She STOLE Half the Store… Then Fell Asleep on the Job [The Bad Hire Ep. 30]

00:00:00 She had managed to steal a significant chunk of inventory and then fall asleep in the storage area. Very quickly realized that he could not cook. I could rarely get more than three or four consistent hours of work from them before they disengaged and returned to their desk. I had a name who supposedly was with the university and was verifying the transcripts. That person didn't exist. Oh man. 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 of work and what can happen when the wrong person gets the job.

00:00:49 These stories aren't just crazy. They're cautionary tales about lessons learned the hard way. Let's get started. All right. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Bad Hire, the show where the best stories about the worst employees happens. I did it just like you like it. Every time. I'm back today. Nathan, Emma, what's up? Hey. Hey. What's up? Hey. How are you guys doing? Good. Hanging out? Yeah. It's been a rough day. We've been trying to get live on TikTok and- Yeah, this is- We didn't- We didn't have enough followers. It's been a rough day. No, we are live on TikTok. We were supposed to start filming an hour ago in case you're scaring. Yeah, it's 10.30 a.m. right now. We're supposed to start at 9.15.

00:01:30 Oh, we're 45 minutes late. I love it. Something like that. Yeah. It's just a little bit late. No. An hour and 15. A little bit over. Oh, is it that long? Yeah. Oh, you're saying we were supposed to- Marcus slowed us down. No, I'm just kidding. Marcus is on the mic today. Say what's up, Marcus. Marcus. I know. What's up, everybody? Can't see anybody here. Let's go ahead. Okay, nice. He's over there somewhere. All right. All right, guys. You Know the Drill, we dive into the wildest, weirdest, like, jaw-dropping stories, you know, like, I don't know, first day flame outs, OG blow ups. A lot of those. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of blows. Interview crashes, you know, from offices, job sites, wherever. And we love to hear these great hiring stories when they go bad.

00:02:15 So that's what the bad hire is about. We love to hear it. Yeah. We love to hear when they go bad. Yeah. All bad stories. Reality is we love it when they're good. And it's not as fun of a podcast. It's not as fun. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, and don't forget, we're running a $10,000 contest to win $10,000. You can submit your story at thebadhire.com. Submit it in. We're going to take it at the end of the year. We'll take a look at all the best stories we told all year. There'll be a big vote. I'm sure these people will argue back and forth and decide who to give $10,000 to. Yeah. Yeah. We're reading one of the submitted stories today. We are. I think it's Emma's story for the day.

00:02:56 I feel like you want me to say one that's not. I don't want you to say anything specific. I feel like you don't want me to say. The deal is you remember about all of them. I do. I feel like you don't want me to say one that ended up very badly. Yeah. No, I don't. Exactly. Yeah. I don't want you to do it. And that's probably one I will take. Oh, my God. But I did like the submitted one we got that one time. It was super long about the guy that kept calling and was like, I can't find the place even though it was just there for orientation. And there was going back and forth on the phone all day. Yeah. And then by like three o'clock, they're like, you know, I just don't even come in today. Just come in tomorrow. Yeah. And then they ended up firing him. And then like 15 minutes later, he reapplied online.

00:03:37 Do you remember that one? So you remember the reapply. She remembers the app. She's got the social clips. So you watch the stories like over and over again. So it's not like we're, well, okay, maybe not. I don't really do that. I just remember them. Yeah, that'd be. All right. So let me get started. So I run a bookstore and every fall we set up one of those seasonal calendar kiosks at the other end of the shopping center. Straightforward gig. Stand there. Answer questions. Sell calendars. That's it. Okay. I needed someone to run it. So I hired a woman. Let's call her Mary. I love how they always say, let's call her Mary. Let's call her Mary. She came in for her morning training. Seemed totally fine.

00:04:18 Normal. Nothing that would make you think twice about anything about her. So I got her set up, walked her through everything and let her go to it. You know, I had stuff to handle on my end of the mall. About an hour later, I head back over to check in and I stop and I stop in the entrance because something is immediately wrong. About half the display is empty. Whole sections of calendars are just gone. And Mary is no, Mary is nowhere in sight. Oh, Mary. All right. I checked behind the kiosk. We use curtains to hide the backstop, the backstop. And behind the curtains, Mary is asleep. Oh, okay. On the floor? About her first day?

