She Faked a Carjacking to Get Out of Work [The Bad Hire Ep. 47]

00:00:00 He shot himself with a nail gun on purpose. The second customer, the one who got the pre-sipped drink, was actually a health inspector. Go figure. Yeah. He had initialed every page of the document that had explained exactly why it was wrong. Wow. This is The Bad Hire, the show with the best stories about the worst employees. We fired him, of course. People are crazy. It's like an HR nightmare. Right? One bad hire stole all of it. Crazy stuff. She got what she deserved. Oh. I'm your host, Ken Monroe. And every week, we dive into real-life stories from the wild world of work and what can happen when the wrong person gets the job.

00:00:40 These stories aren't just crazy. They're cautionary tales about lessons learned the hard way. Let's get started. Hey, everyone, and welcome to The Bad Hire podcast, the show with the best stories about the wild world of work. I'm joined today by Morgan. Hi, guys. And Nathan. Hey, everybody. How's it going? You guys are doing well. Yeah. Another show. Show 47. That's crazy. It is nuts. We're coming up on a year of the podcast. Yeah. That's great. I'm looking forward to giving away the $10,000. It's going to be here soon, actually. We've got a few more shows before we do that. Yeah. So send in your stories now. Yeah. Because then otherwise, I don't know what our – I don't know if it's $20,000 for season

00:01:23 two or what we have planned. I haven't talked with anybody about that. Yeah. But yeah, send in your stories now because this contest will actually – it is real. We're going to give it away here soon. So get your stories in there. I think I want to give away more stuff rather than one big thing. Yeah. A car. Right? No, more stuff. Oh, okay. More stuff. Like, you know, for like every submission, somebody gets something or something. Yeah, that's right. Something like that. Because we've had like one giveaway we've been hyping up for a year now. For a year. Yeah. We'll have to do a bunch of like mini giveaways. How are we going to give it away? We've got to figure that out, right? Like, are we going to go out? Are we going to put a suitcase full of cash and show up like Mr. Beast? What do we – That would be fun. If we can find the budget. What we need to do is just like for all the people,

00:02:05 because we appreciate all the people who have been sending in stories or like we've got a couple on today, like the guest segments where people are, you know, on camera telling their stories. And we don't have anything set up right now for like any kind of like thank you package or influencer kind of package. But that's what we need to set up. We're like sending a story or show up, be a guest on our show. Yeah. Get a little care package from us just because we just need to have like a whole system for that. Yeah, we did. We've appreciated everybody being involved with the podcast. All right. Well, you guys know the drill. You guys know the drill. We, you know, every week we dive into the wildest, the weirdest, some of the most shocking hiring stories from organizations all over the country. We have guests who come in on guest segments.

00:02:46 We read stories that are submitted. We find stories. We bring them and we tell them. And really the purpose is really just to show the kind of wild world of HR and what it's like hiring people and managing people and how difficult it can be. Yeah. And challenging it can be. We absolutely know it can be rewarding. But a lot of times, sometimes to make a tough job, a tough job, more palatable. It's fun just to kind of oftentimes laugh at the absurdity some of us have to deal with every day at work. Yeah. And so that's why we're here. So have fun. Enjoy the stories. And hopefully, you know, they resonate with you and you feel like, oh my God, I know exactly something like that's happened. Yeah. And if you do have a great story, submit it.

00:03:28 Go to thebadhire.com and send it over to us. We'd love to have it. Mm-hmm. For sure. So why don't I start off? Cool. He shot himself with a nail gun on purpose. Oh, gosh. So check this out. It's a good story title. Yeah. So I run a production floor. This person writes, I run a production floor, heavy equipment, pneumatic nail guns everywhere. And these are the kind of guns that like two inches, you know, a two inch fastener would just go straight through a four by four, right? Yeah. So big time guns. One afternoon, a single wasp. This is not good. Sounds fun. A single wasp gets into the building. And at some point, it lands on one of my workers' hands. Oh, gosh.

