He Took a Phone Call During His Job Interview [The Bad Hire Ep. 36]

00:00:00 They look at me and say, I had things to do. What followed was a series of calls to our office demanding to know why they didn't get it. What happened? On Monday morning, he logs into our team stand-up meeting with his camera on. It is not the same guy. 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

00:00:40 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, the show where the best stories about the worst employees happens. Welcome, Emma and Nathan. Welcome, everybody. Hi. Nathan again for the second show in a row. Emma in the house. Yes, I'm here. We're happy to have you. She's been carrying the team. We have. Getting us viral everywhere. It's light work. You know. This is light work. Yeah. This is what I do. This is what she likes. Yeah. Yeah. Shout out to Marcus, too. We couldn't do it without you. Everybody say hey to Marcus.

00:01:21 Marcus, we've done this 36 times, bro. Yeah. I wasn't here for like a first time. You know how, you know how, you know the story of Marcus and I? Marcus wasn't here for like the first 10 episodes. You just walked across him in the parking lot, right? Marcus wasn't here for like the first 10 episodes because we filmed somewhere else. Really? First eight episodes. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. That's right. We had to drive. 26 episodes, Marcus. Don't be taking credit for this first day. So the story with Marcus and I is I'm sitting in my car in the parking lot and I see this guy walk into our building with a C-stand in his hand and a bag. And I'm like, that looks legit. That looks like video equipment. Yeah. And we were looking for a video. I mean, I'm sure he probably thought I was correct.

00:02:03 He was like, hey, bro. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, you want a job? He's like, he looks at me. He's like, that's awesome. What's going on? You want some candy? Oh, you're terrible. You're terrible. Oh, my gosh. I was at the point in my life where people called me to the car. I had gear in my inside. I was making an assumption. I'm like, oh, he's probably curious about what I'm doing. And so I was like, well, why not go to his car and see what he wants to talk about? And so I went there. And I can't remember exactly the first thing you said to me, but I think it was along the lines of, what are you doing? And then I told him, yeah, I was doing something for Northwestern Mutual.

00:02:44 I love you guys. And then he was telling me, yeah, man, we've been looking for a guy to do social media. It was crazy. I had just interviewed like three people. I was that week. Yeah. Yeah, I remember that. And then he walks across the park. I was like, I think this was like, you know, whatever that is. It's a good thing you didn't flip them off or anything like when you saw him in the park a lot. That would be crazy. That's good. And man, that's awesome. That was great timing. And then we took off from there. Yeah, it's been really great. Thank you, Mark. You're doing a great job. We helped build everything. Yeah, that's awesome. Hey, you guys know the drill. We dive in the wildest, the weirdest, the most jaw-dropping hiring fails in offices, job

00:03:26 sites, you know, any organizations, nonprofits, heck, even on airplanes, all over the country. And don't forget, we're running a $10,000 contest. So submit your story at thebadhire.com. I know you have one. Every single HR person, talent acquisition specialist, recruiter, literally everyone I've ever met. If I say, and business owners too, and even some office managers who run hiring, when I go, oh yeah, we have this podcast called The Bad Hire. It's just for fun. You know, this is what we do. And they're like, oh yeah, I totally got this. Yes. You should hear. You know, they want to tell me a story. And so it's really fun.

00:04:08 So we hope you'll submit your story. I do want to, we'll give away a briefcase full of cash. That'd be fun. Is it actually going to be a briefcase? All ones. Absolutely. We should do it that way. Mr. B style, right? If it's 100, it'd just be like that big. So I'm like, fill it all ones. Right. It's got to be ones. It's got to be 10,000 ones in a briefcase. That'd be great. All nickels. That'd be great. But we're absolutely going to do it. We're going to give it away at the end of the first full year of the show. And then we'll re-up something fun and new after that. Yeah, it'll be fun. All right. Here we go. Let me get started. So this was a submitted story. So I'm on the management team. Here it is. I'm on the management team at a pretty well-known indoor interactive attraction.

00:04:50 They're not going to say the name. And after about a year, I get asked to start conducting interviews for supervisor roles that would be reporting directly to me. We had some solid candidates come through. But one interview from almost five years ago still lives rent-free in my head. The candidate was scheduled for 1 p.m. By 1.45, we still hadn't heard anything. So we tried calling and got no answer. At that point, we assumed he'd just ghosted us. And we moved on another day. And then they just showed up. At 1.50? No explanation.