00:04:59 I don't know. Slowly gets long. I stood there for a solid 10 seconds just trying to process what I was looking at. She had been on the job for less than a morning, really less than an hour. And in that time, she had managed to steal a significant chunk of inventory and then fall asleep in the storage area. So she stole and then just fell asleep right there? What did she do with it? Wait, she stole or she let other people steal because she was sleeping? He said she managed to steal. Half that display managed to get things stolen. I don't know. I don't know. But anyway, half the shelf is gone. I said her name. She woke up. Okay. We had a conversation. It was a brief conversation. Wake up, Mary. I think so she stole out the stuff from the display, put it in her backpack.

00:05:43 I don't know. You would think like new job vibe would give you that adrenaline dump. You know, it's like new job. Yeah. Rock on. You know, I could stay awake for an hour. Maybe she's like, I finally got my job. Time to just coast. Well, it's not very busy right now. Yeah. Quick nap. That's crazy. I just can't imagine that. Also, like I'm lost with the stealing part. She stole or maybe she's like. I think they just meant people stole while she was asleep. She just wiped out the counter and then knock out on the floor. Where's my kid when it's laying? I think I just took a nap. They stole everything. But I wanted a nap before I left because the getaway is going to be great. Yeah. Yeah. So. I'm about to go fast.

00:06:23 I don't know. All right. All good signs. Flame out on the first hour. Yeah. Those are the best stories. Well, the worst stories. When they just stood out last one day. Before we dive back into the chaos on the bad hire, this episode is brought to you by B-Checks. Hiring shouldn't feel like rolling the dice. Background checks should come with great tech, seamless integration, and customer service that delivers. That's B-Checks. Lightning fast results. Unmatched accuracy. Built in fraud prevention. We help you hire the right people. Now, B-Checks plugs into over 100 HRIS and ATS systems. So your background checks run smooth, fast, and backed by top-level service.

00:07:05 Protect your team. Protect your reputation. Protect your sanity. Go to B-Checks.io. That's B-C-H-E-X dot I-O. We got a clip from Jeremy. Yeah. This is Jeremy. All right. And let's see what Jeremy's up to. Yeah. We weren't just looking for any candidate for these kinds of roles. We had very specific qualifications, specific competencies. And for whatever reason, this role had to become one of those white whale scenarios for us. It's like, where are we going to find this person, right, to be able to fit all this criteria? So now, I remind you, this was a different era of recruiting. So we were about a month or two in into this new recruiting that I was doing with all that.

00:07:49 And I found her. I found that candidate who checked every box. But here's really where the story takes a turn. As part of our background checking for management trainees, candidates, we required them to submit certified collegiate transcripts. So I asked those, and she sent them to me. And when I looked at them, it didn't look like other transcripts that I had seen. There was no certification seal, no official stamp, none of those kind of things. At this point, I don't have any proof of anything. I don't know what's going on. I just have a feeling. So what I did was I called her. I asked her some follow-up questions, tried to give her the benefit of the doubt.

00:08:29 And she said, hey, you know, I'll have someone from the university give you a call, and they can verify the transcripts. And I said, all right, awesome. Let's do it. Sounds good to me. So the university call you. Yeah, I'll have my people call your people. From the university. They verified everything on the transcripts. Call ended. Boom. I was done. After that call, I still didn't feel right. Like, there was still something there. So I picked up the phone myself, and I called the school. When I got to the right people, I asked them about the person who had called me. I had a name who supposedly was with the university and was verifying the transcripts. That person didn't exist. Oh, man. Imagine if he just hit callback.

00:09:11 So he said he looked up the phone. He just hit his callback. He got Andrew's phone. I was like, yo. What I'm wondering is, did this person think that they would forget that the university was supposed to call them and then just let it slide? Or they were just going to have a fake person call them? Yeah, I'm sure that's what you said. So I talked to him. Is that a buddy call? That's just a lot of work. You're talking to him, right? I talked to Jeremy, and it was just one of his buddies or his mom or something like that. It was a family member. Oh, really? So he's like, oh, I'll have the university call you. And then he just had his buddy Frank give him a call. Oh, okay. And just pretend. It just sounds like a lot of work. Maybe it was like his mom, and there's a picture of the candidate in the background of the call. He designed some transcripts that clearly he'd never seen one.

