She Took the Job Just to Meet Men [The Bad Hire Ep. 49]

00:00:00 Yeah, men. She took the job to meet real men. Before I can finish the sentence, he says, is this about the restraining order? Bad hire. I mean, bad hire. They steal, then they badmouth you on the way out to try to cover up their tracks. Yeah. This is the bad hire, the show with the best stories about the worst employees. We fired him, of course. People are crazy. It's like an HR nightmare. Right. One bad hire stole all of it. Crazy stuff. She got what she deserved. Oh. I'm your host, Ken Monroe, and every week we dive into real-life stories from the wild world of work

00:00:40 and what can happen when the wrong person gets the job. These stories aren't just crazy. They're cautionary tales about lessons learned the hard way. Let's get started. All right, guys. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Bad Hire, the show with the best stories about the wild world of work, whether it be first-day flame-outs, OG burnouts, or bad hires blowing up. I hate when you say OG. Why? Because. You hate it when I say OG? Yeah. You want to say vintage? What do you want to say? Vintage love? Vintage. Is it just overuse, you think? Yeah. Is that what it is? I feel like it's a little. Word. Don't say that either.

00:01:22 Since it's old and OG. And word is OG. Word is OG. Thanks for listening. See you next time. That's like the greatest ever. I do that to my daughter all the time. We have Gen Z versus Gen X. Cool slang. Word tops all. So let me introduce you. This is Emma and Kyrie. Welcome, guys. Emma, you're an OG on the show. Wait. Kyrie, tell me about what's up. You work for BeachX. You're a coach over in our sales team.

00:02:04 He's been on the floor. Yeah. I think it's your second time. It's my second time. All right. Yeah. We're glad to be back. I don't know what took so long. Sorry. Yeah. I don't have to bring you back. Sorry. It's all about the views, baby. You're right. You're right. Yeah. Congrats, Emma. We're doing well. Somewhere between two and a half, three and a half million views a month now. Wow. Famous. Isn't that crazy? No, no. That's a thimble full of effect. But we're doing good. We're doing better in the first show. That's for sure. So it's been, it's been up since day one. So great job, Emma. Yeah. Filming our one year next time we film.

00:02:46 That's right. Wow. It's been that long. It has. Yeah. It has. Yep. And the year doing this really are no G or that's for sure. Right. All right. But you know, the drill every week we jump into the wildest, the craziest stories. We read them. They're shocking. They're, they're crazy. They're unbelievable. They're stupid. They're stupid. And, uh, and, and, and redeeming. I like the redeeming ones. I like the ones, but, um, um, but that's what we do. And Kyrie, tell me, listen, I was going to follow up with, uh, you know, so you, you, you know, I didn't let you answer, but you're doing your coaching. You're on the sales side over at BeachX. Yeah. Yeah. Just working on the sales side. Um, and it's going well. Yeah. We're educating a lot of people.

00:03:27 Good stuff. We were reading today that, uh, earlier that like 90% of companies already have, already have a background screening company, you know, so they're already background screening, which means they already got a background screening company, which means 90% of the people you talk to already got a vendor. True. So what's up with that? Uh, yeah, I mean, it's true. Just about everyone that we talked to has a vendor. How do you win? With education. No. Uh, because we found that the majority of the people who have a vendor don't know exactly what they're getting. Yeah. That's true. Or why they're getting it. We did that industry satisfaction survey and, you know, it turns out that, uh, this, this

00:04:10 industry is interesting. Overwhelming lack of loyalty, lack of satisfaction with providers. But because of the providers are built into the workflow, they'll sit, they will stay because of the heartburn to potentially think about moving to a different vendor. Exactly. So I'm sure that's one of the things you've got to, you know, make people, you know, uh, ensure them of that, that a transition is going to be, uh, going to be easy and worth it. Right. That they improve in service and all that's going to be worth it. So, but I wanted to ask you about your singing. I've seen your videos. I follow you. What's your, what's your channel? What's your handle?

00:04:51 What platforms you on? I'm on Tik TOK. I'm on Instagram under Kyrie makes music. Is that right? Yeah. Kyrie makes music. You know, you did something so cool. And by the way, I've listened to Kyrie makes music. Look it up, check him out. Cause he rocks. He's really good. He's really, really good. That's how I met you. Do you know that? Oh, is, is that right? Yeah. I met you the very first time. Cause you're married to another employee here. Right. And we did some event and I didn't know it, but the talent was you and you were singing. That was the first time we met. Yeah. And I met you there and I didn't know at the time that we were going to end up working

00:05:34 together later, but it was a couple, it was a year or two later and we, you were just, and then you were just attending the event as, yeah. We call that an invisible string. That's it. A what? An invisible string. How's that? An invisible string is something that ties you to somebody else without you knowing. Oh yeah. Okay. I didn't know that. Music. We tied in. We like it better. So, so that's how, but Kyrie makes music. Check it out. It's, it's fun. He's good. And you did something though that I thought was the craziest thing. It was like the greatest thing ever at a trade show. You know what I'm talking about? Yes.

