The Most Unqualified Hire We’ve Ever Seen [The Bad Hire Ep. 34]

00:00:00 He is 45 minutes into his first day and he's Googling what his own job title stands for. He believes the manager is trying to poison him. Oh, I stopped working at two o'clock. That's when my day ends. This is The Bad Hire, the show with the best stories about the worst employees. We fired him, of course. People are crazy. It's like an HR nightmare. Right? One bad hire stole all of it. Crazy stuff. She got what she deserved. Oh. I'm your host, Ken Monroe, and every week we dive into real-life stories from the wild world of work and what can happen when the wrong person gets the job. These stories aren't just crazy.

00:00:42 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 with the best stories about some of the worst employee experiences or employees. Thanks. I'm back today with Morgan. Hey, guys. And Corey. Hey, hey. Bro, welcome back, bro. How many times have you been on it? You've been on it like twice? You've done it like two shows? This is my second time. Oh, this is. Yeah, yeah. Well, he did two episodes the first time. Yeah, he did two. So, third episode. Third episode. Second time. Yeah. Same day, though. Yeah, yeah. Gotcha. Good stuff. Okay. Long filming day, dude. Yeah. Glad to be back. Welcome back. I encourage everyone to look Corey up on TikTok.

00:01:27 Oh, God. I love it. I do. I love it when you guys have a creative outlet. I think it's cool. I think it's cool. Thank you. I do. I love it. In fact, if you, you know, however I can help. You guys can follow me on LinkedIn. I don't have TikTok. Oh, man. So, you guys are okay? Yeah. Doing good. Work good? Yeah. Every day's a holiday. Yeah. You're having fun, aren't you? I am. You're having fun. I love that, bro. Corey's having fun at work. Yeah. He's working hard. I left here last night, like, I don't know, late. And I walked out and Corey was still, he was still going at it. I was going back and forth.

00:02:08 Yeah. It was awesome. That's what happens when you have California as your state. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I also have Hawaii, but we're going to have to be up until midnight for that one. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. That's, yeah. So, hey, listen, you guys know the drill. We dive into the wildest, the weirdest, you know, we try to find some jaw dropping stories. So, just some fun hiring fails, you know, like OG kind of flame outs or first day burnouts, you know, whatever it is. And, you know, we tell the stories. And I guess, you know, we're just trying to have a little fun. Hiring is tough work. And finding great people is a hard business. And so, recruiters should be and talent acquisition people should be applauded for the hard work that they do every day.

00:02:54 And they do have to deal with a lot of experiences like this. So, I don't know. We hope they have fun. And then we've got this $10,000 contest going. Hey, if you've got a story, if you're hiring people, I know you've got a story, right? Everyone's got a story. So, if you've got a story, submit it to us. Go to thebadhire.com and submit the story. All right? You can let us know that you want to do a segment on the story. We're happy to do that. We'll let you tell your own story or read your story, whatever it is. But at the end of the year, we're going to select somebody to win $10,000. So, write your story, submit it. You know, heck, shoot your shot, as Morgan says.

00:03:34 Yeah. And so, let's, you know, get that done. And we'd love to see it. Love to have you on the show. So, and, you know, I think so many people, I love the ones that are submitted by recruiters because I think they resonate so well with other people. Like, people are like, oh, yeah, I've had to totally. Sure. It's no tell. You know, I think, like, on every story, you know, there's people out there that go, I totally. We just had a crazy submission, I want to say, last week to the point where I was like, this is so niche that I'm like, I can't even believe this happened to somebody. So, hopefully that ends up in one of these episodes here soon. I don't know if it might get flagged, but it was crazy. Well. We love those, though. So, please send them.

00:04:14 Yeah, keep sending them. It makes us laugh. Yeah, thebadhire.com, submit your story for a chance to win. Yeah. All right. Get it done. All right. Here we go. I've got one here. I had it. Here we go. This is submitted. It is anonymous. But this is still for the money. All right. Okay, cool. All right. So, I had an employee who submitted his resume via email and we interviewed and hired. There were no red flags in the interview or any initial interaction. So, no red flags at all. Okay. He's paired with his field manager and they began working together. And on day two, he believes the manager is trying to position him through his water.

00:05:01 Oh, wait. On day two, he believes the manager is trying to poison him through his water. Yeah. He then believed every day that someone was breaking into his car and spraying bleach on all his stuff, including his sealed banks. This then escalated to him believing he was poisoned by airborne drugs, leading him to go to the hospital. So, I, HR manager, stepped in with investigations, of course, but he had no proof that his manager was doing it. During that sit down, he explained to me the matrix, voodoo, karma, and spiritual debt, among other things he explained to him.

00:05:49 This conversation went on for an hour. I then decided to put him on a new site with a new manager. He then believed that all the managers were spiritual entities trying to harm him. And that this new manager was trying to kill him with heroin. After five trips to the ER with inconclusive results, he was put in a 72-hour hold. He then quit. No one has been poisoned before or after his employment, his four-week employment. That person might have mental health issues. I don't know. I think this story is sad.