00:04:08 Oh, gosh. You can see where it's going. Yeah. Most people swat it. Maybe they flinch. Maybe they like, oh, you know, curse or something. You know, maybe they walk away or something. But what they do not do is reach over and pick up a pneumatic nail gun. Nail it. And directly point it at their hand and pull the trigger. Oh, I would totally do that. What are they thinking? Literally, boom. Some people are so scared, they're like not even thinking. Like, I would do that. I get that. Everyone comes running. I don't know about that. He starts screaming immediately and everybody comes running. And, you know, we're all standing around trying to piece together, you know, what just happened. And he looks up at us holding the nail guns. He says, there was a wasp. Did he get him at least?

00:04:50 So we got him over to urgent care. And, you know, the guy's hand heals up. So what didn't heal, they say, was the part where they couldn't stop thinking about what that moment actually kind of revealed. And it was just like pure panic. Yeah. You know, you know, that it was somewhere in his head that nail gun and open hand ended up in the same, you know, kind of sentence. Yeah. What in the world would make me think to shoot a nail gun in my hand? Yeah. I could see doing that all day if it's not at my body. Right? Like if it's not a piece of wood. Yeah. You know, like, oh, yeah, I'm going to kill this wasp with like on a piece of wood. When it's on your own hand, what are you doing? Well, they said they let him go the following week for reasons that were technically unrelated

00:05:34 to the wasp. Oh, man. But I find that hard to believe. He got shot in the hand and fired. That's a tough week. When you pick up a pneumatic gun and shoot yourself with it. I mean, yeah. The scared hire, not the bad hire. Yeah. Yeah. He shot himself in the foot and the hand. That's sad. Yeah. That stinks. I guess they just didn't think he was smart enough to be. Fit to be around big guns like that. I don't know. Dang. That was sad. Yeah. That is sad. All right. So story two. Okay. You ready? All right. So this one's happier. Hey, this person was referred by the client and they left out that they were convicted felon. So they were referred by the client and left out the convicted felon part.

00:06:16 All right. So check out Jason Bivens. Oh, I interviewed Jason. Oh, we got a guest segment. Okay. One day we got a request from the client to end the assignment of two employees that were assigned together. And by all accounts, really good workers. And so we're kind of digging a little bit, you know, what's the reason why? And they said the manager, journeyman who's on site taking care of these guys, he overheard them both talking. Somehow both individuals had just recently been released from prison and both were in prison for murder. That's the big one. By all accounts, they were great workers.

00:06:56 They were actually referred to us by the client, right? So that happens a lot where we'll recruit for a client, but then a lot of times they'll say, our workers have some guys we want to send you and we'll just, we'll payroll them. We'll onboard them. But this is a wild one. You hear the M word murder. You're like, this is mind blowing stuff. And we're like, sorry, guys, we're going to have to reassign you to something else. So I can't have you working inside people's homes. I had not seen something like that before. I've seen many things in the past, but that was a new one for us. That's crazy. You talked to him? Yes, I did. I interviewed Jason. I felt horrible because I had really bad audio that day and we just had a lot of issues, but we still made it work and we still had a great guest segment and he still had amazing

00:07:40 stories. That one really shocked me. When I was on the call with him, I was like, murdered both of them. I was like, what is the likelihood do you think of having two people on the same job site who have murdered someone? Right. That has to be a rare statistic somewhere. Well, I didn't catch, so he said that those jobs are in somebody's homes. Yes. So what were the- I didn't catch that until the very end. Yes. Oh. Oh. Extra bad. Contracting, I guess. Oh, okay. And homework and yeah. So probably not the right to look around this room. Yeah, that's the kind of detail that gets out to the client. That gets out to a client. It's got you in their home that completely freaks them out. Yeah. Can you imagine you're in your home, you're listening, and you hear the two guys that were talking about getting out of prison for murder and you just be like, oh my God.

00:08:23 Yeah. Because then it doesn't matter if it's a plumber or it's an in-home hospital person or if it's construction work, it doesn't matter. They're in your house and it's like, oh, who's this guy? Oh, what's on his background check? Oh, he was a convicted murderer. Yeah. Let's maybe reassign them outside of the house like he's saying. Yeah. Or maybe just let them go. I don't really know how that goes. I think they ended up letting them go if I remember correctly, but- You said reassign, I guess. Yeah. I think there's another clip that we'll have with him again, I think, where it explains what ended up happening to the two of them. Okay. Yeah. It was very interesting. Good story, man. And Jason, he's got a company called Great Hire Staffing. He said he had to be on the bad hire because he was like, it's literally the opposite of

00:09:04 mine. This company is the great hire. That's hilarious. He said, when I saw your email, I had to respond because he said it felt like it was wrong if I did it. That's a good collab. Yeah. I like Jason. That's funny. But he's a provider of contract labor and direct hire recruitment, partners with HR and leadership teams to help with the heavy lifting of recruiting and onboarding. So I bet it's cool. I love it. So I appreciate that. That was a great story. 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.