00:06:15 So, so you go, I'm going to, I'm going to semi tell the story and then you can kind of take over, right? Tell it. Cause we, we go to this trade show all the time. It's in our home state. So we had a lot of customers there. Um, really unfortunate for any competitor that comes in the space. Cause we really completely do dominate because we do a good job. And, um, you, you, so at the end of the trade show, you know, you've got a chance to speak for like two minutes, right? They give it, they give the sponsors ability to speak for like two minutes. You just introduce yourself and you had the entire crowd stand up and sing with you. Yeah. We got, you got to send a clip and we'll run the clip. Can you do that? That would be cool.

00:06:55 On the show right now? Yeah. Not right at the second. I'm talking about posted in, posted in and post production. Like let, let everyone see him leading several hundred people at the end of a trade show. That was cool. It's on our LinkedIn. It is? Yeah. Okay. We'll figure it out. Put it in here. So people can see it. I just thought it was the coolest thing. I was like, what's so good. What's great about our brand is that we really do feel like we're different. Dealing with us is different. So I know, I know this is off the subject of the bad hire, but I'm, I'm, I'm having fun. Everyone was getting up there saying the same thing and no one in the audience was paying attention. Right. Like you could literally hear chatter. And I was like, when I get up there, I'm going to try to get everyone's attention and make sure that they don't forget us.

00:07:40 Right. And that they, who's going to forget that, that guy from B-checks made, you know, a couple hundred people sing together. I get the first time ever. I get DMs on LinkedIn about that to this day. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. I don't know. Great job, Carmen. I'll go for the clip after this. Do what? I'll go looking for the clip after this. Thank you. All right. Hey, so let me get this started. So we got some stories here this week. I think we got a couple, maybe a couple guest segments, video guest segments. We'll see, we'll hear some people tell stories, but so let me, let me get, let me get started. So we hire a new, the receptionist office supply spree.

00:08:21 Is that what this is? The receptionist office supply spree. Check this out. So we hire a new receptionist who interviews beautifully. Happens all the time, doesn't it? They look great on paper. So they interview beautifully, warm experience, great references. The outgoing receptionist who handles, who handled her training is genuinely pleased with her. So no red flags, all going in, nothing. Her first independent day starts well. She arrives early, rearranges her workspace, seems settled and comfortable. She mentions to me that a few things would make her life easier. A pop-up post-it dispenser. Oh, that's low cost.

00:09:02 Some, some clipboards for candidates. Great. For filling out paperwork. I tell her, absolutely go ahead and order what she needs. You can just see it coming, can't you? Oh, no. She had ordered an expensive new, she, later that afternoon, I got an email from our office supply vendor flagging a large order for my review. Thank goodness for the office supply vendor who sent it in. She had ordered an expensive new chair for herself, a side desk, a lamp, a coat rack, a computer stand, an ergonomic keyboard, a light-up bathroom mirror, pink glitter pins, a pink chair cover,

00:09:46 a footrest, it keeps going, framed artwork for the wall, a pink fuzzy rug, 20 bags of candy, a candy dish, an assortment of fancy lotions and soaps with matching dispensers. These are just the ones I still remember. The invoice was several thousand dollars. Where is this desk? Is it right when you walk in? Let me just tell you, I love her initiative. Oh, yeah. Shout out to her. She just turned the experience of walking your lobby into a wow moment. She's got candy. She's got a coat rack. She's got a fun ski rug. She's got soaps for the bathroom. She's got a rug. I mean, she's doing it, right?

00:10:27 This is initiative. Now, maybe she should have asked, but she was like, hey. Hey, order whatever you need. It could be. He did say that. And that was the first mistake. I show her how the, I assume it's an accident and go talk to her about it. She confirms it was fully intentional. She explains that the chair hurts her back. The office is drab. There you go. The pins are blue and black. And the absence of a candy dish is deeply uninviting. Yeah, absolutely. She has the posture of someone who has done absolutely nothing wrong. She is a world-class receptionist. She's showing it right off the bat. This is what reception is.

00:11:09 She recognized drab. This is my life. This is what I did. You hired a receptionist. You want her to act like a drone. She act like a receptionist. I show her how the, so she has the posture of someone who has done absolutely nothing wrong. I show her how the chair adjusts. I let her, I tell her she can keep the special pins, a couple of bags of candy. I explain that corporate has a specific aesthetic, apparently drab. And I, and it does not include pink fuzzy rugs. Boo. She has a complete meltdown. As she should. And leaves. They were not ready for her professionalism as a receptionist.

