Okay, good. I think. I'm hoping you have. Oh, yeah. No promise. I can never tell anymore. Sometimes I share them and think they're not that bad and then. Yeah. And then you're like, I didn't like that. Yeah, so we do have some stories today, which is fun. I'm excited about it. Just a reminder, we have the $10,000 contest. I know that we're running some ads and doing some email and doing some things to get the word out to recruiters and talent acquisition specialists who have a lot of these recruiting stories. It seems like we hear or read a lot of stories from people who are actually the co-workers.

00:01:24 Yeah. They're like, that was like a really bad. Yeah. I guess they experienced the bad hire. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Which is, you know, kind of interesting to think about the, you know, when someone does make a bad hire, it. Ripples. Ripples. Yeah. Yeah. And you can tell that it affects the other people. In fact, I have a story today. I was just reading through it. It was about someone who knew it was a bad hire, you know, this co-worker who knew before they hired them. Yeah. That's bad hire. Yeah. So. Sometimes the interview process is very enlightening. Yeah. You know. For sure. But, so there's a $10,000 contest. If you submit a story to us online at our website, thebadhire.com, you can go there and

00:02:06 check it out. So, best story of the season, I think there's, that's like half the year, best story of the season will be selected and win $10,000. So, we think bad hire stories are valuable. Mm-hmm. All right. So, before we, before we go, I think I got, what order are we going here? I think we're going you. Yeah. It doesn't matter. All right. Yeah. Okay. We can go on a line. All right. Here it is. I once had an employee warn me not to hire a candidate. Let's call him Bill. I always like that when they say, let's. Yeah. Let's call him Bill. It's always. She told me Bill rented from her and would sometimes show up at his neighbor's house.

00:02:51 Oh. Already. Naked. Oh. Oh. Okay. And here's the kicker. That neighbor actually worked in my store. So, she was saying, please do not bring this guy in here. But my store manager insisted we go through with it. He wouldn't take no for an answer. So, we hired Bill. And right away, things got strange. He started creating drama. Convinced people were after him. Just because they said hello when they walked by. A simple, hi, Bill. Would send him spiraling. He was constantly stirring up conflict and making the workplace uncomfortable for everyone around him. In the end, all of that chaos caught up to him.

00:03:34 And they terminated. And because of the issues and the constant drama he was creating. He was creating drama in his neighbor's yard. Yeah. Sounds like it. Sometimes you can see the red flags waving before someone is even hired. And if you ignore them, you'll almost always regret it. Sounds like he needed to be in a therapist's office. Yeah. In the store working. Did they run a background check on him? Like, is there a public nudity, like, charge on there? Or, like, is he a pedophile? Like... Yeah. And why didn't the neighbor report it off? Does he have a sex offender? Like... I don't know. It seems like going to someone's house naked would have been...

00:04:15 Yeah. If you told the manager, hey, listen, he showed up naked... Immediately. To one of my coworkers who works here... Yeah. ...you would be like... No. He would just pass. Yeah. Right? Okay. Super straight. Interesting. I feel like they made mistakes more so than... Yeah. Yeah. Right? Well, the managers are always like, I need somebody. I need somebody. Yeah. Even now, I'll take anyone. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes taking anyone is not a great strategy. Right. Here's one. On our HR team, we cover a lot of cities. And let me tell you, some of the most interesting stories come out of Florida. Oh, poor man.

00:04:57 I believe it's... Where I grew up, Emma. Careful. I believe it. One case that still makes me shake my head involved a woman who decided the best way to avoid work was just to sit in her car all day. Oh, my God. Nine o'clock out, not calling sick, just hanging out in the parking lot like that counted as being on the job. When she needed to use the restroom, instead of walking back inside, she literally just did it next to the car. A woman? Leave yourself right there in our parking lot. No way. Unfortunately for her, a coworker happened to arrive late that day and saw the whole thing.

