He Tried to Hide Alcohol in a Coffee Cup [The Bad Hire Ep. 28]

00:00:00 My bookkeeper had been cutting himself two checks every single week. He shows up drunk. Oh, gosh. Right. Not a little off. Drunk. Yeah. Right. She says, please hire my son so he can help me pay for my new teeth. He had it in a cup and was just trying to make it. Like a tumbler? Yeah, like, you know. That's what the closeted alcoholics do. Just some coffee. Yeah. 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 dad 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

00:00:45 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, the show where the best stories about the... Worst hires. Worst hires come together. And I'm joined by Morgan. Hey, guys. Yeah. And Emma. Hi. Welcome back. Awesome to have you. You guys always do such a great job. So... We're the OGs. Yep. We're the OGs. This is the OG cast right here. You are OGs.

00:01:26 Yep. Oh, my gosh. Every episode does not perform as well unless us two are on it. I'm just going to say. It's a common denominator. I'm just kidding. So, yeah, I think that might be right. It doesn't matter if I'm on there or not. It just... Yeah. It really matters who's on the couch. We're the talent. Who's on the couch. Just kidding. Oh, man. Yeah. You know the drill. Every week, we dive into the wildest, weirdest, and most jaw-dropping hiring fails from offices, job sites, organizations all over the country. And don't forget, we're running that $10,000 contest. So, submit your story. You know, who knows? Everyone who hires people has a story.

00:02:09 So, you can send it in. Shoot your shot. Chance to win $10,000. All right. So, I don't know. It's the easiest way to win $10,000 I've ever heard of. So, might as well have tried. Yeah, right. Take 10 minutes to jot your story down. Can you imagine? You wrote 10 minutes. You put your story down, and the next thing you know... Gosh, I should probably jot down a story or two. You get a bonus, $10,000. Yeah. Yeah. Me and Emma would love to enter if we could, but we can't. So... Yeah. It's the 27th show. It is. It's crazy. Yeah. We've learned a lot. Yeah. We have. Just thinking about how we started. Changed studios.

00:02:50 Changed studios. Changed... Down to the studios at Charlotte. Changed filming rooms in our own office. Created our own studio. It's been kind of crazy. Yeah. I think our one-year anniversary is this July or August. Yeah. Yeah. I think. Yep. Craziness. Yeah. That's awesome. All right. How about this? I'll start it off. Okay. Uh... So, I'm an HR director at an inpatient psychiatric and substance abuse treatment center. Okay. Okay. Normal Monday. Okay. Running new hiring orientation. New contractor coming in. Mm-hmm. He shows up drunk. Oh, gosh.

00:03:30 Right. Not a little. Not a little off. Drunk. Yeah. Right. At an addiction treatment facility. We get a lot of stories like these. Yeah. Or, like, people show up to a job. They're like, yeah, I don't like talking on the phone. It's like they're my angel center. This dude shows up to a treatment center. Yeah. As a contractor to do some work. He shows up drunk. Wow. Like, maybe, you know, these treatment center people, they would never notice a young person. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, we pull him aside and give him a reasonable suspicion alcohol test. Yeah. Also. As he should. He blows high. Uh-huh. High enough that she's genuinely concerned.

00:04:12 Ooh. So, we wait the required 30 minutes. How did he even get there? Sorry. I interrupted. Do you drink a lot? How did he get there? He drank a lot. Oh, like, how did he drive there? Yeah. Oh. Good question. He drove. His mother dropped him off. Or he's like, I got drunk in the parking lot. Yeah. Yeah. Pre-gaming work, if you will. That could totally be true. So, we wait the required 30 minutes and we retest him. He blows higher. So, to drink more. 30-minute window, he had been drinking at his orientation while being supervised while we were standing right there. Oh, my gosh. Why are you in there? Well, also, it takes longer to get into your system.

