The Most Ridiculous Way Anyone Has Ever Quit a Job [The Bad Hire Ep. 23]

00:00:00 One day, we get a call from the gas station. They told us that we need to stop letting our people use their microwave to heat their pee. Then they hop on a golf cart and start driving around the facility in mascot costumes, flipping off every security camera they can find. 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

00:00:41 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. Hi, everyone. Welcome to The Bad Hire. The podcast where hiring disasters meet guaranteed firings. I'm back today with Nathan and Emma. Welcome. Hey, guys. How you doing? Hi. I'm good. You're good? Yep. All right. Ready for some stories. You ready for some stories? Yep. All right. Every week we dive into the wildest, the weirdest, and the most jaw-dropping hiring fails from offices, job sites, organizations, nonprofits, you name it, wherever, that bad hires happen.

00:01:31 So, you know, send it to us. Don't forget, we have a contest running this year. Send us your stories. That enters you into the contest. It should be a bad hire story. It could be a bad interview. It could be a bad first day on the job. It could be a bad, just a flame out after some period of time. Something. You know what you, you know those stories you love to tell. We think, we think everybody's got a story, especially in the recruiting and hiring business. Everybody's got a story, probably lots of them that you love to tell when you're hanging out with your friends. So, we want to hear those stories. People love to hear them. And so, send them in. Send them in to thebadhire.com. What we're going to do, we'll select the best after the end of the year.

00:02:13 The winner gets $10,000. All right? Nice. Sound good? Yeah. All right. All right. I've just got one today. But it's a couple little stories rolled into one. So, I'll kick it off. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. Oh, it's probably like a couple of like, oh, I hired these three people and this person did this. This person did this. Maybe. I don't know. You're predicting my stories? This is the story of the greatest job exit I've ever heard. It's a good intro.

00:02:54 You like that? So, as a recruiter. So, I, as a recruiter, place a guy in a role. Not just him. Him and his best friend. Oh, no. I'm kidding. Always a bad idea, probably. Same company. Same contract. And it's perfect. They love the job. The company loves them. Everybody's winning. You're thinking, all right, this is what hiring is supposed to look like. Fast forward to the end of the contract. The company extends both of them full-time offers. Like rollover offers. Basically, we want you here permanently. Right? That's a dream scenario for everybody involved.

00:03:35 The only catch is that the rollover process is taking a little longer than they expected. And this, okay, so this was over 10 years ago. Right? So, it's in the middle of nowhere. Right? Court records apparently weren't online in that location. So, the background check literally required someone to go pull paperwork by hand at the time. So, the company's working on it. So, I guess they're saying we didn't do one previously. So, they were just contractors before. And we didn't screen our contractors before we sent them to you. So, the company's working on it. But these two guys decide they're done waiting on their background checks.

00:04:17 And instead of asking HR, instead of being patient, instead of doing anything remotely normal, they choose complete chaos. So, they somehow find where the company stores the company mascot costumes. Okay. We didn't get one of those. What kind of company is this? They put them on. Then they hop on a golf cart and start driving around the facility in mascot costumes. Flipping off every security camera they can find. They park the car, walk off the job, and are never seen again. I'm about to sound like our comments on our videos right now.

00:04:59 That is not real. They were days away from full-time offers. And they chose an all-time bad hire accident. Just to not wait for two days, they blew up their careers. There's no way that actually happened. If this was you, we need you to comment. Oh, yeah. That was me. If you submitted this story on Reddit 10 years ago. No, no, no. I think you said it was 10 years ago. If you submitted this story on Reddit and said that it happened 10 years ago, please let us know if it's actually real. We want to know if this really happened. Yeah. Like I said, instead of doing anything sane or normal. Here's what happens every time we say, that can't be true, right?