00:09:54 Yeah, just a piece of paper that said, like, I went to this university. That was it. I am not a robot. Oh, where you go? A. Math. Yay. Yeah. College. Checkmark. Interesting. So at least he's got some good friends to help bail him out or good family members to try and bail him out and get him a job. Yeah. But I got you, man. I'll cover you. That's why I need the employment verification. There's probably some moms out there that would do that. There's been a couple, though. I feel like there's been a couple moms involved with the hiring processes and the stories we've had. Yeah. All right. I got my story. I got a couple. I got one, and then I think we're reacting to another clip.

00:10:36 So, okay. We brought on a new hire. It's her first day, and she comes in a little wound up at orientation, which I noticed. But honestly, some people are just nervous. It's a new place with new faces, and I don't really read into it. We get through the morning, and things seem fine. Then we're all in the break room together, and she looks over the counter next to two large bags of Starbucks coffee beans that are sitting next to that machine. And she goes, what are those? And someone says, oh, yeah, those are free. Help yourself. Meaning, like, you know, they're free to use to get a cup of coffee for yourself. So she nods. She walks over. She picks up both full bags of coffee beans, puts them in her purse, and walks out.

00:11:16 So there goes the communal office coffee, the kind that would have, you know, been there every single morning for the rest of her time at the job. Someone came and found me almost immediately and said, she's put all the coffee in her bag and left. And I'm like, she, what? I'm sorry. So we let her go before the end of the day. I don't know if that was that. I don't think it was worth all that. I don't know. Yeah, you worded that. It was definitely worth a conversation. She's like, no, it must be my turn. Maybe there are other red flags, but in theft of coffee on the first day, these people really liked their coffee. So that was too far for them. So they let her go. Maybe it was enough that they didn't understand it wasn't the whole. I understand. It could have just been a funny story.

00:11:57 Like, hey, Sheila, remember when you stole those bags of coffee? Oh, yeah, classic. I don't think it was worth sending her home, but. Apparently, these people really liked their coffee. So, yeah. It was just a big misunderstanding. You're stingy around here, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, that one's a little bit sad. Yeah. Yeah, we get, you know, we do the lunch for everybody. We've had some issues with, you know, we provide like factor lunches for everybody. If you want lunch, you can just grab one. So people just dump in and had people like show up in the morning, have to, show up at lunch, have to. Yeah. You know, before they leave, have to, then take some home. I'm having some people over tonight. Let me grab a couple of these. The other one person's like chugging through six to 10 a day, you know.

00:12:38 Yeah. I don't know. If you, you know, what I, what the word I put out was, if you, if you're having a hard time providing groceries at home. Let us know. Come talk to me. Yeah. You know, don't, don't take the, don't take that food. We'll work something. We'll get your Starbucks back. Just wear it away. Yeah. It helped, but you know, don't, don't wreck the, don't wreck the refrigerators for other people. That's funny. Yeah. All right. What you got? You all right. You have Riverside coming up. Yeah. This is another person that I talked to. This is Sandra. She's great. I had a great conversation with her. And this is one of her stories. One that comes to mind that I think highlights a lot of the different things that anyone who sits in a hiring role, whether you're a recruiter or a hiring manager, tries to avoid is, you know, that candidate that interviews really, really well.

00:13:25 And says all the right things and gives off all the right vibes, but then can't actually do the job. And so although we see this all the time, we hired a cook on the college campus that I worked at. We tiered off the cook level so that we can compensate people with more advanced skills at a higher level. And so we had a cook one, which is more entry level. A cook two can maybe take certain things and do them on repeat. And then the cook three was the highest level skilled position where basically anything the chef writes into the menu, you're supposed to be able to actually prepare yourself. We hired a gentleman who on paper was very qualified, had served as a cook in the armed forces for what he told us was years and done all kinds of dishes.

00:14:11 And again, just great interview, said all the right things. We're excited because it's hard to find good culinarians, especially, you know, in a place like ours where it's not big city, lots of numbers to pull from. And very quickly realized that he could not cook when he was not able to make scrambled eggs for breakfast on day one after his training. You know, no matter how we tried to spin it, like, well, maybe they didn't eat breakfast in the armed forces. It was just we had to do some introspection of, you know, as much as we want to place blame on this candidate. There are some systematic failures on our end where we did not actually verify his technical skills more than we were impressed by.