00:04:54 So, he could have, maybe he did drink in the parking lot and then it was just. Well, she's saying he was drinking at his orientation. Okay. Oh, jeez. I guess he was, he had it in a cup and was just trying to make it. Like a, like a tumbler? Yeah. Like, hey, you know. That's what the closeted alcoholics do. Just some coffee. Yeah. Right. We had him gone before lunch. Yeah. The job posting never said, must be sober. But I really thought that was implied. You would think. You would think. Gosh. You would think people would have the common sense to not also just show up to work drunk in general, but. I wonder how many people in the HR space have had somebody show up drunk to an interview.

00:05:39 I mean. I bet it is a crazy. I mean, we've told a lot of stories like that. Drunk or impaired. We'll just say drunk or impaired. I guarantee there's been a time when they sat down and you're like, ooh. Yeah. The whiff of that weave. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Are you high right now? Yeah. Emma, were you high on your first? Oh, that's a weird question. Your first interview? I have a question to ask. No? No. I was just checking. Okay. Seemed like the thing to do. 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.

00:06:20 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. Protect your reputation. Protect your sanity. Go to B-Checks.io. That's B-C-H-E-X dot I-O. Well, before we move on to my telling stories, we should watch our video that we have from sent in by Tom. Oh, Tom. Yeah. Yeah. All right. What you got? Marcus, let it roll.

00:07:01 Let's say we have a negative Nelly's and we are saying, let's try to fix them. Let's turn them around. Because obviously we'd like to see them. We hired them. There's a little bit of confirmation bias. We want to believe that this person's right because we hired them. So I want to introduce you to a guy named Han. Han is in your sales department. Han always hits his metrics. He adds more clients. High profit margin. Top salesperson. So far, I'm kind of like, sign me up for more Hans. I'm in. I'm liking the idea of Han. But then you also find out that Han spreads gossip. Han steals clients from your other salespeople. Han has a negative attitude. Han won't work with anyone else. So we've isolated him to a virtual office and he doesn't come to any meetings.

00:07:44 What are we going to do with that Han? Because that's one type of a negative Nelly. The super high performer. But when it comes to contribution, they're very negative. Their competency is really high, but their contribution is super low. But then you have the reverse. You have the person who loves the company, can recite every core value, will high five you on the way in. At every company offsite retreat, they're the first one there. But they're always late on their work. They submit work that needs to be redone by someone else. There's spelling errors in the newsletter. So their contribution is really high, but their competency is really low. So we meet the second type of negative Nelly. And then the third type is contributions low, competencies low, the duds and deadbeats.

00:08:30 Yeah. Just like goodbye. That's super spot on. I spent it. That was so spot on. So spot on. I love the way he told that. Yeah. Yeah. He's really good. Yeah. He's a great storyteller. I was going to have him come actually live on the show. He's great. That was really good. Yeah. He had a lot of energy. I love it. He's right though. Yeah, he is. There's definitely those two types of people. Oh, I always say that that first time he talked about the high performer, you know, but culturally crushing people. I've always said that's like the real test of your commitment to culture. Mm-hmm. And that even though he's high.

00:09:10 Yeah. Performing. Not actually high, but. Not actually high. Even though he's high performing. Since we just talked about a story. You know, he's actually depressing performance. Yeah. You know, in his proximity. Mm-hmm. And, you know, you heard him say, we tried to move him to a virtual office. That's crazy. To get him away from people. It's like, you're in timeout, but please keep selling. Like, please. Please. But that's the kind of, yeah, it's the kind of bad hire that really test, you know, is a real gut check when you're like, hey, I gotta let you go. I know you're my top performer. Yeah. But you're really bad for everybody else. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. So, I don't know. I, I, I, that is a, a real test.

00:09:51 That was, that was good. I love, I love that. Thank you, Tom. Yeah. Thank you, Tom. Great. All right. All right. All right. Morgan, what's here? So, my story today is about a candidate that came in for a mid-level role. They sit down, shake hands, seem totally fine. Then his mother walks in. A newer hiring manager caught off guard lets her stay. Mom takes a seat in the corner. The interview goes on. She's quiet the whole time. Professional, even. The interview wraps up. Everyone's actually pretty impressed. Then the mom speaks. She looks at the hiring team and says, I need you to really hear this. She says, please hire my son so he can help me pay for my new teeth. Not, he's worked really hard.