00:05:32 No apology. And I reluctantly agreed to go ahead and interview them anyway. I have no idea why. Did they know it was at 1? Or did they think it was at 2? I don't know. When I ask about the lateness, okay, here. They look at me and say, I had things to do. Oh. I'm a busy man. Of course. I don't have time for this interactive indoor activity. No. Can you imagine that? That is crazy. Hey, you were running 45 minutes late to an hour. You know, everything okay? I'm busy. I have things to do, bro. I'm working you in. I had to go to the bank. Wow. Okay, so I had already mentally moved on at that point.

00:06:13 Yeah. But I finished the interview out of professionalism, right? Then their phone rings. They answer it. Excuse themselves. No, I can talk. I'm good. Excuse themselves and leave me sitting alone in the interview room. They come back and we pick back up. This guy's patient. And then it happens again. So we did not offer him the job. Shocking. Yeah. I know. Wow. What followed was a series of calls to our office. This gets me. I just read it. I was like, what? What followed was a series of calls to our office demanding to know why they didn't get it.

00:06:58 What happened? I nailed that interview. Mind you. Mind you. He did not have to extend the interview after he showed up 45 minutes late. Our general manager eventually got on the phone and told them exactly why. Yeah. Let me tell you why. Which I have to say, I respect it. Yeah. Yeah. Some people really do walk into an interview and leave you with absolutely no questions. That's crazy. About the decision you're going to make. It wasn't a hard decision. That guy, whoever interviewed him, he's got the patience of a saint. No kidding. I was just about to say that, like calling and demanding why you don't get the job when he didn't even have to do the interview with you in the first place when you showed up so late. Yeah. Because he literally said that he was already mentally checked out when the guy showed up.

00:07:39 Yeah. Because he was like, I'll just brush it past me, whatever. He's not coming. Yeah. I was like, I'm not going to hire this guy. He just showed up late. Yeah. Especially when you, as soon as you ask. If I asked, hey, you're running late, you know, is everything right? He's like, oh, I had things to do. I'd have been like, okay, I did too. Okay, so do I. Which was. It's a bad. It's a bad. So do I, considering your interview was 45 minutes ago. So how about you just get up and get on out of here? Well, it's like, imagine, wrap this up. I mean, I'm almost surprised. I mean, I guess he's trying to be professional. But like, if he has that behavior during the interview, can you imagine work with somebody like that? Like, hey, we had a meeting at noon. I think he's doing it. I think. Here's what I think. I think you should send in your bad interview stories.

00:08:20 Yeah. Not just your bad hire stories. We'll get some of those. Yeah. I mean, you know there are so many flame out, absolute train wreck interviews. Yeah. That would be so funny to like, be in the room and be like, what did that dude just say? I've been in them. I'm just like, what? Next time we film, I'm going to come in late and say, I had things to do. Sorry. My favorite thing was when I asked someone, so tell me, why'd you leave that last job? You know, what was up? And they get real serious on you and go, it's a lack of integrity of that company. What does that mean? And it's like a standard answer. And I'm like, oh. Interesting.

00:09:01 Yeah. Elaborate more. Why don't you? It wasn't virtuous enough. I mean, you know, it didn't reach your standard values. It's kind of a red flag when they talk bad about the company anyways. It totally is. Yeah. There's so many young people who just moving around in a job. I don't, who cares? Mm-hmm. You know, especially when you're young. You know, if you're experimenting, you know, who knows? You could say, hey, this wasn't a great fit for the culture. Whatever it was. Yeah. Is it a right job for me? Unless you're applying for the same exact job. Yeah. Yeah. But whatever it is, you know. But, you know, it just seems like, you know, like I'm going to try to position myself as elevated by saying the company wasn't up to my standards.

00:09:43 You know, they just didn't have the integrity. That, you know, and I hear that. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I do. I would love to see more higher stories. Yeah. More interview stories. That's insane. I mean, I just can't imagine. I feel like, you know, in interviews, you're trying to be the best version of yourself, obviously. You're trying to be. This is the best it's going to get. You're trying to be prompt. You're trying to be respectful. And so, just like, to be late is scary anyways. Like, I get anxious to think about just being late to an interview. Can you imagine the anxiety you would be under, Nathan? I know you. I'll try to be like 55 minutes early. You know what I mean? Nathan would be so. Can you imagine, like, if I'm talking to you, I really want this job.