00:05:42 Or I don't think this one's true. That's probably the first one where I've been like, there's no way that's true. All the other ones are believable. There's been a couple more where I was like, okay, whatever. I think that's the first one for me. You know which one really got me? It was the one where it was like, hey, we changed the rule book, you know, the employee. Oh, that's true. So the guy said, I get three warnings. Right? Two points and twice. You know? And I was like, okay, I think that's like. I could believe that one. That's like some folklore HR story that gets told, you know? It's like a joke. Yeah. It's a joke. Right. But every time you, every time we say, oh, that can't be true. There's like always someone that says, no, I had something exactly like that happen to me.

00:06:22 Which is also crazy. It's like this unlimited. And that's what's been wild about all the ones getting submitted to us. It's like, okay, well, this person, I guess, could be like submitting a completely fake story to try and win the contest. I guess you could do that. But this sucks is somebody's lived experience. I guess so. Maybe we should verify it somehow. But it's not just pulled from Reddit. I guess some of these are pulled from Reddit and stuff like that. But yeah. That's crazy. Sorry, Nathan. They sound very dumb. All right. I've got one quick story. And then we've got a couple video clips of stories that people have been submitting their stories and asking to be a guest on the show. But when they're in some other state far away from where we record here in North Carolina, I just pulled them onto a Riverside clip.

00:07:04 So we record on Riverside, just like Zoom. So if you do have a story and you actually want to be on the podcast as a guest, we can't make it to our studio in North Carolina. Just hit us up and we'll have you. And at the very least, we've posted a couple of full-length episodes of like the full recorded virtual episodes. But at the very least, we'll like take your stories and have them here on the show. So anyways, you got a couple of those too. But first, I've got one quick story. Okay. At my company, we had a drug testing facility that we sent our people to that was about five minutes away from our office. One day, we get a call from the gas station that shared a parking lot with the drug testing facility. They told us that we needed to stop letting our people use their microwave to heat their pee.

00:07:47 Because somebody had heated it so long and it had turned black and they had to evacuate the gas station due to the smell. So that's the whole story. So I guess people were trying to cheat on their drug tests because like when you do a drug test, they'd see if it's warmed because you can't just like bring in somebody else's pee. Right, just the temperature testing. And so people were trying to cheat by sneaking over to the gas station, microwaving the pee and then sneaking back into the drug testing facility. Yeah, so they're taking a sample with someone who's clean. I have never been into a gas station that has a microwave. Where are those gas stations at? What? 7-Elevens, they have like the hot dogs, they got the pee, it's all right there. You know what this tells me about you?

00:08:28 It's just like someone always goes and gets your stuff for you. You're absolutely wrong. You're in the car and you're like, can you get me, you know, a coffee drink and a hot dog. I'm not going in by myself. Especially not this one. Stay away from this gas station. There is a microwave in every gas station. I have just never noticed. At least every 7-Eleven. To be fair, I don't really eat there. So I don't think I've ever used it before. But I have walked past it. I think you have to work in construction to eat there. For sure. I mean, they're like... Is that a dig at construction? No. No. No. If you go into a Circle K... Circle K's have like turned it into a deli.

00:09:12 Right? They have like the 89 cent burritos, which are amazing. But initially they started building like where you can get hot dogs and they started building other food stuff. And you know, a lot of construction, a lot of outdoor, you know, where you might be dirty. Right? So you're not going to go sit in a restaurant. Maybe you don't want to run through a drive-thru. You can come here. You can kind of load up on, you know, your energy drinks plus grab something to eat. I've been into gas stations where obviously they're like... I've been to gas stations before. I've been... Obviously I've been into gas stations. I've pumped gas before. I've been into gas stations where like they have like the warmers in there with the food on it.

00:09:53 Is that what they're talking about? Taquitos and stuff. Yeah. Is that what they're talking about? Adjacent to there. Yeah. So you're right. They got the taquitos and the pizza. I've got like a 7-Eleven or something like that. But then we're kind of around the corner. Some places have places like the little thing you can pump your own nacho cheese. They're nachos. And next to that is like the microwave for like, again, like the frozen burritos or something like that. Marcus eats there all the time. Right? Yeah, he likes it. I mean, it is. I've just never noticed. Yeah. That's not the first spot I go to where I go into a gas station. It's all going to midnight. Year round. Like all day, 24 hours. For the last time my buddy was in town, we ended up at one like at midnight. Sounds fun.