00:09:49 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.io. All right. So here's what's next. Okay. And this one came in and this one, this one's kind of crazy. And we have these stories all the time where people will make up the craziest stuff to get out of work. Oh, yeah. And then the unraveling story when they get busted is always funny.

00:10:30 Yeah. And it's like, you know, and this is just, this is one of those stories. She faked a carjacking and then she answered her own phone. Okay. It's a good title. So this is, this person writes, this is her husband's story. It was him. But she's, she's, she's going to tell it here. Right. So, right. So she says, he manages a regular office. It's a nine to five, nothing exciting. One Monday morning, the office phone rings and it's one of his employees and she's frantic. Right. She tells him she just got carjacked. Holy cow. And on her way to work and she won't be able to come in all week.

00:11:12 You know, I guess it was traumatizing. Right. So, you know, that's a pretty big claim. You know, he's concerned, of course, and tells her, Hey, listen, take care of yourself. So sorry this happened. You know, file a police report. You know, don't worry about work at all. Just, you know, just, you know, take care of yourself and then hang up. And then something bothers him that, you know, the number that called in wasn't her phone number. Right. And it was one she didn't recognize and he didn't recognize from her. So, you know, just to check on her, he thought, I'm going to make sure she's okay. Like that wasn't her telephone number. Why was it? It just felt awful. A little weird. So, so he, he, you know, he grabs his cell phone and dials and called the cell number on file for her.

00:11:57 So it calls the number, her phone number. Yeah. Right. Rather than the one, the other one. And she picks up and she says, she says, Hey, I'm driving. Who's this? What? You mean the car that you just got carjacked? Right. So now remember 30 seconds earlier. At least answer and be like, Hey, and give a pause. Like, who is this? So remember, you know, 30 seconds earlier, she just told her boss like she'd just been carjacked and it couldn't work all week long. So what is she literally just like kind of going to TJ Maxx and just like come up with an excuse just to not go to work? Like one of the week off. Wow. That's what, what are the lengths you'd go to just to have some time off for work?

00:12:38 I don't know. I don't know. So the explanation is she didn't feel like coming in. So she borrowed someone else's phone to make the call. I don't understand why. And then picked up her own phone a minute later, like nothing had happened. Wow. Also, did she not know it was her boss calling her? Like, did she not have? I think he did. He was never saying. But he let her go shortly after. It's like, if I see Kim Monroe calling me after I make up something like that, I'd be like, I'm not answering that. I'm like. Right. Yeah. You'd have to at least put the game face back on. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's the desperate. What? That's a desperate move of somebody who's out of PTO. Yeah. Yes. All right. Disaccrue. Disaccrue it. Seriously. What people will do. That's insane. What people will do for some PTO.

00:13:21 Yeah. That's crazy. All right. I think she didn't jack her own car, right? That's just crazy. All right, Nathan. Okay. Let's see. So my first story is actually a guest segment with Alexandra. So Alexandra, I see I have like a short bio for her. She's actually the founder of Envision HR, a strategic HR executive with 25 plus years of experience. So thanks so much for Alexandra for hopping on to our guest segment. So this is the real reason that some companies cannot keep employees. So that's the name of the story. Definitely. And I think a lot of like the bad stories that we hear on hiring is typically the organizations where the leaders say, we got this. We'll take it.

00:14:01 HR, you know, that's cute. You could come in at the end and onboard the person or schedule the interviews. Not really acting as a partner. If we were a partner along the way, we'd guide them in the proper questions to ask, the proper evaluation. All of that stuff, it plays a very big role. I really find if a company is well equipped with a great interview process and overall application and onboarding process, it just tends to work out much better for retention. Yeah. So I jumped into a call with her and, you know, we're talking about bad hires and bad hire stories. And it's kind of the whole deal when people jump on these guest segments. In her point of view, she had a couple actual bad hire stories as well. But obviously with her background in strategic HR is just the whole inside of like, it's sometimes not just about the people themselves as bad hires.