00:10:27 Oh, sorry. I got to take this. My buddy's calling me. Just give me a minute. He did that twice? 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. 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.

00:11:08 Protect your reputation. Protect your sanity. Go to bchecks.io. That's B-C-H-E-X dot I-O. All right, let's go. We got a segment that we did. Who did this segment? Oh, this next clip. Is this Dave? I think we got a segment in store with David. Oh, it is? Yeah. Okay, I like David. And so, I interviewed David. I'll just send this to him afterwards. I think I mentioned that I was going to. He's super nice. I added him on LinkedIn, and he's calling in from St. Louis. So, here's David. We had hired a relatively young, not very experienced person for an entry-level position within the organization.

00:11:51 I interviewed them. They passed all the background checks and all that. But it was pretty evident from the first week that things didn't seem quite great. It wasn't a, whoops, we should have hired the wrong person. But it was definitely like, let's try to do what we can to help this person along. But despite our efforts, things just weren't clicking with this person. So, we have a three-month window where we can say, look, this isn't quite working. Let's try to work on some improvement. And I sat down with him, with the head of HR, and talked about what we could do to improve. So, he started swearing at us about why our performance information that we were saying was false, and the information that we had was fake. Everyone there was against him, and my resources were bad.

00:12:31 And then I pulled out all the reports that I had and showed him why the reports were right. He took his papers that he had and threw them across the room. I stormed toward the door, and I'm like, wait, don't leave. Let's talk about this. Now, in hindsight, I should have asked him to stay. And he turned around, and he goes, I don't want to be on performance improvement plan. If I told you that I had a deadly disease, would that change your perspective? I said, what? What are you talking about? He's like, well, if I shared with you that I have a disease that's really, you know, that's impacting me, and it's impacting my performance, would that change anything? I'm like, you know what? This doesn't change anything at all. Your performance is not great. We're trying to put you on an improvement plan. And so with that, he left the room, slammed the door so hard that it cracked the drywall all the way up the ceiling.

00:13:15 The door closes, and he starts screaming at everyone he can see. The police show up. He had threatened to pull out his gun, which he did not have, and shoot people. Definitely not the greatest hiring moment with that individual. Just escalated pretty fast. Oh, my God. This has gone worse and worse. I don't know how he's like, he threatened to pull out his gun that he did not have. Wait. Do you love David's personality? Oh, he was super nice. David's like the nicest guy ever. Oh, my gosh, yeah. He's just a sweet man. Surrounded by this chaos. He's talking about this. We can work this out. I need more Davids in my life.

00:13:57 That is a crazy story. That is insane. What if I told you that I have a terminal disease? Could you keep me around? If I was going to be on a performance improvement, man, if I was deadly ill, would you not put me on it? He's not even saying. No, your performance is bad. I can say I'm deadly ill. He's not even saying that he has a deadly disease. No, he's just saying. He's saying, if I told you. Hypothetically. If I had. Because if you say yes, I need to be deadly ill. Those moments on the show with people where it's like they kind of come to a crossroads where it's like, okay, maybe you give them the benefit of the doubt and then they go

00:14:37 over the top and they slam the door, curse everybody, pull out their gun and stuff. It's like, okay, maybe they're past the point of no return. Like, I've really got to let them go. You know, that's insane. That escalated very quickly. Wow. Randall and I were talking this week about, I think it's Zappos, I think is the name of the company. Is that right? The shoe company? The shoe? The shoe? I don't know. Zappos. Is that beer? Automation company? I think it was Zappos or Zappos. Yeah, that's a shoe. Either one. They're known for their culture. Okay. So maybe someone can. I think it is. I've heard good things. Somebody can do it. Known for their culture. I think we did, you know, a year or two ago, we were studying some of their culture deck stuff as we were developing our culture deck and thinking about how to communicate it to our employees

00:15:18 and stuff. And, but Randall's reading, was reading a book or something, he was talking about them. And he was telling me that at the end of 90 days, because this guy was talking about that 90 day, he was talking about the 90 day kind of, you know, check in, that they have a bonus that they will pay you if you resign. Oh, wow. And then apparently the bonus gets bigger every month for the first several months after that until it gets up to a certain amount that it's, you know, basically it's like, hey, we'll pay you to say out loud that you've already figured out this isn't a great fit for you.