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00:11:18 All right. Well, sorry. Okay, Emma. My bad. Wait. So we're going to do a couple of Riverside Reacts? Is that right? Sure. We're going to do a couple of Segment Reacts. I don't know. I call these segments. I don't know. Come to a segment on the show. Talk to a producer. We'll interview you. This is an episode with Steve. Steve is amazing. He's one of my favorite guests I've talked to. He's out in Los Angeles. Cool background. Yeah, he has a very cool background. I think we might post more of his clips on our social media and stuff like that, but this is one of the stories that he told me. It was a kid who came in looking for a tech spot, and he literally went from high school to a 90-day coding camp. He never went to college, never got a job, never worked anywhere.

00:11:59 Straight out of high school, three-month coding camp. I had an interview with him. He wanted $140,000 to start, and this was eight years ago. And even today, that's a starting salary. I think 140 is probably on the high side. And I said, look, I'm not doubting that you're able to do this, but you've never had a job. I said, I don't know how you're going to be as an employee. You have zero references. You have zero experience. And you look good on paper. You check all the boxes regarding software development. But I just, in good conscience, I can't hire you right now. And I said, look, the other thing you should be aware of is when you come into an interview, it's going to be slanted towards the employer. You're there to kind of serve their needs initially, at least. Yeah, they're going to compensate you, but that's the balance. You do the work, they pay you.

00:12:40 And it can't be the first thing out of your mouth is, what are my days off, or can I work certain days from home? He didn't know. And again, I didn't hold against him personally. I was just trying to help him. But I said, straight out of high school, and you have zero experience with a work, and the money you're asking for is pretty healthy. I said, I'm not going to hire you. I might hire you at half that. And maybe you can come back in six months or a year when you've got something under your belt, but I just can't do it. It was shocking to me. That's where we are. And this is LA, and it's kind of the tech stuff. But again, your choice as a company, as a hiring person, to bring somebody on your team, you don't always have to say yes. Okay, there's a lot crazy in LA, but that's crazy. So at 18 or maybe even 22, I guess.

00:13:20 Expecting that much right out of high school is just insane to me. Yeah, I did a three-month coding camp, and I'm good. I'm going to be in the top 2%. Thinking that in three months is enough is also crazy, because I did a lot of that in college, and it's still difficult. I like Steve, but he did say the kid checked all the boxes. I'm like, wait. He's just out of high school, and he went to a three-month coding camp. Yeah. Maybe $140,000 a year. On paper, it's like, do you know how to do this? I know how to do that. Do you know how to do this? Yeah, I know how to do that. That's one thing to say. But what's your experience? It's like, oh, I did a coding camp I found on YouTube. Yeah. I'll take the job now. It's one thing to say, oh, yeah, I can do that. Now, we actually have hired developers out of both.

00:14:03 We actually ran an experiment one time and hired out of a coding camp and out of a four-year degree, a university degree. And I think we found out they were both talented, both could write code, you know, in the end. So, you know, I think it's up to the student, you know, that might be looking for a four-year experience and opportunity to grow. And learn a lot more than just, you know, compress into. And if you're actually able to, like, prove your abilities to them. Yeah. That's probably. Yeah, there's something about going to school that says to me about someone, I'm capable of getting up, going, you know, going to class, getting things done.

00:14:46 Not only in subjects I love, but in subjects I don't. Right. That's a huge one. If I love coding and I go to a coding boot camp, like, man, I just landed in the stuff I love. I was like, but, you know, work every day is not exactly stuff you love. Yeah. You still got to get it done. You still got to get an A on it. Yeah, and it's like, not that I know anything about coding, but I imagine that having some years under your belt of actually doing in the real world, like, for an actual company, would probably speak volumes to somebody who's hiring for something like that versus. Definitely. I know how to do that. If you're going through, like, a coding camp, you probably have certain prompts that you have to go through. So I feel like it's very organized as compared to, like, if you're in the real world and doing some type of coding, then it's going to be different every day compared to what you're doing if you're just.