00:06:30 He might have, like, schizophrenia or something. Yeah, I think this story is sad. That's what it kind of reads. It's certainly not funny, but it does let you know what you have to put up with and the types of challenges you have when you're an HR professional. I mean, this HR professional is listening to all of this. They're going to accept it. It sounds like she didn't judge. She, you know, the HR person, I don't know if it's a man or woman, then moves them to a different site with a different manager to try to, you know, maybe it has something to do with the manager. And so, you know, then it's, you know, then it's, well, it's all managers. Yeah. And, you know, I had a similar situation in my career where an employee who believed we were poisoning her.

00:07:19 And she believed, yes. Wow. She believed we were putting things into the air that were near her desk to blow chemicals onto her. And she just was on and on about, she was having these health problems and health issues. And, you know, she smoked laborious through the whole day. And, but she, you know, she was having these breathing issues and she was blaming it on us for that. So it got. Did she like actually believe that or was she trying to get compensation? No, no, I think she believed it. No, I think she believed it. Wow. I think she was just mentally ill, right? And so we actually hired a.

00:08:02 Investigator. An investigator or a company that does air testing and move this air testing machine where this guy monitored it for and next to her cubicle for multiple hours, paid a couple thousand dollars to have it done. Holy cow. Wow. And, and to show her, you know, hey. Hey, you're good. And it still didn't work out for her, you know, in terms of she just couldn't, you know, break through that thought, you know. That's really sad. Yeah, it really is. And, but, you know, we were, we did, you know, we were just kind of following HR team's rules, you know, or their idea. Hey, let's verify because if let's make sure there's not, we're not putting chemicals in there. Let's make sure there's not some chemical.

00:08:44 Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, and she's got a hypersensitivity to chemicals. So we, I mean, we, you know, attempted and, but it's a great story of just the challenges HR faces. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and what they have to deal with and that, you know, hoping they got, you know, this person help. Yeah. They, you know, ended up in the hospital. For sure. Good stuff. HR can be heroes in a lot of ways. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's really all you can do in that situation too. Yeah. 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.

00:09:27 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. Go to B-Checks.io. That's B-C-H-E-X dot I-O. All right. So, oh, I've got, I've got a Riverside. Oh, this is Matt. Yeah, we have a Riverside story sent out. I love, I love, I love Matt, man. He's from the South somewhere. I love his, I love his accent.

00:10:09 He's, he had another story in a different episode that I saw, so, or maybe one that's coming up. There's a girl who was hired by the manager of that store about two weeks prior to me showing up. And she was hired in sales, and she seemed like a nice young lady from speaking with her. But day two of me being there, the office manager comes to me, and she asked if the girl had asked for time off yet, which she hadn't. And I asked why, you know, why did she ask that? Apparently, she had mentioned to somebody in the office a Vegas trip in two weeks that she was going to be on for a week. And she'd also been looking up plane tickets for it for the trip on the work computer and left it up so other people could see.

00:10:50 So, like, it was pretty easy to track that down. She did come to me at the end of my first week, and she asked for the time off. And it did line up perfectly with the Vegas trip, but she claimed it was for a medical procedure. After she claimed for the medical procedure, the dates line up. I'm like, I need you to bring in a doctor's note. Since you're going to be out and you just started, you know, I need a doctor's note to file that so I can get that time off approved for you. So at that time, she said, yep, I'll bring it in. My mom's going to bring it in this afternoon. That never happened. You know, Monday rolls around to the next week. She was going to bring it in. She can't find it. A few days go by, if I'm not mistaken, it is the Thursday, the end of the week where she's supposed to be gone that following week. And she brings it in on that Thursday. It is a very obvious fake.

00:11:31 It has several spots that were photocopied to make the header footer. Only part of the signature and the doctor's name was even on the paper. So I relay all this to my supervisor. And after hearing back, we decided it was best to go ahead and terminate her employment at that point. I've never heard of Vegas being a medical center. I mean, like, you know, there's a lot of places that I'm like, oh, yeah, that's a really popular place to go get a medical procedure. Vegas is not one of them. Right. Yeah. I didn't know Blackjack could heal. Yeah. Maybe that's it. She was looking for therapy. Maybe that's what she wanted. Yeah. Yeah. That might be what it was. It was actually therapy. Yeah. Going on a spiritual journey.

00:12:13 I need some fun therapy. When I watched that, I was like, you know, the second story in a row where I was like, man, HR folks are just dealing with it every day. Yeah. You know, like, it's like right off the bat, hire somebody and you're like, hire them, you know, and then immediately watching them come off the rails. That's, that's, that's, I don't know why you would search plane tickets also on your work computer. Like. Say that. Yeah. Unless it's a work trip. Like, I, I don't know. It's kind of crazy. All right. I don't know. I would, I don't think I would care if someone was planning their vacation. Yeah.