00:11:49 The next morning she shows up as if nothing happened. And I have security turn her away. Double boo. Yeah. Really? A few months later, she lists me as a reference for a new job. I tell her I'm not comfortable being a reference. Why? He could absolutely say her level of receptionist expertise was above what we needed. She was overqualified. She was overqualified for the drab office space he was wanting to project. Just say I messed up and told her she could order whatever she wanted and move on. Yeah. Just say. We love a receptionist with main character syndrome. Yeah. I mean. We love it. We love it. It was. Oh my gosh.

00:12:32 I'm, I'm all for it. I don't know that was a bad hire. I don't think it was. I don't think it was. Maybe the manager was a bad hire. I think the manager may have been the bad hire in that one. Yeah. All right. So here's, here's next. A new hire, a new hire quits after leaving. There are zero men. Oh wait. After learning. A new hire quits after learning. There are zero men in the office. Oh. Sorry. I like that. So I worked in the catalog department of a library for about six years. It's a quiet, it's a quiet gig. No public access. I don't have to deal with the public.

00:13:14 Just, just staff. Just the specific rhythm of small, of people who love categorization. And, and, and those people who hate noise. We, we're a small team. We knew each other well. And new hires were rare enough that when we got one, it was generally an event. We make, we made a real effort to make everyone feel welcome. We get a new hire in, get her settled at her desk, show her the system, start walking her through the work. She's been on the job about two hours when she looks up from what she's doing and asks with complete seriousness, where the men are. Where are the men at? Where are the men? You can't make this up.

00:13:56 I process this for a moment. Men? I say. Men? Men. She says, yeah, men. She took the job to meet real men. There was a long pause. A quiet gig? You'll find no men at a quiet gig. There was a long pause. We were cataloging. We were cataloging department in a library with no public access, just staff, almost entirely, apparently entirely, almost entirely women in a quiet room full of books. There were no men within whatever radius she had apparently calculated when she accepted this position. She stood up, gathered her belongings, and walked out.

00:14:40 No conversation with HR. No formal resignation of any kind. She simply determined that the situation was not what she had hoped for. What about the job description made her think she was going to meet men there, is what I wonder. Men can work in library. You know what? Shout out to her, whoever she is. That's progressive. Yeah. It's progressive mindset. Get up. And I appreciate it. Yeah. I thought about her for years. This story is not what I was expecting. Because when I read the headline, I thought, I figured it was a man who went to work there and was like, there's no other man here. Right. And he would feel like, okay. It was the exact opposite.

00:15:22 So I've thought about her for years and honestly, not with judgment, not really with judgment, more of a kind of wistful admiration. Hmm. She knew what she wanted. She assessed the situation. She determined it wasn't there. There were no men. And she left without wasting anyone's time, including her own. The approach was progressive. I take back what I said earlier. I respect it. She knew what she wanted. Yeah. Don't let your job stop you from finding your husband. That's right. Okay. She knew what she wanted. I take back what I said earlier. Good for her. Nice. Good on her for leaving. I guess.

00:16:04 She really felt that it wasn't the place for her. I love it. Whatever. Good for her. Before we dive back into the chaos on the bad hire, this episode is brought to you by B-Checks. Hiring shouldn't feel like rolling the dice. Background checks should come with great tech, seamless integration, and customer service that delivers. That's B-Checks. Lightning fast results. Unmatched accuracy. Built in fraud prevention. We help you hire the right people. Now, B-Checks plugs into over 100 HRIS and ATS systems. So your background checks run smooth, fast, and backed by top-level service. Protect your team. Protect your reputation. Protect your sanity.

00:16:46 Go to B-Checks.io. That's B-C-H-E-X.io. All right. We got Isaac Gordon coming up as a segment. We got him on video. There's Isaac. Oh, he's soup. So, so. Yeah. That's his LinkedIn. The drive link for the video is underneath the blurb on the document. He owns a booking agency. He does. So, with, he's got 30 years in, uh, in leadership, uh, in the entertainment and media industries. I'm sensing a hook up here, Kyrie. Kyrie. I need to do some shows. Music booking agent. Yes. Kyrie music booking agent. Yeah. Um, uh, he's a seasoned talent agent and the founder of Breakpoint Booking, a premier boutique