00:14:47 It's like sometimes companies have really bad disorganized processes. So she's obviously looking at it from that perspective too and how that leads to a lot of people being ill-equipped in the wrong spot, which leads to like some of those flame outs and stuff like that. And so she had just some interesting insight from, you know, somebody who's, I guess, a experienced person with a bunch of, you know, time in HR. So I thought she had an interesting perspective on that. Yeah. I think what she's saying is like when you disconnect HR from the process and, you know, they could bring, you know, process tools, experience to how to select great people. And, you know, you let someone take over who's maybe, you know, that's not what they do for a living.

00:15:29 Mm hmm. Yeah. You know, and I think that's true. I think there's a lot of managers out there who, who, who hire by their gut. Right. And go interview people and just like, and I think what you find is like a bunch of people who go look at a bunch of resumes. Right. And then try to select somebody out of maybe they've got some experience or whatever. And, yeah. And, and then they do a set of interviews and they end up, they end up hiring the person who best connected with them. Yeah. I also think it's important though, for people like the manager to be involved in the conversation because they know the right interview questions to ask. Like, for example, if Nathan was, you know, interviewing me for a marketing position, the HR director might not know those questions to ask.

00:16:12 Yeah. That are really role specific for marketing that you would know, like. Yeah. Hey, how do you make this workflow? And then the HR person might be like, oh, I just like them because they're really nice. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, so it's like you need the cultural part of it, which is HR. And then you need, you know, your technical people too involved. So I like how she said, like both of them guide the process together. It is funny because, yeah, like years ago, you know, I would interview for different marketing jobs. Yeah. And I would, and one of the first calls, typically in the process, you're not talking to the person in the department you're interviewing for. Yeah. You're talking to like a general HR person. Yeah. So I started spewing all this like impressive marketing stuff. Yeah. And they're like, that sounds good. I don't know anything you're talking about, but it sounds impressive. And then they're like, okay, well, just forward that to the actual marketing person who like, you know, I'd be actually talking to you.

00:16:55 It's like when I had that partnership call the other day with ARPA and she, I was like, yeah, do you need an HTML email? And she's like, honey, you lost me at the age. And it's like just, you know, sometimes when you're having a conversation with maybe not the right person. It was just because there's just different, you know, different departments. Yeah. And who work in different fields and stuff like that. And so like it just said, it's, it's good to have a setup where you're talking to the right person. But sometimes the HR generalist type of person is the one who redirects who talks to who and things like that and knows what they're doing. So anyway, so that's Alexandra. I think we got another segment with her later, but we'll get to that when we get to that. That might be next episode. So, okay. I'm on to story number two. So this is the Sonic employee who failed an inspection with one cup. So shout out to Sonic Drive-In.

00:17:38 So I used to, this is the story, I used to manage a Sonic Drive-In for a few years and you learn pretty quickly to expect a certain amount of chaos on any given shift. But I did not expect this. So one of my employees took a drink order out to a customer. The lady took a sip out of the drink and said, hey, this is the wrong drink. This happens all the time. So she hands it back to the window to the employee. He takes the cup back, turns around and hands that same drink, the one that the lady just sipped out of directly to the next customer in line. And that's who it was actually meant for. And so then I asked the guy, did you just hand out a drink that somebody already drank from? And he said, well, it was the right drink for that one person.

00:18:20 And I'm like, yeah, except it just was on another human being's mouth. And so the second customer, the one who got the pre-sipped drink was actually a health inspector. Go figure. Yeah. No way. So we found this out. There to inspect the sonic? Yeah. There to, I guess so. I don't know. But like we found this out because she identified herself right there at the window mid-sip and asked very calmly exactly how that drink had ended up in her hand. And he didn't have a good answer and neither did I. So we failed that inspection in ways I'm not entirely clear on. And he didn't work another shift that day. So one drink. Just that day? No, no. After that day. Sorry, he did not work. After that day. Okay. I was going to say just that day? I was like maybe he should not work ever. He was done for the day.