00:15:59 Interesting. What we don't want is for you to just kind of feel stuck, I guess, be mediocre and feel like I can't leave now to be too early on my resume. Yeah. You know, all that kind of, you know, people are like, eh, this isn't for me, but now I'm kind of stuck here for a bit. I'll spend a year or two. And then, you know, I thought, and I think it goes up to, I think he was telling me maybe it went up to like year three or something, but I was like, I mean, I bet, I bet post year three retention is like really, really good because people have, you know, they've made a financial decision that they could have gotten some quick money just to, just to tap out and say, you know what? Wasn't for me.

00:16:39 I just thought it was really cool. Hiring is so interesting to me because it's like, if you're, there's so much figuring out to do, you know? And so it's like, once you find somebody that you really, really, really like, you know, you want to keep them. That's, that's golden. But a lot of times there's that whole figuring out process, obviously interview, but even yeah, in those first three months, you're like, if this person is really bad in the long term, I'd rather know now in the first 60, 90 days, uh, instead of me figuring it out years down the line and all this damage is done. A year down the line. Yeah. A year. Now you, you know, I was, uh, I was telling a story the other day about, um, uh, you know, a bad hire made and actually had a choice between two people.

00:17:25 And I, I mean, I came up with some reason why I couldn't hire the most qualified one. Right. And, and, um, it was really stupid what I did and it, and I hired this other one. Right. And it w it was a complete utter disaster for a year. And the cost of it was, it was millions of dollars because it was, it was the lost, you know, this was a regional manager supposed to run this multimillion dollar region. And, you know, this region didn't grow. In fact, it contracted instead of growing, you know, just, it was, it was just bad. It's a really cost. Yeah. And, and I thought, you know, I was analyzing later why I made that decision, you know,

00:18:10 and because I followed the other person's career for a while and she just crushed it in her career. And I was like, I had a chance to hire and I didn't. Dang. And, uh, you know, it was like one of the big, uh, and all the hiring I've ever done is probably one of the biggest. It's hard. I mean, it's such a big decision at all times, which is why I like it's, it, it is the decision. We kind of throw it around these days. You know, you see LinkedIn jobs, there's people hiring people, like leaving jobs. It's like, I guess it's not really even thought about. And especially, you know, we're in the background check industry. Like it's actually such a big, big piece. Like if you're going to, like I said, like if you're going to know that this is not a

00:18:52 good fit, I'd rather know now because that those types of just hiring decisions can make such crazy impacts in companies and organizations. For sure. Good or bad. Yeah. Yeah. It's scary. It's real stuff. Well, I mean, it's, it's, we're, we're coming up. Did we just do your year? Yeah. It's kind of confusing. We haven't really decided on whether or not you were. I'm good. I'm just about at one year. So at first I was like, are you talking about me? I don't think I cost millions of dollars. I hired the wrong person. We said one year. Well, I started one year ago, just about today, part-time. And I started full-time six weeks after that. We were transitioning you out of California. I have like two start dates almost, I guess. I'm coming up on my second one. Yeah.

00:19:32 So it's been great. All right, Nathan, you got a story? Yep. Let's hear it. Okay. So I got another software engineer story. So my company hires a software engineer for, for a fully remote role. The guy crushed every step of the interview. He is smart, articulate, sharp on whiteboard coding challenges, and he accepts the offer. We ship him the equipment and he sets up all of his accounts. And on Monday morning, he logs into our team stand-up meeting with his camera on. And it is not the same guy. And I don't mean that it's, he's like kind of similar. Maybe the lighting is different. I mean, it's a different human being, different face, different voice, different age. The guy that we interviewed looked maybe 28 years old.