00:17:30 agency specializing in the development of, of road tested talent. Uh, uh, I'm, uh, take issue with road tests. I can't have you on the road all the time. All right. It's like road, semi road tested. Yes. Isaac is a, he's a dedicated advocate for, uh, artist equity and is actively networking with, um, with venue, um, agents, meeting planners and independent promoters to define the next era of live entertainment. So he's kind of got a kind of a cool job. I met with Isaac. Isaac, this clip is him kind of giving not really advice, but like some trends that he's seen while being in this industry. And then we have another clip from him later on where he just like shares the actual story

00:18:13 that he, that he has. So he's going to talk about some trends first and then later in another clip, we'll see it maybe a bad hire story. Yes. Okay. Let's check out Isaac. And the other category that I see are just people that think that they, this is what they want. And then when they get into a job, any job, but in particular talent agent position, they realize it's not. And the way that they realize is they just don't spend enough time on it. And for those people, I sympathize because I think that they get in way over their heads. They try to make it part of repertoire of other things that they have going on instead of really focusing on it. And I think that they really leave a lot on the table by that.

00:18:53 So for that, I sympathize with them. I wouldn't call those bad hires, but I mean, I wouldn't call them good hires either. So I guess they got to fall in that category. I'm sorry. Because he was, he was talking about, there's two, there's two different categories that, that you see a lot. And there's some that he can sympathize with and some that he cannot. Those are the ones that he cannot sympathize with. And then. Well, the ones that don't put the time in. Yeah. Yeah. It want to try to add it to it. Yeah. I'm a, I do this. I do booking age book. Yeah, man. I'll tell you, I'll just take percentage of whatever I get you. Right. Yeah. Kind of willing to do anything, everything, you know, that to me is a, is you can make

00:19:33 a really bad hire because people have to hire booking agents. I don't care. You know, you, you hire booking agents. You could be a booking agent who's running an agency and you hire a sub agent and they could be bad. But, uh, would you choose someone, someone who's kind of not a specialist, maybe like Isaac, but it's just kind of, this is one of 30 things I do. Yeah. Sing a songwriter. Absolutely. Do that too. I'll write you a songwriter. Yeah. So. It's bad. Yeah. All right. Good. All right. So, um, that's, uh, we get, Emma, what do you got for us today? Okay. Here's my first story. It's called five minutes of unfiltered opinions, one live mic and zero awareness.

00:20:15 Oh boy. Oh no. Ready? Here we go. So we're in a staff meeting, 15 people in the conference room, the rest of the department dialing in from other locations and the boss running things remotely as one of the callers. She's about 10 minutes in covering performance expectations and process changes. When someone joins late, hits a phone key instead of entering their name and fails to mute. What follows is five uninterrupted minutes of one person's completely unfiltered opinion of the meeting, the management team and the boss specifically delivered at full volume over an open line to an audience of everyone. And here's a quote from, from this meeting.

00:20:58 Yeah. It's another meeting with the old, with the old bag. Every meeting is literally useless. And then she, all she ever does is yap, yap, yap. She doesn't even understand our jobs. The other boss sitting in the conference room is audibly saying, you are not muted. Mute your mic. You're live right now. The whole time. So he's talking and he's not paying attention at all. I'm stuck on the old bag. Yeah. Yeah. The person on the other end either can't hear him, is on a separate call entirely, or has simply committed fully to the moment. The commentary keeps rolling in while the boss stops speaking and the room just waits. Finally, it stops and there's a beat of silence. The boss says very calmly, did you want to go on?

00:21:41 You have very strong opinions about me, it seems. Then there's a click and then there's an automated voice that says, so-and-so has left the call. Oh no. The man sitting next to me has been silently convulsing with laughter for the better part of three minutes, tears tracking down his face. The boss said, moving on, and resumed her presentation exactly where she had left off. And the person who had been unmuted was gone within the week, as you can probably imagine. Yeah. If it sucks so bad and you hate it so much. Yeah. It's probably the best that you're gone. I mean, I wouldn't want to be with the old bag either.

00:22:22 I love these, I love these stories like this because the whole time you just, like you have complete shame for the person, you know what I mean? What do you call that? Like when you're embarrassed for it. Secondhand embarrassment. Yeah. You're just like, oh no, no, please. I get that a lot. And there's been, that sounded like a little bit of an older story because it was on a conference call. Because that, I don't know, have you ever been on a conference call? You probably haven't. Like an old school conference call, were you dialed in? No. You remember when they said in that thing, when you hang up, it'd be like, Ken has left the call. Right? That used to be a thing in conference calls. It would announce you when you arrived. And if you hung up, it would announce that you left.