00:05:42 And he went straight to HR to report it. And when we checked the cameras, sure enough, the footage confirmed everything. When we confronted her, she tried to play it off saying, how do you know it was even me? Girl, please. It could have been anyone. You knew it was me. Yes. Without missing a G, the coworker said, those face tattoos gave you away. Oh. Okay. I was like that a reminder. HR doesn't get paid nearly enough for what they deal with. No kidding. I can't even imagine. Why? Just go inside. That's the other side of HR, right? That's like you got the recruiting and talent.

00:06:23 You're trying to get great people in. Yeah. Then you got the whole side of HR that's dealing with the consequences of a bad hire or somebody got the rails. HR is constantly trying to do the pieces. We've had people who have clocked in and stayed in their car in the parking lot here, but nothing like that. I mean, I'm sure they at least came up to use the bathroom. That's definitely. Yeah. That's crazy. 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.

00:07:03 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 dot I-O. One more, and then I'll turn it over to you. I once hired a young woman in retail who at first seemed fine. Showed up on time. Smiled at customers. Nothing unusual. But pretty quickly, things started to look off.

00:07:45 Out of nowhere, she started racking up faulty returns. I've never been in retail. Yeah. But I assume that's, I don't know, 12 of them in a single week. Now, in retail. Sound familiar. She explained, so they explained, now in retail, you expect the occasional return, but 12 in a week? That's a giant red flag. So I asked her, what happened to all those products? She looked me straight in the eye and said, well, I threw them away. Just tossed brand new merchandise in the trash. That didn't sit right, but I held my tongue for the moment. Then the very next day, I saw her wearing one of the items. You're either like, she's just not there, or she's stealing.

00:08:28 Right? Yeah. How do you steal something that they're going to wear? That's crazy. Oh, let's wear it outside of the store. Like. When I call her on it, she got flustered and said her sister had bought it before she worked there. The problem. That excuse only came out after she was hired. The timeline didn't add up and her story fell apart. So we fired her immediately. But the story didn't end there. A few hours later, she actually came back. Arms full of bags stuffed with the missing merchandise. She stood there asking her if we'd give her job back, if she returned at all. We told her no. And just when I thought I'd seen the last of her, she tried to file for unemployment. No.

00:09:08 That went nowhere the second the real story came out. But it was a reminder that sometimes the boldest thieves aren't the ones sneaking in the back door. They're standing right in front of you, smiling and hoping you won't notice the skirt they stole off the rack yesterday. Oh, my gosh. Right. Oh. I don't know. I just think it's so... How bold is it to like... Bold is a great word to use. Because I was going to say something else. But bold is a great word to use. I was fighting for the right word. I was going to say exactly what you're thinking. Yeah. You know. But I was just like, how do you... Just to put it on and just walk into the stores. Yeah. Yeah. There's...

00:09:49 So often now people will post themselves doing something. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Sometimes not always legal, but definitely not right. Yeah. For sure. And they'll post themselves and like be happy about it. Mm-hmm. You know, like, hey, check it out. Yeah. And you know, here's what I did. We had somebody applying for a job here and we went onto their... We looked at some of their social media. Yeah. And we had made the job offer. Yeah. And her social media had post... Somebody brought it to her attention. Yeah. And after we kind of announced her...

00:10:30 Somebody was like that one girl that we read about who looked up the girl beforehand and found out she was... It's like, hey, hey. Yeah. So, you know, it's like, hey, we announced who's coming to work and they're like, oh, who is she? And they, you know. Yeah. And she's got a ring of friends where they're running into stores and stealing. And she's posting it and bragging about their take. Guys, don't do this, please. Also, social media screens are a real thing. We know because B-Checks offers them. So, let's not do that, guys. Be smart. It's also like the people that post on Reddit and like, hey, I lied on my resume and this is how I got away with it. Exactly. How to navigate, like, lying on a background check. Don't talk about that online.