00:15:31 Doing a simple little, you know, prompt. Yeah. Yeah. Doing a prompt in camp or, you know, even. So what's next? What do you got? I got one more story with Veronica, who's also in hiring. And she was telling me about a story who did not go as planned, I guess. I'll leave that as the lead in. Okay. I guess that's how they all are. But this is Veronica. I had this great candidate who absolutely nailed the interview process. You know, great energy. Super personable. Asked very thoughtful questions. You know, the type of candidate that you're in a meeting, you're in a call, and everybody gets off and it says, okay, when can he start? It was that great.

00:16:12 We made an offer. Accepted immediately. He stayed in touch with me throughout. And we tend to hire a couple months prior to their start date because we have firm start dates. I was surprised and actually liked that he stayed in touch, constantly checking in during the background check, excited messages about his start date and generally pumped up to be here, to be joining the team. Fast forward to his first week of work. I get a message from his GM, the general manager, that stops me cold. He's like, he's missing. He's not late, not logged off early, but missing. He hadn't showed up for training for two days straight. And so I'm thinking, that can be right. You know, the GM asked me if I heard from him.

00:16:53 I said, no, unfortunately, I haven't. He didn't text me or anything, which was already strange. Then the GM, the general manager, drops the next bomb. They reached out to his emergency contact, his mother, and she hadn't heard from him in two days either. He even says that she filed a police report. At that point, you know, it's no longer a hiring issue. It's more of a human issue. Months go by. We don't hear back from him or no updates. We eventually reopened the position. One day, months later, he got the best of me. And I said, let me just do a cool Google search because I found his name. I was like, let me see if I can find some information. And there it was in a newspaper article. Smiling, featured, promoting his brand new business, inviting people to join him in his new big endeavor.

00:17:40 And it was at that moment I realized something. Sometimes candidates don't ghost you. They vanish and rebrand. I was so confused. How interesting. How interesting. She told me that story and I was like, what? Like he disappeared and then just kind of came back. His mom fought a police report. Oh, I started a business. And then months later, he's like, oh, here he is. I had a startup now. Two days of training. Well, no, there's two things crazy, right? Two days of training and he realized, oh, I don't like corporate, bro. Yeah. I know. I'm sorry, my own deal. I'm going to be. Ghosted his mom too? Yeah. What could he have started? I don't know.

00:18:20 Some kind of tech startup about vanishing and disappearing from the world, I guess. I don't know. That's very strange. Isn't that weird? And then to the ghost, my mother, I'd have had to been disappeared for like three months for my mom would have considered calling the cops. Yeah. Like, I've heard from him. I've heard from him. He might be dead. He must be busy. Yeah. His mom called the cops after two days. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a man. I mean, my mom would. I'm telling you right now, that's, well, that's someone who's connected to their mom. If you've learned your contact. You're talking like two, three times a day. She's in. Like, I didn't hear from him. But the second day, she's like, oh, this is a cop matter.

00:19:03 My son, they call me. That's the line. He's probably dead. Yeah. It seems like. What's your mom? It seems like. No, no, no. How often do you talk to your mom? What? Every day. Every day? Well, yeah. I kind of have to. Oh, that's right. Yeah. I guess so. That was. Okay. I kind of have to. She literally said, she literally said the other day, if, if she was ever like on a game show and the question was, you have to call one person and if they pick up, if they pick up the phone, you win like X amount of dollars. She said that she would call me. Oh, really? Because I would always pick up the phone. That's great. Is that true? Yeah. It is? Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's. And if I don't, I'll call right back. It's 1249 on a Saturday night.

00:19:47 I'm most likely awake. You're hanging with your friends. Yep. Right? Downtown Charlotte. Mm-hmm. Boom. Phone rings. Yep. It's your mom. I would immediately answer because I would think something's wrong. She's never up that late. Okay. Wrong time. Let's see what. It would make me think something was wrong. So, of course, I would answer the phone. Let's see what she has to say about that. She'd be like, where are you at? What are you doing? She's got my location. Oh, okay. She's here. Yeah. She's in the middle of downtown Charlotte. She's worried. No. What about your dad? Let's see what she has to say about that. She's actually here around the corner. He would be worried. I don't know if he would be worried if he, if he could see where I am, then he's not going to call and say, where are you? Right. Yeah.

00:20:29 He's not going to waste his time. My kid stopped sharing their locations with me. So, something would happen to you, I guess, like your mom would call the cops after? Yes. A day. After two days. It is. How long would it take her? What do you mean? How long would it take her? To call the cops? Yeah. Probably a day. One day. One day? Yeah, probably one day. So, you're twice as fast as? Yeah, probably one day. You're twice as fast as our brand ambassador there who started his own gig. Like, that was very random. I mean, the fact that you'd ghost your employer that you're talking to is like one thing, but like your family doesn't hear from you and you're like, oh, I started a company. Yeah, for someone who was so, so like really all about it the whole time, it would feel like you're like, it'd be so easy to go to the GM and go, instead of just ghosting the

00:21:11 guy, just be like, you know what? After two days of training, I realized this isn't for me. Yeah. You know? Yeah. You would think you would speed up. I'm going to rent a Lamborghini and pretend it's mine and go on social media. Yeah. See if I can get a, yeah, you think you would speak up after like, after she said he had followed up multiple times throughout the whole hiring process. Right. What she said was a month long thing, months long process. Yeah. Cause she said that they would, they would tell them like their start date is, will be months from now. There's been a couple stories where like the company, someone ghosted them and the company actually got worried. I think we were talking about the other day. I was like, what a good culture of that company. I think their first response was to be worried for the person.

00:21:51 Yeah. You know? Yeah. To do a wellness check and, you know. I don't know. I think anytime we have a story on this show about somebody ghosting somebody, that always seems like the most relatable one. Cause I think anything in the recruiting and hiring world that has to do with ghosting and like just never hearing back from somebody you thought was going well on either side, whether it's like the candidate or like the employer. Happens both ways. All the time. And I mean, I've, I've been there before. Like I was looking for jobs. Like, oh, this is going so well. Like I nailed that interview and you just like never hear from them again. I ghosted you. And I think. That's why, that's why I had to follow it back. I showed up at your doorstep. Like, hey, about that job. I ghosted them. He stalked me. Got my Lamborghini. That's so funny.

00:22:32 All right. It was up today. Is this you? Oh, Zimino's? Yeah, I think so. Okay. All right. I've got two stories. I'll start with this one. I haven't reread this one before beginning this episode. So I don't really remember. So we'll see how it goes. We'll see. So we're expecting a lot of stumbling with long words. Maybe. I don't know. We'll see. Today I had to fire an employee who was with me for almost exactly a year. I have a team of 14 employees. We had several verbal warning conversations in different iterations, and I saw improvement at first. Recently, we had some major issues with them arriving late, running behind with clients, and charging inappropriately.

00:23:16 We had a written warning meeting, which was met with a lot of defensiveness from the employee. For context, it's a hair salon. Today I asked them if they were going to finish their client in time or if they'd be running behind. They assured me they'd be finished on time. They were a full half hour late for their next client and charged the first client, who they had spent seven hours with, incorrectly. I had my manager meet at work, and we met with the stylist and let them go. They acted surprised, but we reminded them of every meeting we had leading up to it. Frankly, I was very sad to have let them go, but it's not sustainable. The morale has already been low, and I know this would be a big blow.

00:23:58 It's a small team, and several of them are very good friends with the person who was just fired. I'm not sure how to show up for the team to let... Wait. See, now I'm already struggling. To let them know this really shouldn't have been a surprise for the person who got fired. I know I have to be vague. I don't want anyone to be worried about their job. And then it just ends with the question, any tips for getting morale up and making sure the team still trusts us? Wait. To go back, was that a seven-hour haircut that they gave? Yeah, no kidding. It doesn't have... I think for you, that's... It was probably a color, some type of color.