00:23:03 Right? So you didn't want to hang up in the middle of a call. Right? But Zoom has now turned that into video and the screw-ups stories. Gotcha. Gotcha. We could do a whole show on the screw-up stories. I bet we could do a whole show on the screw-up stories of just finding Zoom disasters where, I mean, listen, we see an dude fired over being an idiot on Zoom. You just can't recover from old bag. You know? No, you're dead. No, you're dead. Still stuck on old bag. Like, I'm just trying to imagine a world. She is not going to let that go. Keep your job. She was super cool. She's like, I'm moving on.

00:23:44 In the back of bed, she's like, oh, I'm going to show you old bag. I'm going to show you old bag. I'm going to whip your ass. Yeah. Yeah. That's why she's got to add OG to her vocabulary. OG is not offensive. Oh, goodness. My second story is the story from Isaac. This is from his experience in the recruiting industry. Okay, cool. One story I would give would probably be an agent taking advantage of a buyer overseas, saying that a client was going to show up, had no intention of ever booking the client, took the deposit, didn't even have the deposit go to the company,

00:24:25 had the deposit go directly to his bank account, which is totally against our company rules. Justin played it off as, oh, it was a mistake. That was sadly something that spiraled because instead of accepting what had happened for what it was, he then decided to go out and badmouth the company and say that we were treating him unfairly, which resulted in some people leaving some nasty comments on our Google page. Yeah. Isn't that how it goes? Yeah. Bad hire. I mean. People steal. Bad hire. They steal. Then they badmouth you on the way out to try to cover up their tracks.

00:25:05 Yeah. It's hard to trust. Would you do that? Would you do? Maybe you do something to just let them. We're just going to let this get out. I'm not going to turn. I'm not going to turn this over to the police. I'm not going to, I'm not going to go through all that. I'm not going to sue you. I'm just going to just want out of the relationship with you. Right. You're really not good people. And so you turn this and then they prove they're not good people even further by smearing you on the way out. I mean, that happens a lot. Yeah. You can go on the, you can go on the glass door and see a lot of negative comments. I, you know, I kind of, I, I think these, the comment boards are kind of rough for me in terms of, because you're super happy employees. Don't sit around and think about, I should go around and leave comments everywhere.

00:25:47 Positive about your company. So it invites people to, that are just upset. Right. You know, some people aren't meant for some jobs and some jobs don't work out for people. And so you're like, Hey, you know, it didn't work out either. You're not a good culture fit. Can't do the work. Not interested to do the work. Maybe you got bad habits. Who knows what it is? Why it doesn't work out, but you leave. And then, so you naturally, the person that leaves is angry and looking, I'm going to do a glass door and blow them up. So they go and write negative review and it doesn't matter what your ENPS score is, what your satisfaction of employees is. It doesn't matter how good you are to your people. There's still going to be some that don't fit, go out and then they do that.

00:26:28 And then it leaves you in this weird place as a company of saying, I, you know, Hey, good people of my company, please go write a review to, to, to counter what these people do. You know, and it's a weird, I've been in that place. It's a weird place. It's a weird place to be as an owner and building a business. That reminds me of this, this website called rate my professor and how we used a lot in college where people can literally just go on there and you can look up your professor that you might potentially take a certain class with. And a lot of students will leave reviews on that professor to say, Hey, definitely take the class with this person. They're a great teacher, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

00:27:10 And then some people will give them like a one star rating and be like, this is the worst professor I've ever had. Like, but that's, that's kind of so hard, right? So what's how's it's so hard to make everybody happy. It's impossible. It's, it's, it is hard, right? It's, I mean, it's, it's one of the things about review of background check companies, right? When you, you see, you do a million background screens in a year, right? And 0.01% of them, 0.01%, 99.99. Good. And those, that small amount goes out and just flames you online. Yeah. Right. 99.9%. You're, you're, you're doing, the, the experience was so uneventful, so perfect.

00:27:53 So a nothing burger, right? Which is really what a background screen should be gone and done. Right. Did you just say nothing burger? I did. Is that another old term I should say? Just let him have it. I'm sorry. I was going to let it, I was going to let it slide, but I just really couldn't. I had to say something. It was nothing. Sorry. Sorry. It's just goes, right? And so those people, they don't, when they finish that, they don't go, I should write a review. I should write a review. That was so awesome. It was just such an, it was just so easy. I should go write a review. So, you know, I, I, that's a good point. The more you do, the, the, the more you do and the more 0.01% of the people, right.