00:19:02 He came back the next day. Okay. I got you. Yeah. He was done after that day. So one drink made it to two different mouths. I love how this is worded. Before I reached the one person in the entire parking lot who is legally required to write it down. So it's like what are the odds that like literally gets shipped, gets handed to the next guy, the next guy is a health inspector. I don't like that at all. Shut down that sonic. I don't like that at all. Yeah. I'm like already kind of grossed out. Even DoorDash, like if you get some food, I'm like, I don't know what's been touched. Like I'm like, that really grosses me out. That makes me not want to go through the drive-thru. You want to have your eyes on it from the kitchen and see like it's on your plate. Yeah. It's like the open kitchen concept. I like that. Like I like to know where my food's coming from.

00:19:42 Yeah. Straight from the grill right here. Yeah. Yeah. If you work at any kind of food, if somebody drinks out of a drink and hands it back, just dump it out and don't hand it off to the next inspector to the next customer to save 30 cents on a drink. I want to know what they ordered. Like maybe a diet soda. I don't know. One of those, one of those line maids. Yeah. Maybe. I'm not sure. Absolutely a training failure. It's the song. Yeah. It's not good. So, okay. Story number three for me. So he was fired for yelling an accusation that nobody made. So here's a story. I ran the IT department at a company for a few years. And one afternoon, I was setting up a new cubicle with one of my guys and he was carrying the monitor across the room and he dropped it.

00:20:25 It's completely destroyed with a shattered screen. Okay. So now accidents happened. I've dropped things. Everybody's dropped things. I was fully prepared to shrug it off in order of replacement. I didn't even have time to open my mouth when out of nowhere, he launches the guy who dropped it into a full volume rant. But I'm not paying for this. That's not my fault. It's your fault. And he starts directing all the blame on me with a bunch of cursing. He starts cursing him out and accusing him of something, that kind of thing. And I've not even said a single word yet. I just stood there and let him finish the whole performance. When he was done, I very calmly said that legally we could not make you pay for it because it was an honest mistake.

00:21:06 So there's a pause. Then I said, but since you just cussed me out, I told him you're fired. So he fired him right there on the spot. So he hadn't done anything wrong by dropping the monitor. Accidents, again, they happen and they're accidents. But when he did scream at the manager over one small complaint, that was enough for me to let him go pretty much. And so the monitor was replaced within the hour, but it took a little bit longer to replace that guy who was let go after the first day. So anyways, if accidents happen to you, that just kind of reveals your character, how you handle when you drop stuff and stuff does not go your way. So just keep your cool in those situations and everything would have been fine. You at least mess up a couple of times when you work for somebody.

00:21:48 I mean, everybody makes mistakes, but reacting like that is very telling on their behalf. Yeah. Imagine Nick is our IT guy who gets everybody their computer match. It's like a new hire here. First day, hands your computer, drops on the ground and starts cursing out Nick. It's like, we'll get you a new computer, but you kind of showed us who you are. So it's not just about this stuff. It's about who you are as a person. For sure. It's a crazy story. Yeah, that's wild. So don't handle stressful events like that if that happens to you. So anyways, that's it for me. You got to cuss to yourself in your own cubicle, guys. Yeah, not good advice. I'm just kidding. Don't cuss at your computer. Morgan, what's up? You've got a guest segment coming up, I think. Yeah. I interviewed Judith as well.

00:22:30 This is our second clip from Judith. We've already seen Judith before. A little bit about her before we watch her clip is Judith is a founder and CEO of HR Media & Co. And that is a minority woman owned HR consulting and recruitment firm specializing in executive and senior level recruiting for mission driven and public impact organizations. I love Judith. I think she's awesome. I hope we could actually have her physically on the show one day. Oh, really? She's also been like such a big advocate for the show. She's like excited to share it on her socials. And so I really enjoyed Judith. But here she is. It also made me realize why I never treat reference checks as like formality because you never know what that person is going to say. The other thing, too, is also has taught me that you can't necessarily know who's going to speak well on your behalf.

00:23:15 When you're applying for a job, you have to be selective and you really need to, as a candidate, hope and pray that this person will actually speak well of you. It was a lesson that let me know you can never assume how the end of a hiring process is going to go right. You can never assume that just because you had an amazing interview with the candidate that they showed up well, they were the perfect candidate, going to have amazing background checks. So that for me was literally like pivotal. That like changed the trajectory of my career back then. And that's a story I just never forgot. What she's referencing is actually somebody she interviewed and they had two perfect reference checks and then they got to the third one.