00:11:12 Like, oh. All right, Maggie. Make sure you do that. Thank you. Won't get caught. Exactly. Because we read those stories right here on the podcast. No, you hear it. Anyways, I only have two stories today. They're a little long, but let's dive right into them. So, the first one is my wife and I own our own vocational rehabilitative counseling firm, specializing in California's workers' compensation. That's a mouthful. We had three offices in three counties. We were basically employment experts. Didn't prevent us from making a horrible hiring mistake, though. We were looking for a front office receptionist for our main office. We interviewed this one female candidate that we will call Jane. My wife interviewed her and then sent her to me for a separate interview.

00:11:55 I interviewed her for about an hour. I agreed with my wife that she was an excellent candidate. Great personality, very personable, professional, etc. We called references, which all checked out. We decided to offer her the job, which she accepted. On her first day, she was being trained by our office manager at the front desk. I had just finished with a client and walked up to her to the front desk. I grabbed a stapler off the receptionist's desk to staple some papers for a client. Jane stated very sternly, What do you think you're doing? I was shocked. I actually turned around thinking she must be talking to someone else. She stared at me. The client was waiting to see what was going to happen. I ignored her and gave the client his papers. After the client left, Jane continued,

00:12:38 Don't take stuff off my desk without asking. I looked at her for a moment and then walked into my wife's office and asked her to call. Wait, is this like the first day? Yes. Can you imagine like borrowing a stapler from somebody the first day and they're like, Don't take stuff off my desk. What do you think you're doing? What do you think you're doing? To the CEO of the company? Yeah. What do you do? Yeah. Okay. And to say that next time you come take something off my desk. Yeah. And imagine being the client. You're taking off your desk? Yeah. Imagine being the client too. You're like. You're taking stuff off. Yeah. Imagine being the client too. You're like, what the heck? So then he says, I walked into my wife's office and asked her to call the office manager into her office. The office manager had witnessed the exchange.

00:13:19 We discussed the situation. The office manager has experience with a similar issue, but much less intense. Apparently, Jade had compulsive boundary and territory issues. We elected to get rid of her. We had our bookkeeper cut a check right away. I called her into my office. I asked her if she thought her behavior was appropriate considering I own the company and the client was present. Jane went into this odd rationale that we hired her and gave her a desk. It was her desk and it wasn't right that anyone should violate her space. I told her she was terminated. I have her check for a full day's work and she left without incident. Considering our vast experience in vocational counseling, my wife and I tried to figure out

00:14:00 how we could miss such a major personality flaw during two long interviews. Yeah. That's, I get that. That's interesting. Yeah. Oh. I've never heard that before. Some type of personal, the boundary thing. Yeah. And I mean, I guess it's hard to test an interview because you're interviewing them. You're not going to touch her. You're not going to ask to see something of hers. Like you're keeping your space. Sure. I don't know. Do you have any disorders? Yeah. Yeah. Are you compulsive in how the territory is? Is there any way? No. That's a crazy one. But at least it wasn't like violent. Like I feel like a lot of these are really violent. This one was just some yelling and get off my stapler, please. I mean, I get it. I mean, I, I, I respect and we try to let people have their space, their desk, you know, and

00:14:44 that's yours. Yeah. I don't think anybody's ever trying. It's just the way you go about handling it. Yeah. Don't say what do you think you're doing? Yeah. You can be like, please don't touch my stapler. Please. Yeah. Maybe. And, or if it's like really bothersome for you, then just put your stuff away that you think would be. Exactly. You know, I don't know. But day one. Yes. That's very fresh. Yeah. Very bold again. Bold. Yes. Very bold. This one was a different kind of bold though, I'd say. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, here's my second story for today. Back then our hiring process wasn't nearly as tight as it should have been. We'd bring people on before the background checks, criminal reports, and financial screenings were finished. It's, it's funny because this story is actually at a call center and they do financial screenings

00:15:27 on them beforehand. So I found that to be interesting, but also at the same time, I can kind of understand not waiting for a background check to come back if you're just a call center kind of. What kind of company? But, um, it doesn't clarify, but. It could be a financial business where they might have some financial information for them, buddy. Yeah. It seemed fine at the time. Most people cleared without an issue. But every once in a while, you'd roll the dice and land on a surprise. I remember one case vividly. We had just hired a young guy who claimed he'd been freshly discharged from the military. He fit in right away. Hardworking, respectful. The kind of person you feel lucky to have on your team. For a couple weeks, everything seemed normal. Then one afternoon, I got a call that changed everything. A flat, serious voice on the other end asked me, is he at his desk?