00:28:38 That are somehow, and let me tell you a lot of times it's the people who are affected by their background check. Hmm. What's on it. It's, it negatively affects them. So now they, they're mad at the background screening company. They're like, they, they, you know, they're terrible. So when I see that now, I think there's legitimate gripes for sure. Right. And I absolutely think there are legitimate gripes and, and, and believe in them. And, you know, if any come our way, it's, it's like a, it's, for me, it rocks my world. I'm like, what, what, you know, how did that happen? And I want to go fix it. And we have meetings over it. It's so, you know, it, it, it frustrates me so much, but, uh, at some point, you know, you, the bigger you get them, the more opportunity for someone to make a lot of racket over

00:29:21 in some, you know, but it's not, but in the overall scheme, it's not a big issue. We, we should definitely, I don't know how we ended up on this topic. Do you? No. Yeah. Me either. All right. What's next? Um, he said he badmowed the company. That's why. That's why. Oh yeah. Um, this is my last story. Um, this one kind of reminds me of a story y'all read on a episode last time. I think about the guy that shot his hand with a nail gun. Remember that? Yes. Just, you know, right through like sealed. Yeah. Right. Because there's a wasp. Yes. Yes. Yeah. He's trying to kill the wasp. Yeah. And he shot it on his hand.

00:30:01 Yeah. That just was, this story kind of reminds me of this in the sense that, you know, some people are just kind of stupid. Sorry, but it's true. You've been holding that stupid comment since the top of the, the top of the show, right? When she said, I'm stupid. I've been foreshadowing the whole time. Yes. She knew what was coming. This is, okay. This story is called The Forklift Driver Who Got Worse Every Single Hour. So I'm running a warehouse, decent operation, good crew. One morning, the owner's son walks a guy onto my floor without introducing him, without asking me anything, and just says, This guy is your new forklift driver. Okay. I put him on a lift and pair him with my best spotter, genuinely my best guy, someone I'd trust with anything, and send them out.

00:30:43 Less than an hour later, I hear someone yell, Stop! And then a very loud bang. He had backed the forklift into a pallet of merchandise. My spotter tells me he's been calling out the whole time and the guy just didn't listen. I bring him into my office, write him up properly since he damaged product, and tell him clearly that any more mistakes and he's off the lift and on a dolly. He says he understands and walks out. Ten minutes later, I hear a similar outburst like before. He'd backed the forklift into a wall this time. I take photographs, fill out a formal write-up, have him sign it, walk him back out to the floor, hand him a dolly, and put him on a picking team, which is the workplace equivalent of taking someone's car keys.

00:31:23 Then I go call the owner to let him know the new guy isn't working out. The owner pitches a fit and tells me to make it work. While I'm on the phone, I hear yelling from outside, then another loud noise. I tell him I call him back. I walk outside and there's a forklift lying on its side in the parking lot. He had gotten back on the lift and driven it off the loading dock. Stop. I got four of my biggest guys and had them walk him off the property with the clear understanding that if he came back, I'd have him arrested. Then I called the owner again and told him I'd fired his guy. And he went ballistic, right up until I told him what the forklift and the wall were going to cost. I never did find out who this guy was to him or why he was so adamant about keeping him on board.

00:32:08 Oh my gosh. We tell this story all the time, right? When the owner, the executive, when they break the process, when they got a guy. Yeah. It's definitely his son. It had to be his son. They skip the process. It's always, and it's not just always family. It's just like, oh, I saw this guy's resume or I knew this guy out of the industry. He's awesome. And they skip the process. Disaster. Yeah. I feel like it had to have been like a family friend or something because it said that the owner's son walked the guy onto the floor. Oh, this is you, you driver. So it had to have been like a family friend that they were doing a favor for or something like that. Yeah. But either way, some people are just.

00:32:52 Nice job. Yeah. Nice job. Nice job. Nice job. Nice job. Nice job with Isaac. I love the stories when it's not necessarily always HR or talent or talent acquisition or recruitment. In the smaller businesses, CEOs, owners, founders, they're doing so much of the hiring themselves and they have such great stories to tell. I think we had one of that one company that does social media SEO. You know, the CEO was talking about the positions he's hired and he's hiring critical positions. And so I always, I always enjoy hearing the stories from. Oh, from an owner's perspective.

00:33:33 So I appreciate, appreciate Isaac. He was cool. All right. Kyrie, what's up? All right. So I have a few. Alrighty. Walk on. First one's called the fake degree. Wasn't even the biggest problem. Oh no. Hey. So we hire someone who comes in with a 4.0 from the university of Georgia on his resume. Confident in the interview, said all the right things. Seems shark. We were excited about him. During the first hour of day one, he comes into my office and asked for a salary advance, not a paycheck and advance on his first day. I tell him no, and he takes it surprisingly well, which I noted at the time without fully thinking about what it meant. I give him a short writing assignment, nothing difficult, just something to see how he thinks.

00:34:17 Four hours later, he hands me back one sentence. One sentence with a spelling error in it. Something felt off. No kidding. So we ran the background check we should have run before he started. He had never attended the university of Georgia, not for a semester, not for a summer class, nothing. The 4.0 was completely fabricated. We bring him into HR, me, the HR rep and him. I'm trying to handle it professionally. So I'll start with something straightforward. We found something on your background check that we need to talk about. Before I can finish the sentence, he says, is this about the restraining order? Nobody.