00:14:55 Dang. That's good. That's interesting. Verifying the technical skills. Never thought about that. Yeah. Yeah. In culinary. Yeah. You're like, you know, you can say, here, take this test for Excel. Take this for whatever. Sometimes you've got to get in the kitchen and you like some food. Hey, bro, I need to make me some eggs. Yeah. It's like, eggs? How do you make scrambled eggs? I don't know. I feel like I see it. I mean, I can see, you know, when you go to, when you go to, when you go to, um, like a nice restaurant or especially in like hotels, they always do such a great job at nice hotels. There's something about the way they cook their eggs. Yeah. It's just, it's just real. But I don't know. It's like, I don't know. I mean, it's not like at home where it's dry. And, but it sounds like you didn't know how to just make any kind of scrambled eggs. I don't know. I feel like that's like, there's like toast, hot pockets.

00:15:38 I don't know. I think there's an art in making a scrambled egg. A good kind. If you made it like you do at home, you're like, eh. Yeah. I'm going to be, remember, you're, I'm going to be paying $18 for these two scrambled eggs. That's true. And expecting to, you know. The Gordon Ramsay style has like the butter and all that kind of stuff. I don't know. But it is interesting. Like, how do you verify stuff for that kind of job? Because I feel like we always talk about background checks and job interviews. And you think, okay, somebody's sitting in an office. But it's like, okay, you need to verify the skills for cook jobs and chef jobs and like. Yeah. On, on site jobs and things like that. It's like. You need to. I had that job before. So. Verify the skills somehow. Yeah.

00:16:18 All right, Emma, what's up? Okay. Let me scroll. That was what? I have to scroll. Okay. This is a story that was submitted to us. Oh, nice. They wanted to stay anonymous. So I won't be saying who it is. Keep this anonymous. Marcus. Was it you? No. It was not Marcus. All right. A few years ago, when I was working at a very small biotech startup, I hired a lab assistant. The role was straightforward. Basic bench work, inventory management, and general lab upkeep. We found a candidate with an impressive resume, strong relevant coursework, and a master's degree. So we brought them on. Like many small startups, we didn't have HR. So all hiring and performance evaluation fell on me.

00:17:01 Not me, but the person that submitted the story. You submitted the story. Not me. On their first day, they disclosed that they were neurodivergent and proceeded to sit at their computer for the remainder of the day. The neurodivergence was definitely not an issue, but the job required activity on the lab floor. Bench work isn't strenuous, but it is hands-on and requires being physically present. From the start, I had to repeatedly prompt them to step away from their desk and engage in training. Any task I assigned would be completed as quickly and poorly as possible, followed by an immediate return to the computer. At first, I assumed this was a communication issue, so I focused on building more structure and support. I created an improvement plan with a daily schedule, step-by-step written instructions, and tasks broken into hourly time blocks.

00:17:45 Despite these efforts, I could rarely get more than three or four consistent hours of work from them before they disengaged and returned to their desk. There were also gaps in Microsoft Office skills, such as Excel, which made all of the computer time even more difficult to account for. Well, early on, I realized they were working a side job during work hours. I addressed this directly, explaining that this wasn't an appropriate use of company time. Their response was that they had nothing to do, quote-unquote, despite having responsibilities assigned by the hour. On another occasion, they stepped away from their computer and left explicit fanfiction visible on their screen. Oh, jeez. I nearly lost my mind. I followed up with a firm professional email and a serious face-to-face conversation, but by then, I was already burned out from trying to do both my job and theirs with very little guidance.

00:18:36 Eventually, we got acquired, and I jumped ship for another company. Oh, wow. The new hire was eventually terminated when my former coworkers realized there was no amount of structure that could salvage this person's performance. Yikes. A very hard lesson for me on paying attention to job fit at least as much, if not more than, as qualifications. Yeah, yeah. That's tough. Okay. That can't get worse. Help me out here, because I have no idea, and I hope this is not bad. Okay. What is neurodivergent? Neurodivergence is like an umbrella term for somebody that has the same qualities of somebody with, like, autism or ADHD or something like that.