00:16:11 Yes, I said cautiously. Good. Don't leave him. Don't let him leave. That's what they said. Don't let him leave. Okay. That was it. No explanation, just an order. And that was the whole exchange, I guess, on the phone. So I walked over to his desk, heart starting to thump. I played it cool and I leaned against his cubicle wall and launched into a casual check-in. Hey, how is everything going? Everything making sense so far? Any questions? He smiled and answered politely, completely unaware that anything was off. Four minutes passed. The medoubled doors of our call center swung open with a heavy clang. And then in walked two military police officers in full uniform. The whole room went silent.

00:16:52 Headsets slipped off. Keyboards stopped clicking. The whole thing. And everybody started staring at him. Without a word, they marched straight over. My new hire's face drained of the colors as they stood over him. You are now in custody of being absent without leave, one of the MPs firmly said. AWOL? Yep, pretty much. Before anyone could process it, they had him on his feet, wrist cuffed, and were escorting him out. The call center was frozen in shock, watching the scene unfold. He didn't argue. He didn't even say a word. And just like that, he was gone. We never saw him again. No follow-up. No explanations. Just the memory of the day the military walked into our office.

00:17:33 There's no quitting the military. I know. I'm like, what did he think? Not show up at work. And so they said they just had the memory of the day the military walked into their office and hauled away one of our own. After that, let's just say we waited for the background checks to clear before giving anyone a desk. This is funny to me because I feel like that was so dramatic. Them marching in there. Oh, I know. Clinging the doors open. And also, is he at his desk? Yeah, like say, is he there? Don't leave him. Don't let him be. And also, he was like, yeah, why wouldn't you say this is the military? Right? This is the military. We have a guy that you guys have there. He's absent.

00:18:14 We need to come get him. Yeah. Is he at his desk? Yeah. Some CIA type. He's absent. Yeah. So there could be a reason why he was absent. It's not. Yeah, true. All right. That was good. Yep. Yeah, I liked that. Those are mine too. Nice. Nope. Yeah. Nobody died. I had a bit of a cliffhanger for me. I was like, oh, now. Yeah. I'm like, you want to know the rest of the story. Yeah. What did he do? I might have to look this guy up somehow. I don't know if I'd find it. Did they kick him out or did they, you know, I don't know. Maybe they don't kick you out for that. They just give you a cruddy job. You know what makes me think that it was a financial company was this story was found on a company's site of like the 15 craziest hiring stories ever.

00:18:55 Oh. And it was a financial company. Oh. So maybe. Yeah. Because it all had to do with finances. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. All right. What you got for us today, Emma? Okay. Ready? I think I have like three, maybe. Three or four. Okay. I can't remember. Well, if they're, we'll do them one at a time. If they're, if it's good, then we can progress to the next one. Okay. So if not, you're done. If it gets too dark, you know, I'm just calling it quits. Okay. Let's go. I once had an employee who was a compulsive liar. Some of the stories about this guy are, and then it has a couple of bullet points of different lies that. Oh gosh. When he first started, he was asked to just bring in his ID documentation as part of the

00:19:39 supporting documents. He said he left it in his car, but would go and get it. He left the office, came back a short while later and just sat at his desk and continued working. When he was asked about the ID documentation later, he kind of just shrugged and said that he went to go get it, but found that his car had been stolen. Oh my God. I feel like I've heard this excuse before, stolen car. And I just came, and I just, and I just came back to it. Yeah. Whatever. What else is one to do besides go get at your desk? He would often make sure that he was the last person to leave the office. And the next morning he would make sure that there's a toothbrush displayed in a glass on his desk to make us think that he pulled an all-nighter working at the office.