00:20:14 The person on the screen on Monday morning was closer to 45. What? So I messaged my manager on Slack and I asked her as casual as I can, do you think, do you think this is actually him? She says, I think so. I tell her to pull up the interview recording and we both go look at it at the same time. The lighting is weird, I guess. And it is absolutely, definitively not the same person. So we pull him into a private Zoom meeting and my manager asks him directly, are you the same person that we interviewed? There's a long pause and he says, I'm working with him. The guy that we hired is his cousin. The cousin does the interviews and then he does the actual work and then they split the pay.

00:20:55 What? Which is crazy. What? Well, it sounds like the cousin has got the better part of that deal. I just did the interview. I guess the other guy just has interview anxiety. I don't know. So it turns out this is a known and growing scam. People who specialize in passing technical interviews and then they hand the job off to someone else who actually does the work for a fraction of the salary. Oh my gosh. It's a little bit like that. In the last episode. Well, the interviewer takes a cut, I guess. So we fired him. We blacklisted the cousin and we notified the recruiting platform. The whole thing was over in about six hours. And the wildest part was that he was apparently pretty competent. He just was not the person that we hired.

00:21:37 That sucks. That's a new one. I guess there's places in which that would work in which the hiring team was potentially far enough away from physically or technically far enough away from the project team where they're never going to be in. He shows up. He's handed over. So he just shows up and everyone doesn't really... There are some holes in the plan. Yeah. If there are twins, that would really... That could fly. We did have a story like that once where it was twins. Twins in a... Yeah. Great memory for the stories. Yeah. I mean, she's digging through all the social eclipse and we hear the stories.

00:22:18 Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah. And also, they were maybe within two years of each other's age. I can't imagine there's one guy's 20s, one guy's upper 40s or whatever it is. That was very strange. Some holes in the plan. I'm counting on what he... That guy's just counting on. And he probably doesn't know, but he's just counting on, I'm hoping that first meeting I go to, no one I interviewed with is there. Yeah, I guess so. You know? And you're right. It's like, okay, I'll do the one-hour interview. You take the full-time job. We'll go 50-50. It's kind of a weird plan. Maybe it's just a cut of the first... I guess... Give me five grand to get you a job. My thing is, how did they think that was going to work? I don't know. Like, interviewing with one person and then the other person doing the job, knowing that

00:23:04 they can see them? It probably could work... That's a growing scam. It probably could work if placement is separated, like, from the interview process. Yeah. If the hiring manager's not involved in the hiring. Yeah. Like, you know what I mean? I know some companies are humongous, and so maybe that's what they're counting on. Maybe... Yeah, that makes sense. You know, just kind of slipping in and just not ever being noticed, I guess. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. But still, how long do you think you're going to get away with that? Some of these stories are kind of like just different versions of the same plot. That's a new one for me. I've never heard that one yet. I've never heard that either. Well, you're right. There seems to be this kind of recurring themes of the different types of blow-ups.

00:23:51 You know, hey, this guy... Twice today, I think we heard, or the last couple of shows where it starts off like, hey, everything started good for the first two weeks. You know? It's like... It's good for now. Everyone can be on their good behavior for two weeks. I don't know. We don't have a lot of bad hire stories where it's like, and on their 11th year, they turned bad. Yeah, every which way you get, like, I always call it an OG flame-out where he's just like, you know, I've just had it and blows up. Yeah. But, you know, the early flame-outs, you know, it really is that kind of rough period at the end. I feel like most talent acquisition folks and recruiters are just holding their breath the whole time. Yeah. And, you know, you've got to believe there's like some third-party embarrassment, too,

00:24:34 when you're like, somebody you've freaking hired. Yeah. So, you... I remember a story about a girl who... Do you remember the story with the... Yes. It was a segment where she... Yes. She's like, yep, I remember. It was a segment. I'm trying to remember her name. She was a recruiter. She was so sweet. And she had such patience. And this guy didn't show up. Oh, yeah, yeah. And then he didn't show up for the next day. And then he didn't show... And then every day she's calling him. Yeah, that's right. Like, hey, are you going to be here today? And finally he was like, can I just work remote? Yeah. Like, we did not agree to that. That was Ignacia, is her name. What was her name? Ignacia, I think. Yeah. She was in San Francisco. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's her. And it was just... I don't know.