00:23:59 And it was a completely different story from the first two before because she was so hyped about the first two that she was like, yeah, I might just skip the third. And then she told me she had like some gut feeling where she's like, you know what, I should do the third one. And then on that third one, it was like, yeah, do not hire this person. And it just like all of these stories came out about that candidate. And so she was like, the background check obviously is vital. And she was like, reference checks are also very important. But she was like, I just, you know, now understand like there's so much more to a candidate than just the great interview. So I really enjoyed meeting with Judith. Thank you for being on the show again. Well, she describes why you should never skip reference checks again. Yeah. Because they will get you. Yeah. You know, we talked about this earlier today, I think, that we were just talking about, you know, just advice to employees.

00:24:47 Yeah. Right. And job seekers is if you know that they might ask for references, identify those references in advance, reach out to them and ask them. And would they be a reference and ask them what they would say? Mm hmm. Yeah. Right. And if they and then once they do and you're OK with it and say, you know, OK. So I'm going to put you down on my list of references and you may get a call and then you encourage them to respond quickly. You know, that's an absolute. But just to throw people on there and, you know, run it through your own filters. Oh, yeah, they love me. I was a good employee. You know, they may have been great at tolerating you. Yeah. Yeah. They may not have thought you did a great job.

00:25:28 They may have liked you personally and treated you nicely, but maybe they didn't think they did a great job. Yeah. You know, so you don't know what they're going to say unless you ask. So make sure you ask. Yeah. You know, and because HR, you know, HR folks, they want you to get the job, too. I mean, you get to that point. You're asking. That means you like them and you're now vetting out. Let's come a long way. So yeah. Huge letdown to the HR, the recruiter when, when, you know, you really fail to know and manage that reference. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The more that we get into this podcast and the more of these stories we read, like the more the, like my, it's like my heart goes out to this, this whole community of HR people. Because like if you're a recruiter, if you're in HR, like let me know if this sounds accurate.

00:26:11 But like you're trying to find somebody to fit this one role. Right. And then you're taking all these people. There's probably hundreds, if not more applicants. You're trying to find the needle in the haystack. And then you finally find the person. You interview them. You have to find somebody who does well. You have to find somebody who might be a good culture fit. And even after they're approved past that, they have to go through the reference check and the verifications and the background checks. Everything has to be like almost like a perfect domino. Yeah. Right. And then like, that's just such a complicated thing. There was so many gaps potentially that where something could go wrong. It's just, it's a lot of hard work. So like if there's any part of that process that's falling out of body men out, just messes up your whole life. So I'm sure that's just a stressful spot to be in. So that's why we always talk about HR in this way of like, man, whatever we can do to make your lives easier.

00:26:56 Yeah. Because like it's a lot of juggling that that whole community does, you know? So it's just a lot. So shout out to Judith. It sounds like she knows what she's talking about. For sure. All right, Morgan. What's up? My second story is he signed a 20 page security policy, then stole the code anyway. Yeah. All right. Okay. So I've seen a lot of new hires come through the door over the years. Most of them spend their first day trying to remember where the bathroom is. This one spent his downloading our entire product. He was a senior developer, came with a solid resume, ace a technical screen, said all the right things about security culture and protecting intellectual property. During onboarding, we had him sign the full IT security policy, the one that takes 20 minutes to read.

00:27:37 He signed it and he initialed every page. I wonder if he even read it. I mean, like, did he just like stare at the page and was like, yeah, I read that page. It was. That same afternoon, one of our engineers noticed him plugging a USB stick into his workstation, who is pulling down the source code for our main product, five years of work and transferring it to his personal drive. Hacking into the mainframe. Yeah. Literally, when they're like, I'm hacking into the mainframe, it's him, but just with a USB stick. Yeah. When someone confronted him about it, he seemed genuinely puzzled by the problem. Huh? I don't know. He said he just wanted to take it home and mess around with it in his spare time. The same way you might grab a company pin on your way out the door. He thought it was something you did. A perk, maybe. HR walked him out within the hour.