00:20:23 That's a creative. Looks like he's a hard worker. Right. I put in so much time. I used to know someone who set their alarm at three o'clock in the morning every night to get up and send work emails. She would send a series of work emails and go back to bed to make it look like she was working at three o'clock in the morning. He got caught stealing small change off of the boss's desk and then tried to blame it on the cleaning lady. Oh my God. He once bought pizza for the entire office. How many times? We asked him why he said that it was to celebrate him being accepted to go study at MIT in two years' time. We looked it up. Applications hadn't even been posted. Yeah. I was going to say, you can't do that two years in advance.

00:21:05 It's in advance. Needless to say, he didn't make it through his three-month probationary period and was let go. About three months after he'd already left, his dad phoned to the office looking for him. Sometime later, we got another... His dad didn't know he was even fired. Yeah. That's sad. That's really sad. He probably lied to his dad, too. Yeah. Yes. Sometime later, we got another batch of new employees. One of them heard the stories and said that they had worked for that guy before. And at the previous job he was at, he eventually had to be escorted out by the police. Oh, my gosh. All these escorts, like, escorting people out on cuffs and everything. I know. Crazy. Okay.

00:21:46 Where's my next one? All right. All right. That one was good. Nobody was on a grill. Nobody got in a bar fight. No unaliving. Yeah. None of that. Good. Yeah. It's good. Okay. Okay. I've only been in the field for about four months now, but this is my favorite petty incident. The morning shift starts at 5 a.m. A lot of guys come in a little early and sit in their cars doing whatever, reading, sleeping, whatever. Apparently, they separate these two people by guy A and guy B. There you go. No. Okay. Thing one and thing two. Yeah. Thing one and thing two. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, guy A has a fancy European car in which the headlights don't turn off.

00:22:30 His explanation, not mine. Well, guy B parks directly in front of him like he always does. He thought that his headlights were BS and was becoming increasingly angry because guy A won't turn his headlights off. Right. So, instead of choosing to park somewhere else, guy B began parking at an angle with his headlights shining directly into the window of guy A. He did this for a few days before then bringing in a taller truck so that his headlights would fully shine into the car of the other guy. He's taking this. So petty. Very serious. Yeah. He saw this in the footage of our security cameras. European car. Who does that guy think he is? No one told me this was happening until a while after this had been occurring, as I

00:23:13 don't start at 5 a.m. like everyone else does. When the operations manager finally told me, I just burst out laughing because I cannot believe that 50-year-old men were acting like this. That's not what I had in my mind. No. We had to tell in this story this whole time, I'm thinking a couple 20-year-olds. Yeah. 20-year-olds. So, we had guy A take some pictures for documentation and told guy B to knock it off and that's when the last of that. And that has been the last of that as far as I'm aware. Oh. Okay. H are involved again probably. Yeah. To solve the dispute. I feel like he didn't even have to tell two grown men not to act like this either.

00:23:54 Just go park apart from each other. I mean. The whole thing of going and getting, I'm going to change cars. I'm going to go get my taller. Yeah. Just to think that all the way there. Drive it all the way. I'll show him. Yeah. Also, Wart. I'll get my lights higher. Why don't you just stay at home if you're just sitting in your car sleeping anyways? Just stay at home a little later. You're not. Park somewhere else. His leg to his holy teeth. Yeah. No need to park at an angle and like. Or you can go up to him and say, hey, can you turn your headlights off? That's just petty. That's also a. That's petty. Yeah. I don't know. Okay. Here's another one. Um. This says not an HR rep, but sat next to the bad employee.