00:25:14 It's like, this is... You know, that's got to be that third party. Because you worked hard. You know, the hiring manager... Yeah. You're vouching for them. You know? And then you're like... Yeah, I think she mentioned it as a reason. I remember her as like... There's a little bit of this embarrassment that you just... You know? Yeah. Somebody you honed in on, you know, just totally let you down when you did the placement. So... Yeah. Probably... Sorry, here we go, Emma. You ready? Yes. Let's do it. Let me make sure my story's pulled up. Okay. Ready? Mm-hmm. All right. In 2024, a popular U.S. bank fired more than a dozen of its own wealth management employees

00:25:54 on the same day, all for the same reason. The reason, according to official financial industry regulatory authority filings was... And I'm going to read you the exact language because it's too good to paraphrase. Simulation of keyboard activity creating impression of active work. Pretending to work. That's the official language from a regulatory filing. Translation, they had been pretending to type. Oh, there you go. Here's how it worked. A lot of companies that monitor remote employees use software that tracks mouse movement and keystrokes. If you're idle too long, it flags you. So naturally, a cottage industry emerged around this, and you can now buy little USB devices on Amazon called Mouse Jigglers that slowly wiggle your cursor for you to make it look like

00:26:38 you're actively working. They run... They're like 10 bucks. Wow. Several of the... Sorry. They're like 10 bucks if you care. Yeah. Here's the link. Yeah. Several of the bank's wealth management employees, people responsible for other people's actual retirement savings, apparently bought these, plugged them in, and walked away from their desks for weeks, possibly months. That's crazy. Eventually, the security team noticed that the movement pattern looked off. Apparently, the wiggle of a real human hand looks different from the wiggle of a $10 USB stick. And this is evidently a known thing in IT. The bank filed everything with FINRA, which means these terminations are now part of the

00:27:21 official permanent record of the financial industry. Yeah, that's bad. Every one of those employees now have a regulatory file that says they were fired for simulating work activity. Wow. That follows you for the rest of a finance career. For 10 bucks. That's crazy. All that for 10 bucks. The wildest part is that if any of them had just occasionally moved the mouse themselves, they probably wouldn't have been caught. Right. That's the scary part. But that requires you to be there. If they walked away and then walked back to their desk and moved it around themselves, then they could have worked. Maybe they could have just gone out to the gym and ride your motorcycle. Yeah. Or they could have just done their job, I guess. That's the scary part. Can you imagine like, hey, how's my retirement doing? And it's like just being squiggled around. It's like, hey, I kind of need that money. That's the scariest part.

00:28:02 Yeah. It's not like they're, I mean. You're supposed to be looking at my account and paying attention to me. Yeah. It's not like they're just doing, I don't know, some random job. It's crazy how lazy some people are. Oh. Yeah. That's insane. Well, yeah, there's a whole jiggler industry. It is. It's the remote work. I always say there's, for remote work to be successful is going to be the right person and the right job aligned, right? There's certain remote work jobs. There's certain remote work people. Put the two together and it's really great and there's a lot of benefits to it. If either one of those isn't great, right, if you don't have the right person, and clearly these 12 people weren't the right people because, you know, given the freedom of not working in an accountable environment with peers around you and managers

00:28:47 and all that, you decided to buy a $10 jiggler and try to get out of, and just not work. Yeah. Yeah. You know? And I guess, you know, the appeal of that is too strong. You know, it's like, wow, it's, they would never know. I can't imagine. The technology, here's this, I've had that happen here. It was heartbreaking because it happened once and I brought, I brought a person in and I coached them and loved on them and said, Hey man, you know, that can't happen again. I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a character issue. You know, he was young, he was, and, and smart and had, and had a lot of upside and, and he

00:29:30 did just a jiggler, right? And the software today that's used, we use it is it's not just for detecting. That's also for safety and security. When you went in a high secure environment, when you move to certain, when you move to certain things. So it can, you know, it can track what you do. It can track if you use, if you upload something, the type of websites you go to, it can, you know, we can tag websites as productive, others as not productive. I mean, keep people off of, you know, sites they shouldn't be on and work time, that type of thing, you know? And, and so there's, and then, and then it looks at your activity like, Hey, they were