00:35:00 He's told on himself. Oh, by the way, restraining orders are civil. So I wouldn't have shown up on a typical background check. So he completely outed himself. He can't make this. He's told on himself. Nobody in that room said anything for a few seconds. We didn't know about any restraining order. We were there to talk about a university he had never attended. And in the middle of that conversation, he had just introduced an entirely new piece of information that nobody had asked for. He was with us for two days. And in one sentence, he told us more about himself than the background check we should have run in the first place. Oh my gosh. Okay. But like, they did.

00:35:41 But like, why wouldn't you run it in the first place? Like you look on there and you're like, not run it. No, it said, no, it said they didn't even run it because they said that he had a 4.0 from the University of Georgia. And they're like, oh, great. Sharp guy. And then, and then he's too, he's too young to have gotten in trouble. Yeah. And then he, and then he gave back that one sentence when they asked him to write like that report or whatever. And they're like, maybe, maybe something's a little off here. Maybe we should do some. Maybe we should. If you're not going to run a background check, you're asking for these problems. I know. Yeah. You're asking for it. Yeah. Is this about my murder charge? It's like, what? Literally. Oh my gosh. This is about my restraining order.

00:36:24 Is this about the restraining order? Okay. So this next one is called the employee who left when she realized nobody would buy from her. So I used to manage a call center. It's a busy floor with not a lot of room for side projects during business hours. We bring on a new rep and on her very first day during orientation, she tells another new hire that she mainly took this job to get access to a new customer base. We find this out later. At the time, we're just onboarding people. Once she's on the floor, she spends the better part of her first week pushing her jewelry MLM to every single person she can get near. She has catalogs. She has a pitch.

00:37:05 She has the energy of someone who has been told no many times and has decided that this time will be different. Our handbook explicitly prohibited selling anything not sponsored by the company. Girl Scout cookies, fundraisers, everything. This was not a secret policy. It was in the handbook she had just received. Her approach to the handbook was to ignore it entirely. She was especially committed to telling people, I know for a fact everyone here can afford $5, which she delivered to colleagues who were actively on calls with customers. She would tell them to put the customer on hold so she could hand them the newest catalog. We explained the policy to her multiple times. She did not believe it applied to her situation.

00:37:48 She eventually left on her own, which I think was the moment she calculated that a floor full of people who had spent a week actively avoiding eye contact with her was not the customer base she had been hoping for. Oh gosh. I love it. Should have moved her straight to sales. Immediately. Shout out to her. That's great to say. He was like, she didn't know how to, she didn't know how to take no for an answer. She just kept going. It's like. They said she had the job. It's called working your base, right? That's right. Gotta work your base. I don't know. Good for her. Sorry it didn't work out, but you know. I don't know how I feel about that. I think, I don't know how I feel about those policies. I know HR's got to like try to manage that, you know, because I think it can get out of control. Maybe the bigger you are, the harder it is.

00:38:28 But, you know, you just get so rules driven, you know, you have to be when you've got, yeah, tens of thousands of people. I mean, I draw the line in Girl Scout cookies. Like no Girl Scout cookies. I mean, seriously. That's what we're doing. Right, right, right. You don't let. Right now our policy, I've never made a policy about it. I think there used to be a policy about it and I did away with it. And I just, I said, you know, I'm willing to let people, because friendships form right here. And so actually if someone asks me, I'm going to help because I want them to know I care about their kids. Most of the time it's about their kids. Raising money for their kids, right? Yeah. The kids sports. I want to help because I want to show that I care about the things that they care about, right?

00:39:10 You're a great boss, Ken. It's not about, you know, I only care about you when you're here, right? I care about you when you're here and I care about you when you're at home and I care about, you know, your ability to be a great dad or a great mom. And, you know, what I find is I grew up, you know, I had kids. They were involved in sports. We had to do all the fundraising, all that kind of stuff. And the reality is you spend all your time here and build your friendships around your work a lot of times. Yeah. Work at church and maybe other places like that. But if this is off limits and I make it wrongful for you to go and ask for help, I've just never really liked that policy. Now, I've never had anybody take advantage of it either.