00:19:18 So, it's some type of spectrum? Yes. Is it? Okay. So, I'm just saying, yeah. Yes. For the sake of generalizing, is somebody... Yeah. Potentially on a spectrum. Yes. Yeah. So, that's a part of it, yeah. But, but it sounds like there's skill issues and things like that at the start, but it's also, like, just poor behavior, too, which is... Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's gotta be, uh, that's, that's, that, that makes something really more complicated. Yeah. Because when you're just trying to deal with, you know, how do I accommodate and best, get the best work out of this person, you know, that's neurodivergent or, God, that's on the spectrum somehow. And, which of this is just, just bad behavior?

00:20:01 You're like, you know, reading, reading... Fan fiction. Reading erotic fan fiction. Yeah. Yeah. That's not... It's a little different than not knowing how you excel well. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, I don't know. Dang. What's crazy is that she stuck with it. She ended up leaving, uh, before the, before the person did. Yeah, that's what's crazy about some of these stories is that some of them are, like, the Starbucks bags where it's, like, people are, like, fired like that. It's, like, something kind of small, like, oh, yeah, we fired them on the first date. Like, oh, that's kind of extreme. And then sometimes, it's, like, there's a lot that people go through and they, like, are never let go or it kind of depends on the person, the organization and things, like, how much people are willing to put up with and be patient through and things like that.

00:20:42 Do you remember the, you remember the story from a couple weeks ago where it was the, the girl was so sweet? And, yeah. She's just, like, yes. Do you remember the story? Yes. It was a segment and she was talking about how this guy, is this the guy that, like, didn't show up? Is that the same story? Where one of the ones we reacted to? Yeah, where, like, he's, like. He followed up a lot during the interview process. Yeah. But then when it was time for him to be hired, he just never showed up, but he went and started his own company. He just kept trying to renegotiate. That's right. Maybe I should be hybrid. Hybrid, maybe, you know. Oh, yeah. I just remember how. Yeah. And I was thinking about, you know, as a recruiter, just how invested they get in this, you know, they've been through an entire process. And you finally find the person. It's almost like, you know, sometimes you get embarrassed for other people.

00:21:25 Like, you're embarrassed and you're also. I think that must, you know, there's certainly an amount of frustration and sometimes probably embarrassed. Well, especially. Somebody just lets you down after you've done, put all the work in to do the recruiting. Well, especially in recruiting because as a recruiter, you're essentially like a professional. Like, you're vouching for this person. Like, you're like, hey, to the other people you're hiring for, whether it's you're an outside recruiter or like a recruiter for your own company. You're like, hey, I found this person. Let me vouch for them. They're going to be a really good fit. And they have all these skills. They're exactly what you're looking for. You're putting yourself out there. Yeah. Because then when it doesn't work out, it makes you look extra bad. So that's why it's extra. And another thing that stuck out to me during the story is listening to her describe what this job did.

00:22:06 And I'm always impressed by recruiters, especially when they get specialties or in some organizations where maybe they're hiring engineers. Right. And pretty soon they're, they, I mean, they know about engineering. I mean, they could, they could dig into the skills of an engineer. They know how to identify whether one's being honest or not. And, you know, they develop a real skill around that. And that's probably super valuable. Yeah. Yeah. But wow. She, she bolted. Yeah. Yeah. That's tough. Some real life stuff there. All right. Hey, well, I think that's it. Is that it? Is that it? I have another short one. I can save it for next time. Yeah. Do I do it or not? I can save it for next time. All right. Rock on. You do what you want. We got plenty of stories. Yeah.

00:22:47 All right. Well, that's it for us today. Thanks for listening to The Bad Hire. And that was fun. Please subscribe, rate, review, do all that stuff on the, side there to share the, um, uh, the podcast with you. We'd love to, we'd love to have more followers. Love to have more fun. Love to have more submissions. So remember you can win $10,000. If you submit us a story, it's picked as the best one for the year. We'll send you $10,000. There you go. So shoot your shot. Take it. Uh, follow us on TikTok. You're live on TikTok. That's right. Yeah. That's our first one. Submit your Bad Hire story now at thebadhard.com. All right. Nice. Appreciate it, guys. Bye. Thanks, everybody.