00:24:38 Seven hours? I would tell you that I don't think that Emma's surprised at all. They're just like, no, okay, yeah. Seven hours? Is that true? That's true. Sometimes hair appointments take really long. It depends on what type of color you're doing. Definitely, if you're bleaching it, you'll probably have to go through it several times because the first round of bleach will probably make it look yellow and orange. Well, you can get a cut, and you can have to have your hair... And then you can have a cut. You have your hair... And then styled. Your extensions put in. Yes, and that takes a long time, too. That takes a long time, yeah. And then they probably... They're pulling them out. They're doing your hair, and I guess... And then they probably style it, which also takes a while. Then they can do the dye, whatever, the color. And then... I just imagine sitting in the hair chair for a nine-to-five, just sitting there, just

00:25:20 working on my head the whole time. That's a long time. Yeah. Wow. It happens. I miss that. It takes like six minutes of your haircut, I think, right? Yeah, I would just be at the sides and get out of there. Yeah, that's crazy. Oh, gosh. All right. My next story, you ready? Yeah. Okay. All right, let's hear it. All right. We hired a senior engineer, let's call him Bob. Bob. Based on a long resume and one repeated claim. Whenever we asked how much of a project he'd done, the answer was always, all of it. For a small company, that sounded perfect. But once Bob started, things unraveled fast. Oh, no. Bob. His code wouldn't compile because he insisted header files were optional.

00:26:02 Quote-unquote optional. In hardware reviews, he'd randomly reroute boards and add components just because. Months in, he still needed constant help with basic tools and his simple code task turned into a total rewrite that made everything worse. That's when we realized something was off. Later, I met one of his former co-workers who casually mentioned he had written all of the code at Bob's startup. Turns out, when Bob said he did all of it, he meant he told other people what to do. Gotcha. He's manager. Lesson learned. Always ask what all of it actually means. Yeah. That's good advice. So, what'd you do? Oh, it's all been done. It's been done by somebody. Yeah.

00:26:43 Yeah. What did you do? All of it. Yes. I have watched people do it. Yeah. Yeah. We've had that. Remember the story where the real similar, the guy was supposed to be a coding expert and he was like, well, I had seen people do it. Yeah, I've seen others. So, I assumed. Oh, yeah. I've seen some TikToks about coding. I know all about it. Yeah. A three-month boot camp. Yeah, I could get it done. How much stuff? I'll figure it out. I did the whole thing. Yeah. That's also a common theme where it's just people overstating what they know how to do in one way or another. Yeah. Like, they either completely make it up or they delegate it. Bro, go on Reddit and read some of these threads for people who talk about getting jobs and they will straight up tell you, oh, just lie and say you can do it all. Yeah. Once you get there, they can't fire you.

00:27:26 Yeah. Just lie. Yeah. No, they can't. Here's how I lied on my resume and got the job. Yeah. Wow. It's right. That's crazy. It's nuts. Yeah. I don't know. All right. Always ask what all of it means. How much of that, how much of the social media are you doing now? Do you know all of it? How much of all of the social media posting are you doing now? All of it. That's what Emma does. All of it. We were saying last time, if you see a snarky reply to your snarky comment, that's Emma being snarky. That's Emma doing all of it. Yeah. That's right. All right. Well, that's it for us today. Yeah. That was good. That's fine. We've got some stories. It's good. It was quick. All right.

00:28:07 So thanks for listening to The Bad Hire and please subscribe. Do that. You can subscribe to us, rate, review, share it, watch it. We're watching our engagement kind of grow every month. It's kind of cool and fun to watch. And don't forget, you know, your story could win $10,000. So submit it at thebadhire.com. Yep. Check it out. Come do a segment on the show like we saw today. We've got those kind of stacked up now and let's get you on the show to tell your story. But, you know, that's it for today. Appreciate it, guys. Thanks, everybody. Bye. Bye.