He Stole $200,000 on His First Day [The Bad Hire Ep. 39]

00:00:00 First day, he gets in the truck, and within hours of starting, his very first shift, he steals $100,000. When police finally received a complaint from the company and opened an investigation, they found the check ledger. 281 fraudulent checks, totaling just over $205,000. 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.

00:00:41 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, everyone, and welcome back to The Bad Hire. It's a show or the podcast where we tell the best stories about some of the craziest hiring events ever. That's right. New tagline. New tagline every time. Yeah. I don't like doing the same tagline. And I'm here with Emma and Nathan. What's up? Hey, everybody. Hi. All right. So why don't you tell them what the drill is, Nathan?

00:01:24 What do we do every week and tell them about our contest? Every week you're not in the mood to tell the stories. Yeah, well, let's do it. That's fine. Every week we all get together and we tell the best stories about the worst hires. And so if you're in any kind of recruiting, hiring, hiring manager, if you own your own business, even if you just know somebody, then send in your stories because we want to tell them on here. Not just to like, I don't know, wallow in the pity of the sadness of the chaos, but really just to make it, hey, it's relatable. If you've got a crazy story, if hiring has not really gone your way, you're not alone. This is kind of the world that we're in. Yep. So send in your stories. We have a podcast or we have a contest right now. We've had it pretty much since we started. We started it almost a year ago.

00:02:05 We'll be coming up in one year of the show in like a month or two. I think it's the end of July, beginning of August. Yeah. And then we'll be giving away $10,000. So to the best, to the best story. Speaking of 10,000, Emma told me this morning, we just hit 10,000 followers on Instagram. So shout out to Emma. 10.1. Oh. That's right. Wow. That's a big jump from yesterday. Rock on. And Glenda the Good Witch from the Broadway, Kristen Chin, Kristen Chinowith. She liked our video this morning. She liked our post. It's been the buzz at the office. All right. We love that. That's our intro. Anyways, that's all I got to say. No, that's awesome. All right. So you guys ready to roll? Yep. All right.

00:02:46 I got to go. I read a little bit of this already. I started laughing. So here we go. So listen, there's this company called Garda, and they operate armored vehicles. The job is exactly what it sounds like. Okay. You put money in a truck, drive the truck, the money stays in the truck. You know, it's a role with pretty clear success metric. Get money from here to there. You know, that type of thing. Okay. In the summer of 2017, they hired a 19-year-old to guard the money. Seems like a bad idea. Yeah. First day. I wonder whose idea that was. First day, he gets in the truck, and within hours of starting, his very first shift, he

00:03:27 steals $100,000. He took it himself? Oh, no. There's a surveillance camera. What? Like, it exists specifically because the vehicle is transporting large amounts of cash. There's one in the truck, caught the whole thing. Footage showed him basically helping himself to stacks of bills. No way. While the truck was on route in Fairfield, New Jersey. He wasn't subtle about it at all. I mean, like, what did he think was going to happen? Sometimes you wonder, right? Wow. First instinct is to steal $100,000. Yeah. I feel like, not that I'm, like, trying to help. How would you do it? Not that I'm trying to help him out or anything, but I feel like you should start with a smaller

00:04:09 amount first. For the next time. Police recovered $85,900 from a nearby vehicle before arresting him. The remaining $14,000 was never accounted for. That is wild. It's crazy. He was charged with second-degree theft and released on his own recognizance, meaning he walked out of the arraignment on the promise he'd show up to court. And he had, at that point, been employed for approximately one shift. This is his first shift. Yeah. He is coming in hot. When the investigative detective asked what happened, he said this. He just chose the wrong profession. Yeah. The other profession was being a theft. I mean, you're looking at a big stack of money, and you're looking at it's so huge, and there's so much of it, and you go, you know, they probably wouldn't miss that much

00:04:52 of that big stack. Yeah. How would I know? That's crazy. Who's counting? Yeah, who's counting? I guess, like, how do you do a background check on a 19-year-old who, like, just finished high school? Yeah. I mean, you know. I don't know. I guess he's just, I guess it may be the person out the gate. I do think it's interesting. I mean, that's kind of a significant role to put a 19-year-old on. I'm surprised. As I was thinking, I was like, well, 19-year-olds go to war. They fight our wars. Yeah. They fight our fights. It's not like all- They can do that. They can certainly ride some guard on some cash. It just, you know, you got to be, there ought to be some tests to take that would indicate that you're not dumb enough to steal money on camera on your first day. It's not like all 19-year-olds are bad, but that's hard.