00:39:54 You know, like make someone feel really uncomfortable for not buying their kids popcorn or whatever, you know. Yeah. But so it's part of that respect culture you want to build. Yeah. I respect it. You know, I want them to be able to, you know, I want to be able to support them, let them, let their friends at work support them. Yeah. You know, I don't know. That's how I feel about it. You got another one? Nice. Got one more. I wonder how HR people feel, but they probably think I'm crazy. This is called, you ready? Mm-hmm. Through the bathroom door. Oh. All right. A little ominous. So I ran a small IT outfit, on-site repairs, mostly home users and small businesses, the kind of work where you're physically standing inside somebody's house, which means the job is about 80% technical skill and 100% not being weird in a stranger's home.

00:40:45 We bring one in. Okay. I totally, totally agree. Get right to the point. I'm investing. I totally agree. I'm investing in the story. Have you ever had anybody in your house like that and the whole time you're like, oh yeah. Bro, something's wrong. They just give you like the creepy vibe? Yes. Oh, for sure. Absolutely. For sure. So we bring on a new technician who interviews fine and knows his stuff, so I give him the easiest call on the board to start. A straightforward malware cleanup at a client's house. I just want to confirm he can handle a basic job without incident. He shows up half an hour late, which I chalk up to traffic and move on from. That's nice. 15 minutes later, my phone rings and it's him. Normally when a tech calls in, it's a procedural question.

00:41:28 Do you want me to run this or that? You know, something quick. This was not that. This was him completely unprompted telling me at length how easy the malware was and how the client, the woman whose house he was standing inside, was, and I'm cleaning this up considerably, a complete moron. While he's talking, my other line rings. I put him on hold and answer it. No, I know what's coming. It's the client. She has been listening to everything he just said to me because he made the call from inside her bathroom and spoke loudly enough that she could hear him through the door. I tell her I'll handle it.

00:42:10 Switch back over and ask him as calmly as I can what he thinks he's doing, calling me from a client's bathroom to insult that client while she can hear him through the wall. I tell him to pack up and leave. Here's the part that still gets me. On his way out, he cried to her, told her she had cost him his job. He also demanded to be paid for the visit. I paid him because I wanted him gone more than I wanted the money. Years later, I put out an ad for a technician in that same region. Guess who applied? No way. Oh my gosh. You gotta love it. Dude. Imagine that.

00:42:51 You're listening to him and you're like. The job is so easy, but like she could have done that herself. She's stupid. That's great. Can you imagine clicking the button to hold to pick up the other? Yeah, hold on. I got it. It's like it's the other. It's the lady and you're like, oh. Oh no. Oh. It's the moron is on the other side of the door. That is funny. Oh my God. That's really funny. Man, but. Can't recover from that. No. No. There's no. The wild world of work. It's crazy. The crazy stories. But the nerve to cry. And like.

00:43:31 I know. Become the victim suddenly. I know. And say that she cost him his job. Like we. No. Call her. I'm a moron. I don't remember. I'm a moron. Probably did. I'm a moron. Oh my gosh. All right. Well, I think that's it for today, isn't it? Yeah. That's all. It was good. Yeah. That was fun. Nice work. Some good. Some good research you did. Good stories. Yep. Yeah. I loved them. Wow. So listen, we've got. As we wrap up, I want to remind you. This is it. This is probably the final. Well. I guess. It's time we film. Technically you could submit something. This will already be. Will this already be. Will this show already be done? By the time we do the annual show? Or can someone submit something now for the $10,000 contest?

00:44:14 That's what I'm asking. For these, probably yes. But the next time, no. Okay. So this is the last show. And which when you see it and I say, submit your story for a chance to win $10,000 for the best story of the year. This is it. Submit it. And, you know, if you watch us or listen to us, we know that we've, there's a bunch of folks who listen to us on social media. Um, if you've got a great story, tell the story, send it to us for a chance. I don't know what promotion we'll do next year. We hadn't figured that out yet, but it won't be giving away $10,000. So, um, we'll, we'll, we'll do something else, but submit your story.

00:44:56 We'd love that. So you do that at thebadhire.com. And I think you can also find the bad hire now on the BeachX website. If you. Yeah. If you type in thebadhire.com and a redirect to our page. Very nice. Okay, great. So you're good. You'll, you'll be there. You can see all the episodes. You can watch them the entire length. Of course you can find us on social media. You can find us on Facebook. Um, you can find us on, uh, Instagram. You can find us on TikTok. YouTube. LinkedIn. YouTube. All those at the, uh, the handle's always thebadhire. Is that right? Um, yes. Yeah. All right. So, uh, we appreciate you guys. Did a great job. Thanks. Thanks. You should get in touch with Isaac. Should. Yeah. But, uh, I, if, if you remember, I love, I love our team with talent.

00:45:41 And so all their talents aren't always here. Sometimes they're elsewhere, uh, as well. And we want them to, to, to have time for all of them. And so good luck with the, good luck with music. I'll be listening to you online. Okay. All right. Until then. Uh, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.