00:10:31 Not, I'm just here for moral support. It's straight to the dental work. And the hiring manager said it was the clearest sign she'd ever received that a candidate might not be ready to manage his own professional life. So, he didn't get the job and the teeth situation remains unresolved. I can't keep a straight face the whole time you were telling this. I just, I remember putting the story on. I was like, you better give me some new teeth. So, I'm going to make sure you go to your interview and I'm going to make sure you do a good job because I need new teeth. But, oh my gosh. My dad would find this one really funny. He's a dentist. I'm sure that would give him a good laugh. But we have another story to react to by Tom.

00:11:14 This is his second story. Oh, cool. And so, let's go ahead and cue that up as well. Tom is a rock star. Yeah, I'm like, he's giving us a whole show today. Thank you, Tom. There was a general vibe of negativity in the organization. And so, they brought me in and they said, hey, can you just sit in for the day on several meetings and just take notes and then we'll reconnect afterwards. So, I did. And I sat there and I took all the notes. I listed. I took some quotes down. And I saw really quickly what the issue was, like almost within the first two meetings. So, at the end of the day, I'm sitting with the executive team. And they're like, so what did you see, Tom? Like, what did you hear? And I started reading some of the quotes. Am I the only one who thinks around here? This is ridiculous. Do we hire the wrong people?

00:11:55 Why can we not get this done on time? And everyone in the room starts looking at one person because those quotes were all from the exact same person. Now, here's the thing. In the world of dance floor theory, we give them levels of engagement. So, now that we're on the dance floor, we give them levels from neutral one, two, three, four, and five. Executives many times think they're automatically a five. They're a level five leader because I have the seed suite title. But the reality is some of your worst negative Nellies are going to be your executives. And why that matters is because if an intern walks into a room or a meeting and is a negative Nelly, it will have a little bit of an impact. But if you as the CEO walk in and you're saying these quotes, you better believe it's going to influence everyone else in that room.

00:12:42 And so, that's why I say C-suite people, you may be complaining about your culture. But I say you need to check in with yourself first because you may be the negative Nelly on your team. Oh, Ken, do we really want to react to that? I'm just kidding. What are you suggesting? I'm joking because you're an executive. Oh, my gosh. I mean, I do like – You believe you went there. No, I'm just joking. I do agree, though. I feel like you do see some people who like in these companies that are the executives and they're like negative. And then they're like, why is our culture so crappy? And then it's like, you know, it starts from the top. Yeah. So, not here at BeachX, obviously, but – I don't know. I worked for a guy for a long time. Worked for a couple guys for a long time that had –

00:13:24 The only difference is they never asked, why is our culture so negative? Yeah. They didn't even know. They didn't care. Yeah. Culture was not even something that – Came through their mind. Yeah. So, you know, and sometimes I think it's, you know, people just don't have the skills. Yeah. You know, the idea that there's some type of dictator gets in their head, you know, at the executive level. And then, you know, they don't even care. Culture is not even something they think about. Yeah. You know, it's just get the job done, obey the rules, you know, kind of thing. That's the culture. So, yeah. Yeah. But he – I loved what he said in there.

00:14:05 And that was, you know, in turn that's negative has little influence on others. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and the higher the person is in the organization. The higher the impact. Yeah. The higher the impact they had. No, I agree with that. So spot on. Tom is awesome. Yes. We love Tom. Yeah. Thank you, Tom. I'm going to hire Tom. Yeah, for real. Tom, are you looking? I'm just kidding. He's probably like CEO of something. I need to go look at his profile after this, but thank you, Tom. It was really good. Yeah. Now, what's up? My turn. Okay. Okay. I just have one story. But here we go. Okay. So I ran a small company and I needed a bookkeeper. I found someone who seemed solid, good with numbers, easy to work with.