00:28:18 He left looking confused. And honestly, I'm not so sure he fully understood what he'd done wrong. He had initialed every page of the document that had explained exactly why it was wrong. Wow. So either he was going to do something malicious and maybe resell this product, or he was like, maybe I'll get a raise if I make this product better. Maybe. Yeah. Who's to say? Maybe he's trying to know the product's super in-depth. I'm just going to study it on my own. Yeah, exactly. Dang, that's crazy. No way. No. He's probably stealing it. I just want to give him maybe the benefit of the doubt. That's crazy. Oh, I actually have Judith again from My Story 3 today. Oh, cool. Yeah. So this is why background checks exist. Okay. Let's hear more from Judith. Oh, the school hire, nobody's all coming.

00:29:00 Where I've actually hired folks for roles in schools and other roles where they have come back as sex offenders, where they've come back as not having a degree, and it's important for them to have a degree. I've had cases where someone lied on their application, and then when we did the background check, they were honest with us and said, hey, you know, I don't have a high school diploma. And in that case, actually, it worked in that person's favor because we actually were like, hey, we still want to hire you anyway for this role. Background checks, it could definitely get wild because you never know what's going to come up or what you're going to get. Definitely crazy. It's like a box of chocolates. Yeah. That little last clip she did was just like the perfect.

00:29:41 Yeah. Just like the perfect, like background checks are kind of wild. Yeah. You never know what you're going to get. Yeah. She knows who she's talking. You guys should turn that into an ad. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to team that to do to- I love her. I love her energy, man. She's really awesome. Yeah. She's great. She's clearly got lots and lots of experience hiring people. For sure. Yeah. But yeah, she's right on. And what's interesting about that is she's talking about a school. She's like, I have hired people for school. And then she lists out some crazy offenses. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, the bottom line is when you do what we do for a living, right, in terms of background checks and health checks and reference checks and, you know, verifying people's identity

00:30:23 and just really just the workplace safety and compliance function, you begin to realize that without this function in place, right, there would be, you know, companies would hire people and be unaware of potential risks within the organization and schools would. So, you know, they serve, they serve, the background checks serve an incredibly force for good. And, you know, Especially at schools. Yeah. Plays like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's nice to hear. When you hear a story like that, you realize, you know, it's those moments when they, when people like her and organizations go, oh, and I'm, you know, they're happy.

00:31:07 Yeah. It's making a huge difference in the world, you know, because that's what we do. We do background checks, obviously. And just to know that somebody like Judah is on the other side so that like when these background checks are being ran and there is an offense, a potential offender who's up for a job in a school, they're obviously not getting that role. So, you know, it's just the unsung heroes of like keeping those places safe. And what I'm saying to her was she said when someone didn't have the role, she was like, she's willing to take it in context. She's willing to, hey, they told the truth. Yeah. Which was the important part. Hey, I don't have the high school. Yeah. Yeah. But she said we still hired him. We wanted to hire him anyway. Yeah. You know, because they told the truth instead of lying. Yeah. Yeah. Because sometimes it's just like a gap in education or, you know, something just needs

00:31:49 to be explained. And then sometimes it's a major offense. You know, it's the context always matters, you know, which is good that somebody like her is taking that context into effect. For sure. Well, I mean, that's it for today. So, hey, thanks for listening. Thanks for hanging out with us. We enjoy you. We appreciate you. Thanks to our HR heroes out there. You know, we admire all that you do. And we find it incredibly enjoyable to work with you. But hey, like, subscribe, share our content. You know, our clips on social media, on YouTube. You can come to our channel, watch the entire show. We'd love for you to have you be a part of The Bad Hire. And don't forget, we're still in that opportunity to win the $10,000 before the end of the year.

00:32:34 So submit your stories. Go to thebadhire.com to do that. And we'd love for you to do that. And if you want to be a guest, just like Judith was. Yeah. You can email us at producers at thebadhire.com and say, hey, I'd be interested in doing a guest. I have something. Yeah. I have a fun story to tell you. We'd love to hear it. Have you come on? See me or Nathan in that call? Probably. Maybe. We'll make a guest appearance. Yeah. We'll take the calls. But we appreciate it. Hey, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Thank you, guys. Bye. Bye. 40, 45 minutes or so. Yeah. We'll get rolling right away. Okay.