00:30:13 there. They weren't, their computer was dead for two hours, you know, you, and so you can look at it and, and, and tell, but the tech is significant and bright. And I'm sure very expensive to build. Right. Right. And so the second time this, uh, this, this, uh, this happened with the same person, I think he had built a little app or some type of little macro to, to switch tabs and move the cursor. So it looked like he was going between his here and here. I remember you telling me that story. Right. Yeah. And, and, uh, so I, you know, as I said, I was like, do you, do you, do you think really

00:30:53 that, uh, uh, you know, a macro you could build in 15 minutes is going to, you know, that the, that the system that this company has spent millions of dollars building and this company has got a valuation of X dollars, you know, as very valuable company. Do you think the whole company was going to be undone under your 15 cent, you know, macro, you know, you think it's not going to pick it up. It picked it up instantly, sent an alert, you know, that, you know, potential, um, I forget what the alert was, but you know, I don't, uh, and I hated it, you know, and I think that, I think for some people, just the appeal of not working is too strong. And, you know, the idea that they could do that, you know, but yeah, there was a big, uh,

00:31:37 when COVID hit, there was a surge of jigglers. I guess that's what started. I mean, I mean, I just, I can't imagine. So I, I work remotely almost all the time and I can't imagine ever trying to get away with anything. Like I got too much on my plate because the thing is like, it's not just the fact of like, okay, maybe I could like sneak in a day off there. Like even if, even if I ever could, it's like, I got so much to do. I have to like show, Hey, here's the stuff we've been working on, you know? So it's like, what's the plan on the other side? But I guess when, even when we were talking about people stacking up jobs where like they have two or three full-time jobs, I guess those are just easy jobs. I don't know. But it's like, if your job is worth doing, then you'll actually just do it.

00:32:19 And then you'll have stuff to show for it too, you know? Yeah. But it just like blows my mind. I guess people just think it's like a screensaver or like, Oh, if there's screens on, then, then I'm good. So they think it's that simple, but it's like the technology is probably a little bit smarter than that of like your computer's on or is off. Yeah. It's the tech today is, and it just, it's getting better now. It's probably got AI layered all in it. And, you know, so it just absolutely connect whether you, whether you're working or not working. And so, and I'm glad they exist. And, you know, we, we let our team know, and this is what you, this is what happens. And this is, you know, this is on there. Normal accountability. You know, initially it was, I felt I had a, I even, I had a problem.

00:33:00 I was a very big brother, but I, that I realized that even here's, here's what happened. We, that there have been multiple people in my organization that are really good people that just over time got pulled, you know, by distractions and flexibility. And next thing you know, and they're, you know, the amount of time they spent working went from crushing it to just nearly part time. And it, it was like a slow boil. It's like, you know, and it wasn't malicious. It was just the loss of discipline and of having to get up, walk through the front doors of a place, have your peers around you, sit at, sit at your desk, you know, you know, if you're

00:33:43 not there, people notice, um, physically. Um, and so without all of those environmental kind of guardrails, you know, it allows some people to slip and, you know, it's, and I don't necessarily think it was malicious. Yeah. And so there were times when we had to, you know, talk to people and say, Hey, look what's happened, you know, and look, this happened over time and show them and they're like, yeah. And they get, they're like, I don't know what I was thinking. You know, I went shopping in the middle of the day, you know, I went, I went and got my car cleaned and did this ran, ran that air.

00:34:23 And they see, you know, I was gone five hours and I did that two days this week, three days. Yeah. Yeah. You know, they don't mean it and it just happens, you know, it slowly happens. And, and, um, so, you know, sometimes you got to coach them back to them. And then, and then some people put more work into not working than, than if they would. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's the absolute, you know, let me just, uh, just have four full-time jobs and just like lie about it being on all of them and like all this kind of stuff. I don't know how many times we've like told a story about somebody trying to get around working and where I'm like, that sounds like a lot of work. It's like a lot of work to do your job. To not work. Yeah. Right. That sounds like a lot of work. Yeah. I don't get it. Well, Hey, that's it for us today.

00:35:04 Thanks for listening to the bad hire. Uh, please subscribe, rate, review, share. We'd love for you to follow us on the show, build our, build up our followers. Um, and, and don't forget your story could win $10,000. So at the end of the year, we are going to give away $10,000 and, um, and, uh, I'm looking forward to doing that. So submit the story, go to the bad hire.com to submit it. All right. And we certainly appreciate it being here. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Thanks everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye.