She Robbed a Bank on Her Lunch Break [The Bad Hire Ep. 5]

00:00:00 Ever made a bad hire? Had an interview spiral into chaos? You're not alone. These stories can be hilarious, shocking, and sometimes downright painful. Welcome to The Bad Hire, the podcast that pulls back the curtain on hiring going wrong. I'm your host, Ken Monroe, and I work with companies every day to help them hire smarter and avoid costly mistakes. Each week, we'll dive into real stories from HR leaders and recruiters and talent pros who've lived through the worst of the worst, from nightmare interviews to first-day disasters. You'll hear it all, because behind every bad hire,

00:00:41 there's a lesson worth learning. Hey, everyone. Welcome to The Bad Hire, the show where hiring disasters and guaranteed firings happen. I'm Ken Monroe, co-host Emma and Morgan. Hey, ladies, how are you doing? Good, how are you? Awesome. I'm good. That's good. How about you, Ken? I'm good. All right, every week, we dig into the wildest, weirdest, and most jaw-dropping hiring fails from offices, job sites, organizations from across the country. We've had some good stories so far. I still think the cuddling cat is still, the nestling cat is still my favorite story. He's going to say that for like 100 episodes. What about the guy that melted his face to the grill? That was pretty bad, yeah.

00:01:22 As a reminder, we're running a $10,000 contest. Just send us your best bad hire story, and we'll read it here on the podcast. Funniest, craziest, wildest story you can think of. Could be happy, could be sad, could be tragic, whatever it might be. Just tell a great story. We're talking about resumes full of lies, maybe somehow a failed background check, something that just completely whiffed on the hire. Those would be great stories, and that'll give everyone a chance to win $10,000. So I'm looking forward to more. I know we got some submissions this week, so we'll read some of those. That'll be cool. And yes, you can change the name of the person,

00:02:06 so you can keep it anonymous. Let's not throw anybody under the bus for real. But I'm excited about the $10,000. I'm excited about giving that away, and we'll start getting some word out on social media and some other places, people to submit some stories and for a chance to win $10,000. So that's really cool. For sure. So have you guys got good stories today? I do. All right, we'll try to do two or three a piece because you told me you had some long ones too. Yeah, we have some very windy ones today. And you had some type of comment from our social media someone maybe thought was funny. Yeah. I think I think it will be funny. I do, yeah. Maybe. Maybe. We'll see. All right. So why don't I start?

00:02:47 You want to do that? Yeah, sure. Yeah, of course. So here's the story, and I read this a minute ago. This thing goes from a little menacing at work to just absolute crazy town. So we had been noticing a lot of tools going missing at work, like thousands of dollars worth of drills, batteries, sawzalls, you know, that kind of stuff. You know, we're a pretty large manufacturing facility, but our processes hadn't called up to our size yet, so nothing was really tagged or identified, which made it really hard to track. I guess easy to steal when they don't know what they have. Yeah. Yeah. I was working in one of our shops, and the supervisor came in and grabbed one of the apprentices

00:03:28 and asked him to come with him. Now, this kid was always a pretty decent guy, pretty funny, and not a bad worker. We all knew he was kind of a mess, though, and had a lot of bad habits. So when he got asked to go, we started to put it together that he must have been the one stealing the stuff, probably to pay for drugs, and that he was going to get let go. He comes back a little bit later and confirms that he was fired and grabs a couple of things but doesn't touch his tools. Very odd, considering that's how we make our living. But one of the guys asked if he's going to take them, and all he said was, nope, I don't need them. But watch me in the news. Then he left.

00:04:08 What? What? Yeah. That's him. We kind of... Oh, no. This is going on. Oh. The story keeps going. We kind of looked at each other and laughed, figured he was just mad and making some crazy statements or claims, and that he'd come back and grab them when he calmed down a little bit. Nope. Never returned. Turns out he had some relationship issues going on along with that rampant drug use. And now that he had even more time to enjoy, that he had no job. So he ended up assaulting his girlfriend. And when she left in her car, he ran down the street to a convenience store, carjacked some lady's ride.

00:04:51 She managed to get out. Before he took the car. The four days following were pretty crazy. Apparently, he was randomly committing crimes with no real ideas, with the idea of what the heck he was doing. Lots of kind of random B&Es. And at one point, he was confronted by a homeowner to which he threatened. Oh, my. It was pretty crazy seeing someone's face that you just worked with a few days earlier, plastered all over the news. So he was not telling the lie when he said, catch me on the news. You know, he was real serious about it. He was just doing all this and not, no, because he's on drugs, right? Yeah. I guess, I don't know why he did all this.

00:05:31 I don't know. It all came to, it all came to let him know. Undercover officer spotted him in yet another stolen vehicle on the highway. The cop flashed his badge to try to get him to stop. He did stop by ramming the police car and forcing them both onto the side of the road. The officer was then attacked by the man, but he eventually tasered him and got some backup. So Mr. Namewithheld received a decently long jail term for his efforts, and I've never heard from him since. We should give him a name. Yeah. What's his name? What's his name? Bob. I'm going to call him Bob. Dang, Bob. Yeah. I don't know. That's a lot.

00:06:12 So it goes from, you know, a missing saw to carjacking to, you know, ramming a police officer. I guess a lot of times you have no idea who you're working with. Yeah. You know. Guess. Guess not. I just need to check, Emma, if, like, tools start missing at the office. I'll definitely be checking from now on. Not that I wasn't checking before, but. I don't know. All right. It just seemed like it just wasn't. That was a Reddit one? That was a Reddit, yeah. Okay. Oh, okay. It was Reddit. It went all, I mean, it just completely went off the rails here. All right. Here's another one. I hired someone who seemed promising. How many of these stories? They all say that. They all say they seemed promising. That's what they all say.

00:06:52 Yeah. Right? It's just like everyone's like, oh, this was going to be a great hire. And then it just. So I hired someone who seemed promising, said he was proficient in a coding language, but on day one, he couldn't do even the basic coding in that language. So even after being given code samples, during his exit interview, he admitted he'd never used it. He'd just seen it used and thought, well, he could probably figure it out. The examples he gave in his interview were apparently stolen from coworkers. So I don't know. I'm just thinking. Coding isn't something you can just see someone do and be like, oh, yeah, I got that.

00:07:33 Or I'll figure it out later. Yeah. I'll just do it on the first day of the job. I'll just, you know, I don't know how long you think you. As long as I remember to put this in my car. But the skills test. Yeah. They actually have skills tests. It's just kind of crazy. They would. Someone would hire someone on their work. Yeah. Wow. You know, they had to have had more than one applicant. Working interviews are like a real thing, guys. Like you guys can do them. Right. Like you don't have to. Oh, I saw that once. I'll just put it on my resume. Yeah. Okay. So I don't know. And so I was, I was, I was trying to think of the number. You know, we've had, I don't know, examples of people saying they can do things. Yeah. You know, in my career. And then you get there and they can't.

00:08:13 And in fact, I read an entire Reddit thread last week. That was, it was just people talking about how to lie on their resume. It was just literally. Yeah. Tell them you work here or there. Sometimes they don't check. Lie by your employment. And like. Totally lie about your employment. Yeah. Whatever. Your university. Your time missing. Just fill it in with fakeness. Yeah. And there's. This is crazy to me. Yeah. Yeah. Just lie. And there were people being, telling their story of how they lied. That they got the job. Yeah. And then other people being like, kudos, man. Yeah. Some like celebrating it. This is so helpful. Thank you. Wait till, wait till they hear about a social media screen though. When we're checking their Reddit comments.

00:08:55 And it was like, yeah, I lied on that job and I'm in there right now. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. That would, yeah. That would be horrible. Yeah. I don't know. That, that, that, uh, I know what happened, but I guess I was, even in the business that I'm in, I was still completely shocked at, uh, just the rampant, just say, Oh yeah, I did it. And here's what I did, putting it, writing it down. It's like saying you speak a language when you don't. Yeah. Coding is like a whole language. It's crazy. So I hired a contractor and this is a con, not a, not a builder, but like I think as a coder, um, I hired a contractor, um, after an accelerated interview,

00:09:35 I like red flag immediately accelerated interview, meaning, Hey, can you do this? Yeah, I can do it. You're hired. Um, I hired a contractor after an accelerated, accelerated interview because I needed someone now and they passed with flying colors. So they said to flying colors and seem promising. Yeah. Emma, can you, are you do marketing? Yeah. Oh, awesome. You're hired. Cast the flying colors. Yep. Uh, on day two, a female report, a female reports back, comes to me and says, this person won't let women review his code. Oh, I talked to the new hire to get a side of the story and he confirmed, uh,

00:10:16 what, what she said is correct. I want to know what he said when he confirmed it. And, and double, well, he doubled and he doubled down on it. Oh, okay. I will not let a woman review my code. On day three. And why did you say why? I would know. It doesn't say here. I'm sure he said in the, they probably don't want to post that already. Right. On day three, he was fired. Okay. So. As he should be. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're not going to let somebody review your work. It's a quick, I don't understand how you could possibly say that and think that someone's going to be, I don't let women review and they're, you know, review my code and someone's going to, you know, the manager's going to be like, Oh yeah, no problem. Yeah. Yeah. Totally good. Totally get it. Get it. Yeah. Understand. Understandable. I wouldn't let a woman review my code either.

00:10:56 Don't worry about it. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. that. I don't know. Sometimes what people will say, you know, they lose their job for, for, for good reason, I think. Yeah. Right. I mean. A lot of these are very well deserved of firing. A lot of these are very well deserved of a fire. Yeah. Quick firings. Guaranteed firing. So, um, there's, this one is mind blowing. Okay. And I question whether it's real. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So there was a lady at my job that robbed, it just sounds like something. That happened in a TV show or like some folklore, but there's a lady at my job that robbed a bank on her lunch break. Remember the,

00:11:37 remember the, remember the, uh, a couple episodes ago we had the, uh, what was, was it like the, like it leads the kids. Yeah. What was that? But he like robbed 10 banks. Yeah. Oh, he was in school. He was in school. He was a teacher. Was he a teacher? Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. He was like a, like a minister of something. Oh yeah. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. Like a college. It was, no, it was a private school. It was, it was a like really high end private school. Rob 10 banks, but yeah. So this lady robs a bank on her lunch break. Comes back. Then parked her car in the garage of a hospital across the street and came back to work. Like nothing happened.

00:12:19 With what? All the money in her car? Yeah. Yeah. If someone, if someone hears this and say, Oh, we've heard that story before. It's totally not real. You need to tell. Is this a movie guy? Yeah. Unfortunately, she had forgotten to take off her ID badge. Oh my gosh. She robbed the bank. So the cops just came over to the building and arrested her by the end of the day. Real or fake? I'm going to give her a name. Let's call her, um, Lisa. I was going to say Linda. That's so funny. Linda. Yeah. So, so. Come on, Linda. Real or fake? I don't know. Maybe there's truths to it, but during a lunch break is crazy. Like, how do you think you're like, I have an hour long. Made me think about it was, was like an alibi. The whole ID badge thing just made me think.

00:13:01 No way. Yeah. Yeah. Well, remember the one I read, uh, last episode, episode before last one, when they, he robbed that bank with his two coworkers and they called him cause he signed his autograph on the booklet at the desk. No. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It did. I'm sure there's like some parts to that that are true, but, um, definitely stretched a little bit. All right. So you guys, who's got one? You, you've got a long one. I do. This is a submitted story, I think. Yes. So this story was, um, submitted to me on LinkedIn, but she asked if she could stay anonymous because she said that a lot of the story would be very telling if somebody was to see it someday as to who they were and where she worked. Protecting her identity. Yes.

00:13:42 And so, um, this is a long one guys. So buckle in. Um, she said she wanted to finally share her bad hire story. I think she's been waiting to tell this one for a long time. We could be an outlet. I know, right? Let's go. I hired an intern to work with me who was a backup for someone else. I was hoping to hire. The day started as an intern was a day we had to attend a horror event and it was her actual first time walking through haunted houses. I took her through and the night ended up being great for our literal first time meeting each other. We naturally became close after that and had a pretty decent relationship. Fast forward and I ended up hiring her full time, but I was going through some personal things, a separation from my marriage and was trying to be there for her, but was also

00:14:24 being kind of distant. I would ask her to get work done and she would get very flustered and wouldn't know how to handle it. She was overwhelmed by everything all the time, even as simple as sending an email. One day I saw her using chatgbt for every single project I assigned to her, which is fine, but some things need to be personal. A few months into her being full time, we hired a new intern who she had recommended and knew, but as she was hired, she was quickly jealous of the new intern and had to, so the new intern, I guess, was having to sit at her desk because of the lack of like desk space that they had and she would go to my fitness class with me. So that's, she's saying the new intern would go to these fitness classes with her and the new intern and her got closer.

00:15:06 The original hire was getting jealous and upset, even though she was invited to do all these activities, but she wanted to get really close to me and my friend. Since I wasn't letting that happen, she decided she would tear me down. She ended up quitting her job, making it about me. Then she lied to my manager and to the HR department about all these things that I had did. She told them that she had to drive me home from being too drunk at an outing, separate from a company event. She told them I was using her apartment to have an affair, literally never saw her apartment. She told me I showed her inappropriate photos of myself that I wouldn't want, like wouldn't take to work and that she would show them to her while she was at work.

00:15:47 I would ask her to do things because that's her job. She would even gaslight me in the office and say I never told her to do something, but I would have actual physical proof of it in an email or a message. Anyway, HR asked me like 30 questions, about 90% were lies, and after three months of an investigation, I got fired. What? What? I didn't know if that's as bad as many other bad hires, but since she has blocked me on all my social media, including LinkedIn, people keep sharing her posts with me and it's her complaining about how awful I was and that she had to hide in her car and cry from me yelling at her, which again, I never did. She posted on TikTok about how horrible her boss was. And of course, this was her first job. And a lot of people in the company knew her boss was me.

00:16:30 Anyways, that's my story. How old is this person? She's now like, I think like the person who's writing this. No. Like the intern. The person that was causing all the drama for her. I think she sounds pretty young. I was about to say. Yeah. It sounds like. Because, yeah. It sounds like high school drama that she brought into the work. Yeah. It's just ridiculous. And she, the lady who's telling the story must be older because she was married. She had a separation from her marriage. I think now she has like a really high up position on a different company, but she had an intern working for her. So this person had to be called right out of college. That makes sense then. Wow. That's crazy. I just like gave her an opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I guess a lot of people, you know, bring a lot of, bring a lot of drama and all that

00:17:10 kind of stuff into the, into their workplace. Yeah. But that's. I guess being jealous of a coworker. It's more than a bad thing said about you that aren't true. Yeah. Yeah. But. But then like saying that she was doing things at like non-company events. Yeah. Because I have to do. And bringing it to HR. Yeah. Yeah. It just, it's so dramatic. I don't know. I think it was. Yeah. I feel bad for her. And the biggest thing for me is if it's all of it's not true. Yeah. Right. Yeah. To have that said about you and then have, and then have someone go on TikTok and post about you. Yeah. Apparently. How bored do you have to be to come up with all of these fake scenarios too. Yeah. Like. A negative person or something to do that.

00:17:51 Yeah. That's crazy. Post about them on LinkedIn. Like if I'm a future like employer and I see her posting about her previous like hire. I actually want to bet that a social media screen on that particular person probably would have shown like. Most definitely. Yeah. Most definitely. Like some. Crazy stuff. Like bad stuff. Yeah. Like maybe not great posts. Yeah. Wow. It kind of reminded me of Mean Girls. Like when they have like the book that they write in. Yeah. And it's like. The burn book. Literally. Yeah. The bad hire book. The bad hire book. The bad boss book. Do that social media screen. At least for like. Yeah. At least for senior people. But it seems like it might be more effective for young people. Yeah. To make sure they even know how to operate on social media.

00:18:33 Yeah. And like complete gaslighters on there or something. I feel like social media is sometimes even more telling in modern day than like a background check sometimes too because like that's where people's lives are. They post everything on there. Yeah. And like there are a lot of things that you know they might not have gotten like a record for but they still could be doing. Yeah. I think. Yeah. I mean you could do so much damage to someone or a company on social media. You know the background check and the criminal records are important as well. But. Yeah. It's just crazy town. Yeah. All right. What's next? This one's from Reddit. So this one's a kind of short story. All right. So I was a hiring manager at a Dunkin Donuts and I had a guy submit an application and he

00:19:15 had listed that he was a felon. I briefly asked him about it. I really don't care. Tons of felons work here. And he told me that he had two counts of grand larceny from stealing from his previous jobs. His most recent job was at another Dunkin Donuts. No. You're saying he said in advance? Yes. Okay. So he said he had two counts of grand larceny but it was from stealing from previous jobs. His previous job was at Dunkin Donuts. So he's going to apply for another Dunkin Donuts. Oh my. And he said that he was bragging about how many times he got away with it before getting caught. Needless to say, he was not fit for the position. Well, I'm sorry. That really got me. I don't care.

00:19:56 Lots of felons work here. You fit right in. Yeah. Like, I don't really care. But also, why would he just go to another Dunkin Donuts? Like, change up where you're going to steal from. That is funny. What is it about the Dunkin Donuts? What does she want to see her so bad? Is he just stealing the cash or is he stealing the product? I don't know. Like, we tend to ask. He really wanted to sneak peek at the seasonal stuff. Oh my goodness. All right. Now, this is also from Reddit. This is from somebody who's worked in recruiting and HR for a very long time. So it's kind of a list of their bad hires in one post. So this is a lot of different things. But they're kind of short. Yeah, they are. Okay. So it says, oh. Just kind of some bullet point.

00:20:37 Yeah. Which, if you've had this many bad hires, you start to wonder, should I still be doing recruiting? Well, you know, I know it's tough work. It's super hard work. It is, yeah. And it can be incredibly rewarding. Yeah. Like, when you put somebody in the right job. Yeah. In the right company. And they just crush it. Yeah. That's got to feel good. And if you look across a company you've been doing business with, you can see kind of like you're recruiting DNA everywhere. Yeah. I've really done a good job. You can feel good about that. Yeah. But, you know, you also, if you do it a lot, you stack up some misses. Yeah. This one, I think, was full of misses. I like this person was like. Let me just give it all to you. Let me just give you some misses. So he says, oh boy, where to start? Most of these stories are early in my career, but I've had bullet point.

00:21:20 A candidate on trial for the murder of his wife. A best-selling author slash medical doctor, breast surgeon, who tried to run over a police officer. We're starting off strong here. I'm not. Okay. Multiple people show up drunk or under the influence. All right. Had one guy who tried to fight the operations manager after feeling disrespected by the manager's inquiries to his shaky work history. Had a lawyer tried to. So that had to have been, that had to have been like early in the process. Yeah. Like, cause there's asking about his work history. So you're talking about like week one. Yeah. Like, what have you done now? Yeah. Had a. He does. Don't ask me. I fight, you know. I fight. Yeah. You don't. Yeah. You don't want to know. Don't ask me about my work history.

00:22:01 I'll throw it down. He said none yet on his resume. All right. Had a lawyer try to sue me and bill a client, a bill a client for time spent on an interview because he was pissed that he didn't get the job. Once we explained the billables to his company, they dropped him like a fly. A lady once presumably soiled herself in a small interview room with me. Oh my gosh. I had a woman. The life of a recruiter. Had a woman of color tell me I couldn't understand diversity because I'm a white guy. Okay. Troves of candidates that are terrible in interviews, bad on paper, etc. Try to offload the rejection onto falsities that are easier for them to accept.

00:22:43 Sorry. No, ma'am. It's not that you are an older person. I had no idea because we only spoke on the phone and you never revealed any identifying information. But yes, please keep telling me in the screening call that we won't hire you because we are ageist and another you won't understand because you look young. Okay. Had a greasy looking guy once tell me my colleague was hot when she left to use the bathroom. Oh, there was this one guy who stole a projector on his way out of the building. That's so gross. I'll be taking that. Thank you. I need one of these for Sundays. I need to watch the game on one of these. I can't believe he still has one more or two more.

00:23:24 Had a former cop applied a security job to find out he was forced out of the force due to domestic violence, drugs. And oh, yeah, he's a sex offender. Oh. Maybe a children's hospital isn't the best place to apply for it. Oh, my God. Well, that's true. We see that all the time. Oh, yeah. People are applying somewhere. We do their background check. And you're like, they're trying to work where? At a school. Right. At a children's hospital. And you're just like, wow, I'm glad these people do background checks. Wow. This one was, I was offered sexual favors from candidates, men and women. Wow. Oh. Okay. Wow. So his last line is, so many more. These are just the ones that come to mind. I wonder how many recruiters are listening to that list going, no way.

00:24:05 Yeah. Like, just haven't experienced that before. And they're just like. And who's reading the Reddit thread going, oh, that was me. Somebody replied to him and said, Jesus Christ, are you working for a McDonald's? Are you recruiting for McDonald's? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe. All right. This is my last story. Good people. I mean. Yeah. Everybody's got good people. This is my last story for this episode. But the candidate submitted a take-home test by email. And they forgot to extract the text of the email reply chain with his buddy. In which, if you scroll far enough, you could see, A, their buddy helped them with the test. Actually, the buddy did most of it. And B, the two of them weighing up on the finer points of a drug deal they were participating in.

00:24:48 No way. I guess people don't understand, like, the reply all and, like, the forward. I guess they had this big, long conversation. Yeah. He's like, hey, check these questions out. And then he forwards the devil thing. Also, like, think about talking about a double check. I've gotten, like, some forwards where, like, people didn't. How are you not double checking, though? Especially for something like that. Yeah. I almost never hit reply all. I think I aggravate people. Like, oots, let me make sure they don't see my drug deal. Yeah. Who talks about a drug deal on email, though? I know. Like, text about it. Like, use something else. Keep paying your text message. Literally. All right. All right. You're going to keep it anywhere. Quick, quick break. This podcast is sponsored by B-Checks.

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00:26:12 It's from Reddit. Okay. All right. Here we go. Let's see if I can keep this PG for the listeners out there. Yeah, let's keep it PG for sure. Yeah. I'm going to try to modify some things. All right. I was the office coordinator for a large staffing agency between 2004 and 2006. So, this was a long time ago. My office was unique in that it was situated on a client side in a modular building. Our office only staffed for this one client, but we had 225 to 250 employees at our client site. Every spring, the client would hire approximately 10 to 12 people from our pool of people. This was a great opportunity for people that had little to no previous experience or a

00:26:56 less than stellar work history to get a foot in the door and an opportunity to advance to a job with great pay, benefits, etc. I love that. Of course, you also got some of the scummiest people walking through your door looking for work. Oh, that's so bad that they said that. I know. I know. I can't believe they said that. Our biggest disqualifying factors were people, like, were felons, sexual background checks. Sexual background checks? Is he doing a sex spinner check? That's what he says on here. I'm assuming that's what he means. All right. So, first, let's not suggest that all felons are unemployable. Yeah. Because they absolutely are. Yeah. But, okay.

00:27:37 Yeah. I'm assuming that's what he meant. Because that's the people, a lot of those people need those jobs to get back into the workforce and get great pay and benefits. Another thing is testing positive for controlled substance and recent violent crimes. We also tended to stay away from people that have worked heavy manufacturing, doing repetitive stressful work for a long period of time. Okay. I was second in command of our branch office and reported directly to the branch manager. We'll call her Mandy. Okay. Mandy's a made up name. Mandy was a very interesting woman, about 40 to 45 years old. The best way to describe Mandy was, um, she was a little crazy.

00:28:24 And she reads the story and tries to reword it. I don't know if I could reword that. I'll just keep it out. She was a little crazy. Okay. Um, Mandy absolutely loved me and treated me like I was her golden child. I was in charge when Mandy was absent and all the shifts shift leads would call me when they had a problem. We had an employee. I will call him Fred. Fred lived in a weekly rate hotel. That was a dump right down the street from his favorite bar, which I will call minis. Fred worked on one of the day shifts that ran 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Um, and from, hold on.

00:29:07 I can't, I can't keep up. The story is so long. That is a long story. Okay. This is just little details about like where he lived and everything that has really nothing to do with the story. He's in a motel. Yeah. He's in a motel, whatever. Near the bar. Yeah. Lots of setup in this. Yeah. Yeah. People love the detail. I really love it. It helps me paint. It helps me paint the picture. You notice his eyes. Right. Fred had started off as a decent employee, but his attendance started slipping as he was, sorry, I had to switch. Going to minis. Yeah. As he was calling in sick.

00:29:48 Fred was one, Fred was of the notion that he was going to work just enough to be able to earn himself enough money to be able to drink and pay weekly rent and no more. Fred had been counseled repeatedly by myself and finally the branch manager on his attendance. He was on his last warning and was informed that any more attendance violations in the next 30 days would be met with termination. Three days later, Fred comes into my office hysterical that his mother was in the town next over, had a stroke, and was dying in the hospital. He really needed to be with her. I grant him a one day approved absence as long as he is going to be with his mother at the hospital. One day. I was really generous and I let him have a job.

00:30:29 He said as long as he's going to be at the hospital with his mother because God forbid he go to minis. Like, he thanks me profusely and I call him a cab. When Mandy comes into the office, I inform her of the situation. She is going to wait about an hour and then go down to minis to see if he's there. Half an hour after I spoke with Mandy, the office receives a call. It's from Fred's sister. Her and their mother had been doing some shopping downtown and her mother stepped out in front of a car and got hit. Her mother is in bad shape. They are airlifting her to a trauma hospital. I take her name and number and will have Fred give her a call. I call down to minis and ask the bartender if Fred is there.

00:31:10 It is an emergency. They put Fred on the phone. I relay the information from his sister without mentioning anything about his absence. Like, not even going to bring it up. Yeah, not even going to bring it up. Not just too bad a time to bring it up. Yeah. Fred then blows up on me via the phone about how dare I call him at minis. He informs me that he doesn't care if his mom's in critical condition. How dare I ruin the sanctity of minis by calling him. What is so slug. And then inform him that he is fired. Don't bother coming to work tomorrow. And then hung up the phone. I then inform the branch manager of this.

00:31:50 And she laughs and says, take all your things. Like, everything. It's fine. And she is glad she doesn't have to terminate him now. Like, she's glad she didn't have to be the one to do it. Yeah. I call and have the customer deactivate his access card and I enter his termination notes in the employee database. 20 minutes later, a cab pulls up and Fred jumps out and comes running into our office and starts screaming at me from the entrance to the building while walking towards my office. Mandy hears the commotion and grabs him and pulls him into her office and plops him down in a chair. The conversation ends with him saying, F you. I don't work for you. I work for the client. Whatever. Blah, blah, blah. He then storms out of the office.

00:32:33 We look out and see him try to use his access card in the gate to gain entry to the factory. When it doesn't work, he begins kicking the gate. At that point, I call 911 and report an aggressive drunk ex-employee attempting to break into a secure facility. This one? Yeah. From the sympathy of Millie's to you. Millie's. Fred walks around to the front of the client and starts banging and kicking on their locked front glass door, demanding to be let in. I call the receptionist and inform her that the police are on the way. He ends up kicking their glass window and spider webbing it before being tased by the police. Like, smash it. Oh, I see. Yeah. Second taser event of the show.

00:33:13 Yeah. Our client ended up having him banned from the property and press charges on him. Whatever. Three days later, I get a call from Fred asking me as sweet as pie if he can have another chance at his job. I had to inform him that even if I was willing, which I was not, he had acted in such a way that the client had him banned from their property. They were so terrified of him. My hands were tied. He thanked me for my time and hung up. Oh, my gosh. And then this is how it ends. Get ready. It's. Oh, it's crazier. It's kind of dark. It's kind of. Oh, my God. Two years. Two years later. Oh, no. Two years later, Fred was killed in a bar fight after being hit in the head with a bar stool at Minnie's.

00:33:58 Oh, my gosh. Okay. And that is the list of that story. First of all, there's so much to unpack here. No more stories like that. That's just. These. You can't ruin my day with. Well, I wasn't trying to ruin your day. You wanted the craziest story. That's crazy. First of all, I want to say that, like, I don't, I don't, like, think, want to say, call it karma. But he really spoke his mother being in the hospital into existence pretty much. I know. I know. I don't know about her. I know. There's so much to unpack here. The way that he. There's so much detail in that story. Yeah. And then the sanctity of Minnie's literally ended up being his death. Makes you think it's real that it's, it's like so many. How dare you call me at Minnie's.

00:34:39 Right. That's crazy. That's pretty crazy. I think about that when I hear that story, I think about being a recruiter. Yeah. And in an operation like that, when you've got so many people. Yeah. And one client, I think they said they had 250 people on one, on one client. Mm-hmm. And just all the stuff. Yeah. You have to deal with. Right. Just all the emergencies from the people that you hired. Yeah. And most, most of the time, those are like really high pressure placements. It's got to have the people, the people are hard to find. Yeah. And so, you know, you end up sometimes not getting the greatest. You absolutely get some people that you're going to have challenges with.

00:35:23 And so you're, you know, your life every day is, you know, you wake up and wonder what, what emergency am I going to deal with on somebody I placed at a client's place. Yeah. And it's always tough because think about the pressure of, of, of the recruiter of like that one hire does something so bad. Yeah. Lose the account. Now we're going to lose not just the one position, but the whole thing. Yeah. All the placements as, as they switch. So I don't know. It's very, very, very tough. Mm-hmm. That's crazy. All right. That, that, I, I, that's got to be it for today because I'm. I only got their one story. No. Please tell me you have something that's. You have a light. I'll have better. I got, I'll have better ones next time.

00:36:04 Short, funny one. All right. So there was some short comment made on what. Yes. Take talk. This one actually might be. We shouldn't end on that. Well. Boring. Yeah. But at least it's not like death. I guess. Got killed in a bar fight. All right. Yes. This one was submitted to us or commented on our TikTok page by Judgmental Barbie. And she said, hired a 16 year old for a front desk position at a hotel. First day, late by 10 minutes due to the bus. Okay. That's valid. Second day, late 30 minutes due to period cramps. I get it. Being a woman can have its moments. Third day, late one hour because she didn't want to come.

00:36:46 Walked over to HR and sent her packing. Day three? Day three is a magic day. It is. It is. Yeah. It's like. Guaranteed firings happen on day three. But that's all she had to say. Three is a magic number. Yep. Well, thank you for that. Judgmental Barbie. Thank you. Appreciate your comment. Judgmental Barbie. All right. That's going to be. That's going to do it for this episode of The Bad Hire. Big thanks to everyone who's. We had a couple of submissions in there. Big thanks to that. And we look forward to more coming in as more people submit on our website. We've got that $10,000 contest running. So if you've got a really bad hire story that you'd like to tell, we'd love to hear it. We'd love to read it. We're going to have some cool ways to submit online at our website, thebadhire.com.

00:37:33 And I think we're going to experiment with some technology that would let you tell the story. And maybe we could play someone doing it. And then, of course, if your story is great enough and we like it, we'll ask you to come on the show and hang out, be a co-host for a couple episodes and read some other stories. It should be fun. So submit your story. We look forward to it. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to follow, rate, share us. We need it. We want to grow the show, want people to listen. We think it's fun. It's fun to do anyway. And share this with a friend who might be in the space and be hiring people. They've got their own stories to tell. We'll be back next time with more unbelievable stories that prove sometimes the biggest risk to your business is the person you just hired.

00:38:21 Until next time, I'm Ken with Emma and Morgan. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next time on The Bad Hire. Bye. Thank you, guys. Thanks for tuning in to The Bad Hire. Don't forget to follow, rate, and share the show. It really helps us grow the podcast. Got a story of your own? We'd love to hear it. Visit us at TheBadHire.com to submit your story or connect with me on LinkedIn at Ken Monroe. Until next time, remember, don't make your next hire the bad hire. The Bad Hire. The Bad Hire.