00:24:37 So this is one of the co-workers. Oh, thanks. Co-worker. We love these. Worked at a bat. Worked at a job that required an FBI background check because it was a large financial company. All right. Fingerprints. Yeah. Fingerprints. List all contacts with police, whether they resulted in charges or not. Blah, blah, blah. Basically, they only cared about financial crimes. So unless you robbed someone, you were likely fine as long as you listed. Okay. That's what it says. Well, this guy started. From day one, he was in his cubicle having long conversations with his lawyer about his upcoming drug trafficking trial. He loudly corrects his lawyer with, no, they said it was two kilos, but I only had one and

00:25:18 a half. Oh. Okay. But to be specific. What if that matters? Yeah. What if there's something special? What if there's a law, you know, in that state where that actually mattered? Maybe. I actually picked. Maybe. I picked this story because of this little line right here. I thought you would like this. The check could take up to six months to complete. The background check? Yeah. Yeah. And they would let you start working while it was underway. Yeah. So we were all waiting for that to come back. Management heard from employees what was going on and evidently had the FBI rush it. So four days in, two security guards and an HR rep showed up at his desk and walked him up. Oh.

00:25:58 Well, the FBI checks are like mandated. Some legislators think they're the gold standard and they're not. But they mandate them in. They take a, you know, can take a long time. Yeah. Disruptive. You got to send people, you know, it's just commercial, commercial screening is, um. Superior. I just picked that story because it mentioned. You know, really a good person. Yeah. I picked this one because it mentioned the background check specifically. Like sometimes they don't end up in the story, but. But I see that where companies in the circumstances will conduct it and then bring them on. Yeah. Because they can't wait. Yeah. I mean, they would never be able to hire anybody because no one would wait around.

00:26:41 Sure. Like, hey. Willing to not work for six months? When the background check gets done, you'll be able to come to work. Yeah. You know, I'm going to go get another job. So that's what would happen. All right. I've got one more. It's kind of short. Okay. Go for it. All right. Asked in the interview if he'd ever been convicted of a crime, which is legal in my state and a requirement of the job. He said no. We made an offer. He accepted. And we read a background check. It was four pages long. Drug charges. Assault charges. Burglary charges. Basically, if you can think of it, this guy had done it. The crazy thing is he knew he needed a clean record for the job and he knew we were going to run a background check as he had to sign off on it.

00:27:22 But was still surprised and mad when we rejected the offer. We took the offer back. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. That's right. Or maybe he tried to run some, you know, name flukiness trying to mess up his name when he applied or put something in. Maybe he read some Reddit article. Yeah. He was searching the forums before this one. But I read that somebody did this before and it worked. It worked. Yeah. You know, so you never know. But it does. It shocks us all the time with people. Yeah. You know, with our clients, there's, you know, vulnerable populations or kids, older parents, people in, you know, that in the hospital or whatever.

00:28:07 And you see them apply and you go, I mean, this isn't, this isn't the place for you right yet. Yeah. And maybe in the future. Yeah. You know, when you've had some time. Rehabilitative effort. Probably not. Yeah. You know, the best situation, you're probably not going to be able to get in. Sometimes even mandated by the government. Yeah. Can't work there with that kind of record. Yeah. For sure. I don't like you're thinking when they apply, but they read it, probably read some Reddit article. Mm-hmm. Is that it? That's all of mine for this one. Very nice. Yeah. Good episode, guys. It's like not, not too bad. Yeah. I love these. We're not ending on a bad note today. Right. I got to try to figure out what I had to like say something cheerful on the way out.

00:28:49 Yeah. Because Emma just took us down a rabbit hole. Yeah. Stories. You know, I think a lot of these stories are, are, are funny in hindsight, you know, but the reality is they create a lot of stress on people. Yeah. Yeah. You know, HR people and, you know, the folks are in human resources or the recruiters are, you know, and talent acquisition. And you think about when you bring somebody on and you're, you're, you're in talent acquisition and you, it's a bit like putting your stamp of approval. And so, you know, it's just a bit, a bit taxing when, you know, one of your hires is, I assume brings a lot of stress to folks. So, but hopefully afterwards you can laugh about it.

00:29:32 For sure. For sure. All right. Well, that's it for today. Don't forget of our $10,000 contest. Submit your story to us on thebadhire.com. Like, share, follow, uh, any of our information, any of our, any of our stuff on social media. Um, we'd love to have you join our show, share our show, but submit your stories. That's what we want. We want to hear your stories. Tell us a great story about a bad hire for a chance to win $10,000 until next time. Bye. See you later.