00:14:49 I trusted him pretty quickly, honestly. Every week payroll ran, everyone got their check, and things just kept moving along like normal for a year. Hmm. It wasn't until someone flagged a small discrepancy during an audit that anything came up. Turns out my bookkeeper had been cutting himself two checks every single week. One legitimate paycheck and one that was very much not legitimate. For 12 months, nobody caught it because he was the bookkeeper. Yeah. I guess he's the one who would catch that. Don't ever know. He reconciled the accounts. He knew exactly where to hide it and I just had no reason to look. I brought in a forensic accountant who confirmed it. He had been paying himself double for an entire year.

00:15:31 Yikes. But when we confronted him about it, he seemed surprised, not that he'd been caught, but that it had taken this long for them to catch him. That's pretty funny. He's like, you idiots. Like, he finally caught on. A background check with employment. Just wondered how long you're letting me get away with this. The ability is dying to get caught. And then it says, a background check with employment verification might have revealed that his previous employer had let him go under very similar circumstances. Oh, Lord. And spoiler alert, they did. Great. Yep. Run those employment verifications, guys. Let this be your lesson. That's hilarious. Yeah.

00:16:11 Not hilarious, hilarious. Yeah. I don't wish anybody to steal, to get stolen from. Yeah. But that happens so often. Yeah. And I have heard so many stories. Yeah. About people hiring bookkeepers and really not doing a super thorough job. Yeah. You know, like maybe they do some background checks. Yeah. But a lot of these things where people get caught, you know, they don't get turned over to the police. Yeah. There's not a lot of charges. They end up getting booted and fired. I still feel like you should have somebody who regularly audits your bookkeeper just to like be safe. Oh, yeah.

00:16:51 For sure. I don't know. Yeah. Because. It's like giving somebody that amount of trust is a little crazy in my opinion. But yeah, it's just me. Because the funny part about that story was that the guy was surprised. He wasn't surprised that he got caught. He was surprised that it took that long to catch him. He's like, hmm, let's see how long I can get away with this for. Oh, my goodness. Another bad hire. Yeah. Yeah. That's all. Another day. The bad hires will continue. Is that it? Yep. All right. Well, that's it for us today then. Yay. Thanks for listening to The Bad Hire. And listen, please subscribe, rate, review, like, share, whatever you do to, whatever you do on whatever app you're on to support us and share our clips or our show with anybody.

00:17:38 I think we release every Wednesday now. We do. And so that's kind of cool. So it's kind of we're getting into a rhythm of knowing exactly when we're going to release shows. So but, you know, like and review and share. We'd love that. Sure. And then also remember, submit submit your bad hire stories. Just it's so easy. You can do it. You can do it anonymously. And you can write, you know, a terrible bad hire story, just like bone crushing bad hire where you can, you know, you can write a story of redemption. Somebody, you know, who maybe did something wrong, but ended up getting it turned around or listen. Listen, you can even write a story about someone being awesome. Yeah. All right. We'll just do it.

00:18:19 We'll just do an anti bad hire story. Positive story. And what you learned from it. So what we really love to tell is hiring stories. Yeah. And, you know, we laugh about them only because some of them are crazy ridiculous and it's true. And it's what it's what HR pros face like on a regular basis. Like we hear these stories and then, you know, people have come up to me after the show, after hearing the show one time or two and saying, oh my gosh, that was so true. I have had that exact thing happen to me. Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, this is a, this, the hiring world is a crazy world and recruiters get to experience a lot of, a lot of crazy stuff.

00:19:03 So let's submit your story, go to the bad hire.com. You could get an email from us to, to do a segment like Tom did. Yeah. Tom did a great job. I bet you would too. So, yeah. So get it done. All right. So if you want to be a guest, you can also email us at producers at the bad hire.com. All right. We, uh, thanks for listening. And, uh, we'll see you next time. Bye guys.