00:05:34 That's an insane story. Yeah. So, so story two here. So a payroll specialist is printing at a printing company in Northeastern Pennsylvania has access to the check system. Okay. She knows the names of former employees and sometime around 2019, she quietly opened a personal bank account. She doesn't use it right away. She waits four years. Okay. Before she uses this account. Slow burn. Very strategic. Yeah. This is, this has just been a burning idea for a long time. Yeah. Like trying to build up the guts or feel slighted enough to do it. Yeah. In December of 2023, she starts creating payroll checks using the names of people who had already

00:06:15 left the company. Former employees who would have no idea their names were being used. She routes every check into that account she opened back in 2019 and waits to see whether anyone notices. Nobody notices for five months. She's getting away with it. When police finally received a complaint from the company and opened an investigation, they found the check ledger. 281, 281 fraudulent checks. Oh my gosh. Total in just over $205,000. All made out to people who hadn't worked there in years. Wow. Wow.

00:06:55 She was charged 281 counts of theft. 281 counts of criminal use of communication facility. Each one's individual. 281 counts. And she was just what? Pocketing that money. Yeah. Related to consolidation of theft. Nine additional charges. 852 total charges. Wow. Which is, that would be a very large background check when it came across. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Which is a particular kind of irony for someone who worked in payroll. Yeah. Man. She was arraigned and released on $100,000 unsecured bail. One more detail worth noting. This was a printing company. Their entire business was producing documents. The documents that ultimately undid her were the ones she had made herself.

00:07:37 281 of them all printed. Wow. Right there. Wow. So she was printing their own checks. So she was just waiting until John Smith quit. And then she's like, made that check to them. I guess. You know, like, add an extra two checks, you know, where no one notices. What if she, like, started sabotaging people so that they would quit or get fired and leave so that she could use them? I haven't had a bonus in a while. We need to, you know, I haven't been able to take a check. We've had really good retention. You wouldn't they miss if they were gone? Yeah. You need to get rid of somebody. Let's get this guy out of here. I'll take his checks. That's insane. Jeez. Five months is a long time, but also, I mean, yeah, five months is kind of a long time. To what?

00:08:17 To go undistuckered. To get away with that. To get away with it. Actually. But I guess you could get away with it. The typical fraud in small business is actually much longer. Really? Than in big business. Yeah. Last much longer. Interesting. Because of, they don't have the detection systems. The visibility. Yep. Well, auditing and all the layers of protection process. Yeah. Makes sense. In smaller companies. The average fraud in a small company is well over a year long. It's perpetuated forever. And the average fraud size is actually larger than in large companies. Yeah. Fun fact. Interesting. That's crazy. It makes sense. Because, yeah, I feel like how would you get away with something like that at Google? Like, they would catch you like that. Yeah.

00:08:57 Yeah. That's right. Yeah. You know, you do try something like that at a bank or something. It's not going to happen. You get caught. But, yeah. Well, that's sad. Man, between her and the other, the kid, they're just like stealing money left and right. Yeah. That's crazy. Remember, we just did the thing with the Alex Hormosey, you know, social media reaction we did where we watched his video where he told the story where he got stolen from. Oh, yeah. And it was like somebody that he knew. Yeah. Like somebody, you know. That's a mysterious. I always thought that was interesting. It's somebody that he went into business with that he knew. Yeah. But, you know, it was like the person explained it like, oh, this was just a, it was a bit of a, you know, a misunderstanding. Yeah.

00:09:38 You know, but he still stole. And he stole from Alex. Yeah. And that is one smart dude. So, if he can have it done to you, anybody can. Yeah. 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.

00:10:21 Protect your team. Protect your reputation. Protect your sanity. Go to B-Checks.io. That's B-C-H-E-X.io. So, listen. Here's another one. So, I'm in manufacturing. Fast-paced, blue-collar, union environment, mix of men and women on the floor. And we hire a new maintenance supervisor who, on paper, looks incredible. I don't know how many times we've heard that. On paper. That's always the intro. That's right. Strong skills. They looked great. Solid background. Vetted through a recruiter. Three rounds of interviews. We did everything right. About a week in, he's out on the floor overseeing a group of employees when he walks up to one of the women and asks what she's having for lunch.

00:11:05 She takes the question at face value and tells him whatever she brought from home. Oh. So, he says, oh, so you're not on the menu? Oh, wow. We got a reaction out of Marcus from that one. Wait, no. This story was submitted to us. It was? Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. A few male co-workers nearby heard it and went straight to the woman's brother. Oh. Who also worked on the floor. Dang. Well, things escalated very quickly. Uh, we terminated the supervisor the same day, collected his equipment, and had IT scan his laptop. In just one week on the job, he'd managed to do very little actual work.

00:11:48 What they found instead was an extensive collection of adult content. Oh, right. Oh, my gosh. Apparently, that had been his primary activity on company time. No way. Three rounds of interviews, a recruiter, a week of employment, and that's what we were left with. Wow. Ooh. Dang. Ooh. How does that happen? It's so creepy. You do everything right, and the creep still gets through. Yeah. I think it's just, it speaks to how hard it is to hire great people. Yeah. You know, it is the difficult task of talent acquisition. You can understand why people are so hesitant. Like, we talk a lot, even we were talking about this morning, some other content, like interviews can go a long time, because companies are extra careful, but then sometimes you

00:12:31 understand why. Right. Because, like, you don't want to just pull the trigger on somebody who's going to be terrible. I mean, think about this. At least somebody overheard it or, you know, and some people around her reacted appropriately. That's good. You know? Um, but if it had just been like, eh, you know, some guys have been like, oh, we didn't, you know, no big deal. That'd be some really bad culture. Yeah. I mean, it was just, next thing you know, you've got just a real cancer in your culture, just really messing it up. You'll probably lose a good employee who's, you know, because of what she's dealing with. Dang. Yeah. I wasn't saying that was submitted. Yeah, it was. Like a couple of days ago? Um, either a couple of days ago or a week ago, something like that. Wow. All right. So Nathan, let's, what do you have?

00:13:12 Okay. So I got a couple of stories to read. The first thing I have is a guest segment to react to. Okay. Hi, Morgan. Morgan's commenting on our live right now. What's up, MJ from San Diego? How you doing? And then, hi, Morgan. I think that's Morgan. I hope it's Morgan. Yeah, I hope it's Morgan. From the BeachX Club. What's up? Yeah, Marcus. MJ from San Diego. And Marcus, I got a video to react to. So whenever we're ready. So this is Casey. Spent some time with him on our guest segment. So thank you for your time, Casey, Casey T. So he's like the head of growth at a company called, I think it's Service Professionals. So head of growth. So he does their marketing. He does their sales. He does their recruiting and their hiring.

00:13:53 Pretty much just anything to help the company grow. So he does it all. So shout out to Casey. And so service professionals, I think they go out and they find the best tradesmen, plumbers, electricians, things like that. And so it's kind of a mix of marketing and the trades. And so shout out to Casey. But this is one of the hiring stories that he had told me. One of the early hires that we were evaluating, pretty senior level guy. You know, he comes in, crushes all of the interviews, really impresses everybody. And then we get to the background stage, background check stage. And I have to follow up a couple times. So already in the back of my mind, I'm like, huh, it's not going smooth. Like, there's a little bit of pushback.

00:14:35 And like, I have to chase him for this. So runs a background check. And then we get the note on the side that's like, hey, just so you guys know, someone stole my identity. So it's a long thing, had a bunch of stuff going on. And sure enough, background check comes back and the rap sheet is like three pages long. So we're trying to figure out, like, is, was this the case? Like, person saying he has a twin brother who stole his identity and all of this. Long story short, we didn't end up pulling the trigger. But we had heard through the grapevine years later that that was the right move, that it was the person.

00:15:18 There were things under the surface there. But, you know, we dodged the phantom twin brother that stole his identity. This, unfortunately, is not the first story we've heard like this before. Yes, this actually happens. That's crazy. Oh, that wasn't me. That was my evil twin. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you get, we get a lot of disputes like that, too. Yeah. You know, a beat check. So where someone will come in and go, hey, it's not me. You know, it was my twin brother or someone stole my identity. And there's, there are actually solutions we can do. But the reality is when you do that, we're going to be like, okay, absolutely. We're going to take you seriously and we're going to investigate. And, you know, honestly, nine times out of 10.

00:16:01 Yeah. That's, you know, it's not true. There's no brother. Yeah. There's no brother. There's no twin. Yeah. Sometimes there is a twin. Yeah. You know, but they're just trying to shift the blame and, you know, you're just like, okay, well, we're going to go get mugshots. We, you know, the investigators will go and get definitive evidence. You know, so it's, but, you know, it is, it's pretty, pretty interested. You do get that. You know, when they, when they're slow to sign that background check release, you know, like, you know, and then they talk about, you know, and then you'll also hear, oh, I have personal policy about giving out my social security number. That's convenient. Yeah. You're like, it's not a good sign that his story kind of shifted halfway through.

00:16:44 Like, oh, my identity was stolen. And also I've got a twin. I got a twin. And also, yeah, somebody's impersonating me. So I would tell you that would not be the first time we've heard these, these stories. Yeah. I, I, I hate it, but for them, you know, much better for them to just hit it head on and just go ahead and put it out there. He interviewed so well. He just said, you know, this stuff happened in my life. Yeah. Let me tell you something. It was the worst time, worst decision, but I'm 100% past it. Let me tell you what I've done and we're going to move on. Yeah. And not everybody, but some will appreciate that and, and hire you. You know, so especially in an environment like that, it's when you put off lie.

00:17:25 Yeah. Try to get past it. That's when they're like, hmm. You know, the common theme is, the common theme is don't lie. Yeah. All right. What do you got? All right. You got another one? I got a story. This is from, this is me. Yeah. This one. Yeah. That's for my turn. Yeah. All right. But I got a couple of stories to read. Yeah. So you guys ready? Yep. All right. So I hire a human resources assistant. They are a remote position with standard hours of 830 to 530. She seems great on paper. Ding. Every time. Every time. Every time we hear that. Interviews well. Ding. She settles in. No issues. Okay. So she's actually getting started. This is what I don't know is that four months after joining us, she took a second full-time job.

00:18:06 This one was as an HR specialist for the TSA paying $132,000 a year with a work day starting from 730 in the morning. So that was a 10-hour daily overlap that she now has that she's supposed to be working for me. So she certifies full attendance at both jobs. And by September, she's added a third position. And then a fourth. So now she's working four full-time jobs all on top of each other. I guess every time. She's an HR specialist. I wonder if she was doing recruiting. Maybe you like every time she like interviewed somebody, she's like, they could go one of four places. Yeah. Hire you over there.

00:18:47 Hire you over there. Okay. Then a fourth job. So she eventually holds roles simultaneously across six organizations. The TSA, the HUD, the FDA, Air Force Reserve, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, Explosives. So all these, which is crazy that these organizations are catching this. And she keeps three laptops open side by side. And she rotates like Ron Swanson spinning in a circle from one screen to the next with the appearance of activity on each employer's system. Her time cards are routinely claiming more than 120 hours of work in a single 40-hour week.

00:19:32 So this goes on for three years. 120 hours. Yeah. You know. She's grinding. Right. Right. She's working really hard. So when federal prosecutors finally catch up. So this sounds all cool and nice. It's like, oh, I could pull this off. When federal prosecutors show up, they catch up with her. The total losses across all six employers approximate about $292,000. She pleads guilty to wire fraud. And she faces up to 29 years in prison with prosecutors recommending no more than 24 months. And here's the part that I keep coming back to. At every single one of these organizations, she had been hired as a HR professional.

00:20:17 The department that exists specifically to identify fraud and other people's employment situations. And she was very good at appearing to be good at work. Yeah. Right. So I thought that was an insane story. Especially since it's like those official government places. It's, you got to know when you do it there, you might get just fired. Yeah. Somewhere else. But if you're doing it to the federal government or an agency, you're probably, they're probably going to come after you for stealing. The prosecution is crazy. They can prosecute you. Yeah. It's not like, it's a little different. Yeah. And I don't know. You know, you guys know, and I say this, boy, I got cooked online in the last comments on one of these stories.

00:21:01 Yeah. I mean, you know, people are like taking the side of a person that they literally said, you know, half the audience believed they should be able to work. Multiple jobs. Multiple jobs. And lie to everybody. And just lie. And because they get to, you know, triple up their income and, you know, the company would never pay them for that. And I was, you know, I was just like, wow, I just, it's hard, hard to believe, you know? Yeah. I mean, it, you know, it's a kind of going, you should just be able to steal from a bank. You can make more money if you just steal. No. Just steal. It's worth it. You can make more money. Yeah. Makes no sense. Well, the main thing is like, like I said earlier, hey, just don't lie. Don't lie to your employer. Right? And if you, let's say, have a kind of easy remote job where you work and it's super early in the morning, another kind of easy remote job where you work at night and you like talk to, and they're both aware.

00:21:48 It's like, okay, you've talked to them. They're in the loop. You're not lying to anybody. Yeah. But if you're lying to six companies and saying like, oh, yeah, I'm only working for you. And you're telling each one that, it's a little bit of a different book. Yeah. Because then you're straight up lying. We, I've got guys or developers that we have right now that have come to us and said, hey, I really would like to pick up some gig work. Do you mind if I do this, that, and the other? And, you know, we're like, no, you know, we want you to, if you have the, if you got the desire and you want to put in more time than we're asking, absolutely. But, you know, I think there's a, there's a really sense of respect when someone comes and brings that, you know, when they do that to me, I'm going to try to do everything I can to make it happen.

00:22:29 It's just good communication. Yeah, for sure. Anyways, that was a great story. Okay. Next story. So, I run a hospital and in June of 2022, we were bringing on a new chief operations officer. He comes in with a solid resume. He completes our hiring process and he gets the job. What our background check did not surface, and I still think about this, is that in 2015, he had been convicted of federal wire fraud and he was sentenced to five years of prison for defrauding two healthcare organizations in Louisiana. Which, what background check service are you using that you don't catch the big stand there? Yeah. I'll answer that question in just a minute.

00:23:10 Okay, that's good. A health cooperative and a cancer center. He had run fraud schemes at both, served a sentence, and then applied to help run our hospital. How convenient. Federal convictions are public record. We acknowledged that directly when everything came out. We said that we would be conducting a full audit of our screening systems to figure out how the heck that happened. He lasted 13 days. The moment the convictions came to light, he was terminated, and we began reviewing whether any data had been improperly accessed during his time with us, which was about 13 days. A man with documented federal records of defrauding healthcare organizations was hired to help run a healthcare organization.

00:23:55 He didn't bring it up during the hiring process, obviously. And our hiring process didn't find it. We are in the business of identifying risk, protecting people, and making careful decisions. And our screening process for a senior executive didn't reflect any of that. And we said so ourselves. That's a crazy story. Wow. Well, here's how it could happen. Now, in most healthcare organizations, there's some fingerprints done, but he may have been in a position where he didn't have to do that type of fingerprint. So he did a commercial screen. And here's a mistake HR leaders make all the time, right? They get a screen that does county-level screens, a national database, and they don't add federal screens.

00:24:39 So if those were federal charges, those are in federal courts, and they have to be searched separately from county courts or state courts. And those big national databases that all these salespeople in the background screening industries say contain everything. They're awesome. Yeah, that's right. You know, don't have those federal records in most cases. And so there's a lot of organizations who don't know to run that federal that they have to ask for and run it. And a lot of background check companies don't want to do them because they're not as profitable as selling some of the other stuff. And they're hard work because it's very manual to do them.

00:25:23 And so they just assume, you know, make better margins on other stuff. And so, but, you know, you got to order those to get that. And so something that's just simple as that, you're hiring a CEO, you hire everything. He's never been arrested by the local sheriff, by the local police. He's never been to state court, you know, all that. He was in federal court. You bought a background check because your HR team didn't know any better. It's just such a crazy place to cut corners, especially at that level. So that's funny, Nathan, but you would say that, but sometimes I think it's not cutting corners. It's just a lack of knowledge. You just don't know what you don't know. Yeah. You don't, this is a complex, this is a complex industry. And, you know, it's so easy and salespeople want to sell you what you ask for.

00:26:07 That's true. You know, it's like, you're like, hey, I need a background check. Does this and this and this? And they, you know, as soon as you say yes, they're, you know, a lot of times they're not interested in trying to talk you into spending more, especially if it's competitive. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the wildest part is they, they probably, and we hear these kinds of stories all the time. These people probably think I'm doing the right thing. I'm hiring this person. Hey, I'm going to go through this extra step. You know, the safety step of getting a background check. Oh, Hey, they passed. We're good. Like we're making all the right decisions and people can still do all that. And they don't know that like they got the wrong kind of background check or the cheap kind or the, or whatever kind. And they're missing stuff without even realizing it. And so it leads to this kind of effect. That's the reason I built Screening Hero is because I, just years of HR leaders just not understand the complexity of our industry.

00:26:54 Yeah. And buying things and thinking things are done a certain way because, you know, maybe a salesperson told them that or it just wasn't clear. And, um, so yeah, that's the reason we did it. All right, Emma, what's up? Alrighty. First, um, we're going to do another guest segment. All right. Um, this is Liz. Hey, Liz. I interviewed her a couple of weeks ago. She's a manager of recruiting and sales in the Chicago area. And she's been doing recruiting for like the last 10 years, I believe. Great. Awesome. Um, but she was wonderful to talk to. She had a lot of stories to tell me. She's super knowledgeable. Um, yeah, I love her. So let's just, let's, let's hear her story.

00:27:34 Let's check it out. I filled a direct hire talent acquisition manager position with one of our clients in downtown Chicago. Everything was going great. As far as I was concerned, I hadn't heard anything from the client. I hadn't heard anything from the candidate saying that they weren't happy or anything. Um, about two and a half months into her employments, she left the office for lunch. And then never came back. The client called me in like a super panic. I don't know what happened to her. She left for lunch and then never came back. Um, she's like, I've tried calling the candidate. I've tried calling her emergency contact. I can't get ahold of anybody. Can you please try to reach out to them to see if you have a better success in doing that?

00:28:18 I tried calling the candidate. I tried texting her. I tried emailing her. I sent her a message on LinkedIn. Heard nothing. The next day, the client was still like super worried because she still hadn't returned. So she actually called the authorities to do a wellness check. The police got to her apartment. Nobody answered. The next day after that, they were going through her desk and they found a bag of all of her belongings. So it had her work phone, her badge, her key, all under stashed underneath her desk. So at this point we're like, well, maybe she was just a walk off. Two weeks later, the candidate showed back up on LinkedIn with a new job. What? She's like quick. She just quit quietly.

00:28:59 No, it's so dramatic. And it's like, oh, she's back. Yeah. That's wild. This happens all the time. Someone takes a job. I think you guys remember the story. Maybe I've told it to you guys, but where, you know, I was recruiting someone and I got in the process of talking to her and then I noticed she was saying, you know, like getting a lot of congratulations on her announcement of taking this new job at this organization. And yet she was still talking. She was still reaching out to me. And she, and so we continued this interview process for like a month and then she came in and met multiple people and I was like, I'm watching this, you know, now she's posting

00:29:43 about, you know, reposting some of her new employer stuff on LinkedIn. And she's still talking to you. And she's still talking. Yeah. And so sometimes I think people have like, they take a job because they need a job. Trying to get their options open. Yeah. Right. They take a job because they need a job. And, you know, maybe they're, as long as they got any feelers or anybody else, they're wondering if there's anything better. And, and so they, they keep it up and, um, you know, and then they, this is what, this is what happens when that one, they hope they would get, it was slow, did them 10 interviews, you know, finally get around to hiring them. Yeah. And they're like, bye. And it just, you know, it's, I'm sure, you know, it's embarrassing.

00:30:25 Hey, I just used you for two months to keep a play, you know, to bridge me to that other, that other one. That's crazy. It's terrible. I mean, think about, you know, the talent acquisition person who put her in play, you know, you go through, you, you know, and then it's just humble pie afterwards, you know, the person you vouch for, you set up, you thought was perfect, you know, and then you're those, you know, starting over. Those recruiters, they stick their necks out for people and they're like, yeah, this person's going to be great. You want to hire them. Right. And then that kind of thing happened. It's awkward. You know, they, they go through that a lot. So that's a crazy story. Yeah. All right. What do you have? All right. My next story is one that was submitted to us.

00:31:10 Um, it's kind of long. So here we go. This person's from the UK. Oh, cool. So, all right. I worked in a lovely family owned pub and restaurant for years as server and then manager. Things were great, but we really struggled for decent chefs that could manage the busy periods or turn out to be drug users. Apparently a lot of the chefs in the UK are drug users. I don't know. Owner and sous chefs had to be, had to carry us most of the time between letdowns. We found an amazing guy with a ridiculously great resume had worked at amazing places, including Buckingham Palace for a decent period of time. Good on paper. That's cool. Met him, seemed amazing.

00:31:52 Talked the talk, all that stuff. But there was a problem. He had a critically ill newborn at the other end of the country in a specialist hospital for his needs. And he wanted to start ASAP and commute between the job and seeing his wife and son a few times a week, which was four plus hours each way. In the UK, that's like a lot. Sick whole country. Yeah. Yeah. But the owner, who was also a father, said, no, we'll take you on properly when you're ready, when your son is better. Let's plan on, let's plan on the meantime, like after the fact. So we start seeing him every other week or so as he pops in to discuss menus. And he's often crying while telling stories of his very ill child who seems to be worsening. It's heartbreaking to see.

00:32:34 Meanwhile, he's produced a Christmas and festive menu for us, fancier than we're used to and above what our staff can produce normally. But we're all confident in learning once he joins. So we're reassured. We sell our Christmas day and the festive periods out with his menus and the promise of the Buckingham Palace chef, taking pre-orders and deposits, which is a pain to get customers to do. He finally starts his little boys better. We all shower him with hugs and well wishes for his family. Shift one. A lot. A lot of things at the past look very different to what I'd expect for my nine years of front of house service. But what do I know? I've never been to Buckingham Palace, right?

00:33:15 Wrong. Most dishes he did were sent back. Owner in the kitchen working with him is confused. He talks it up to nerves and build up and everything like that. Next day, he's caught by several people Googling stuff like white wine sauce, how to cook scallops, how long to cook a medium rare steak. He's asked to make the soup and can't. Oh, wow. Owner manages to make it three days before gently telling him to prioritize his family and go back up north. Doesn't call him out on it. We're gutted because we have to restart the whole Christmas process, which upsets lots of customers. The kicker. A week later, we finally hear back from the head chef from the palace who had never heard of him. Oh, no. And we also had a close friend who was making a TV documentary in the hospital ward.

00:34:01 His child was meant to be in. This was meant to be a super critical case and the child had been on a specific ward they had been filming for six months and they had never heard of the guy, the child's name, either of their last names or a child with that illness on the ward. What? Crazy. Managed to gaslight a whole business for months, let us cry with him about his child and fake working at the palace. It was all a lie? Yeah. What? Yeah. What the heck? Pretty crazy. Crazy. So he lied about being in the palace and even his kid? Yeah. He lied about having a sick child. Did you read that last line? Yeah. What was the last line? Here, you read it, Ken. If you're going to lie, maybe start a little smaller. Yeah. Yeah.

00:34:41 I mean, that's some good advice. That's crazy. I mean, it's like, was his reference to the queen? Like, that's crazy. Hey, it worked at the palace. I know. Yeah, don't worry about it. He's chat TVTing. But also, what is an onion? Like, I feel like they should have checked that reference first before they hired him. But I mean, what do I know? Man, that's bold. That's bold. That's really bold. Yeah. It's crazy. I said, you know, when you started talking about the front of that story and he's talking about the kid, and I was like, kids are going to be sick. It's just always, I don't know how many times we've seen stories of people who like, you know, fake murder their parents, you know, like whatever. Or, you know, he's like, my mom died, my grandmother, my dad, you know, and then my husband, my spouse.

00:35:25 Yeah, I know. They're telling everyone and everyone's feeling sorry for them. Yeah. It's crazy. I guess that people just want the sympathy just to try and cover over their lies, you know? That's crazy. Jeez. Wow. Well, thanks for saying that story. Yeah. That's insane. So, my last. We saw the list. Are we got a separate clip from Liz? Yeah. Yeah. It's another clip from Liz. Oh, we do? Yeah. It's super short, though. So, something to lighten the mood of the depressing story that I just told. But, yeah, this one's super short and sounds very similar to a lot of the stories we've heard on here. So. We had a situation last year where a candidate was hired for an HR director position.

00:36:07 So, pretty high-level role. And they said that they had a bachelor's degree on their resume. But when the client went to go do the education check, they couldn't get a hold of the school. You guys said, oh, I think the school closed down. Find out that he's actually a bachelor's degree. He was just saying that's what he could get the job because that was a reward. Oh, yeah. Harvard. Harvard. They closed down. So. Yeah. Harvard's actually not. They're closed today. Don't call them. Yeah. Yeah. We've heard so many stories like that about people lying on their resumes. I think there's, you know, in background checks, there's the criminal check, right, which is,

00:36:47 you know, 75, 80% of the business. Right. And then there's the verification work, which is education, previous employment, and sometimes references. Yeah. There could be other pieces of that. Maybe some checking a license, verification, make sure someone has a license they say they did. That type of thing. And there's so much, so much lying going on there. Yeah. You know, if it's important for a company to have those things like actually be true. Yeah. You know, they, you know, they should absolutely do it. Yeah. They should absolutely do verification. And it's, and it's hard work and it's frustrating work because, you know, you, you, a lot of times

00:37:29 it's done on the phone, you're calling someone and it is crazy. You're calling someone to reference or to get information and they just ignore you. Right. I mean, they, they know what the call is, you know, they ignore you. And then, you know, you tell the client, listen, we did 10 attempts. Nobody answered. No one's returned any of our stuff. Mm-hmm. And then they're like, we'll try. And they pick up the phone and like, first attempt, bang. Yeah. You're just like, ugh. My favorite, oh, you good? Yeah. My favorite stories that people tell are when, and probably shouldn't be my favorite, but it's when they just like have one of their buddies pretend to be the school or something like, oh yeah, he was great here. He had a 4.0. And then, and it's just like his, his roommate who's like, you didn't be a reference.

00:38:13 Yeah. We've had a few of those. Oh my gosh. Well, hey everybody. Hi Morgan. All the comments are Morgan. Yeah. And then we got a different, oh, is that different Morgan? No, that's not Morgan. No, that is Morgan. Yeah, that's right. It's just Morgan on her other account. Hi Morgan. That's funny. Oh my gosh. Well, hey, listen, that's it. That's it for today. Thanks for putting that together, Emma. That was some cool stories. I thought they were really good. And, and thanks for listening to the Bat Hire. We appreciate you. Yeah. We crossed over 10,000 followers on, on Instagram. I think there's others elsewhere, you know, I think we're, you know, the show's actually

00:38:54 done pretty good. We've, we're getting hundreds of thousands of views and some of, some of the clips are doing, are doing really well. So, um, and don't forget about that contest that, uh, Nathan told you about top of the podcast. Yeah, send your stories in. Yeah. We'd love to hear them. Nathan wants to give away 10,000 bucks. I just heard in the middle of this episode that we've gotten three new submissions already. Oh, sweet. Yeah. They're all Morgan. Yeah. They're all Morgan. Yeah. Totally not true. That's great. All right. Well, submit your story. If you, you can go to the bad heart of gut.com to do it. All right. That's where to go and you can, and submit it. And if you want to do a segment like you saw with Liz, uh, that's, those are super cool. Um, as well. What was the other guy's name? Casey.

00:39:35 Casey. Yep. Yeah. Thanks to Liz and Casey for doing that. We're super appreciative. Uh, good luck in your contest for 10,000 bucks. So, um, yeah, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. We'll be right back.