00:12:55 Took a few minutes at work to look up a, look up a ticket. Yeah. Well, if I knew I was going to lie about it. It's just a lying. Yeah. That's the issue, right? If I knew I was going to lie. I'm going to be in the hospital next week. Excursions in Vegas. Yeah. That's a little different. Best casinos to go to while in Vegas. All right, Morgan, what do you got? All right. Post-surgery, best casino to go to. Anyways, my story today is, so I worked at a midsize firm and we've been searching for someone to head up a project management office for months. We were talking to a stack of res, or we're talking a stack of resumes a mile high. After all that, we finally landed on a guy. Let's call him Brandon. Oh, Brendan.

00:13:36 Okay. I'm just gonna say Brandon. It's easier. Brandon Seavey was frankly immaculate. Leadership roles at three different companies, decades of experience in the field, glowing references across the board. We were genuinely excited to bring him on. He starts on Monday morning. We fill him in with a welcome tour. We walk him through the team and hand him his laptop. The whole nine yards. Around 10 to 15, he mentions that he's going to step out for his first coffee break. Now, a coworker happens to be at the same coffee shop. He spots Brandon in line and walks over to say hello. Brandon is on the phone, mid-Google search, and the screen is right there in plain sight. He is Googling, what is PMO? To be very clear about what that means, PMO, project management office, is the entire

00:14:17 role. The entire thing we hired him to lead. He is 45 minutes into his first day, and he's Googling what his own job title stands for. The coworker takes a photo, walks by to the office, and shows the boss. We immediately dig into the references. Every single one of them were fake. By Wednesday afternoon, Brandon is being walked out of the building three days in with a total tenure of about 51 hours. And his last act in any official capacity was Googling what those three letters meant. We should have a contest. We should have a contest, like, for the... Because that's two stories that list of the total hours. We should have a contest for, like, the quickest... Fires? Yeah, like, the quickest.

00:14:57 This one was 21. We had one of those as crazy. That was, like, 30 minutes, right? When it was, like, the guy who was, like... I think it was, like, a developer, and he's like, I won't read a woman's code or something. Wasn't that, like, a really quick one, too? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm trying to think of some crazy ones we've had. Yeah, yeah. Kind of first day flame-outs. I don't know. Yeah, there's been a lot. Well, I have a second story today, too, actually. I run a convenience store, nothing fancy, just a couple of registers and a lotto kiosk, the usual setup. We bring on a new clerk, and her first shift gets off to a pretty uneventful start for about 15 minutes before my phone pings with a notification from the security cam app. I open it up, and there she is, behind-the-counter, scratching off lottery tickets. No customer lottery tickets are lottery tickets.

00:15:39 No way. The ones that had not been purchased yet. I keep watching because, at this point, I genuinely have to know how this ends. She is hunched over with a full stack with a coin in hand, completely going to town, not even attempting to be subtle about it. This goes on for 20 solid minutes before I finally get in my car and I drive over to the gas station. When I walk in, she doesn't even notice me because she is mid-scratch on one of the tickets. I tap the counter, she freezes, and I just look at her, and I say, How's day one going? I'm like, she goes, fine. And I told her, she didn't work here anymore. The really sad part was, I checked the pile after she left. She didn't even win. You got Vegas in one store.

00:16:21 I know. Seriously, I will guarantee you that's not the first time this happened at a place who's done that. Because you would think, like, hey, I'll just start scratching until I hit the winner. And I'll be able to pay off all the cards and make some money. Oh my gosh. I know, like, a lottery ticket or a scratch-off. I mean, I've never done it before. So, like, I mean, are they the same thing? The lottery tickets, you buy numbers and you got to watch and the numbers come out. That's what I was going to say. And you get to match the numbers. Scratch-offs are, like, you could win a dollar, two dollars, five dollars. There's tons of scratch-offs. Yeah. I was going to say, was she, like, watching the TV to see if one of the numbers hit?

00:17:01 Or was she just, like, the lady? The manager? Yeah. Or no, not the manager. Well, no, no, no, no. When you do the scratch-off. She's doing scratch-offs. That's what she was doing? Because it's a lot of tickets. Yeah, so she's doing scratch-off. She said, scratch-off. So, you scratch it off. If you get, like, three-managing, four-managing, you could win. It'll tell you. Win one dollar. Win two dollars. You know, it's, it's, it's, and so you're, like, you know, or win nothing. Yeah. Right? So, maybe you buy five cards, you win two bucks. Yeah. Right? So, you know, or ten or twenty dollars. But, you know, the cards cost you twenty-five. So, you lost five dollars in the deal, right? Yeah. But if you were to sit and go through a ton of them. Yeah. You might stumble on the card that's five thousand.

00:17:42 Well, it sounds like she didn't win anything. So. No. Yeah. Dude, those things are a rip-off. Deal. I was one away from, like, twenty thousand. They played me hard, man. Oh, my God. I'm sweating. I was like, one more? Get my hopes up. That's hilarious. Oh, gosh. All righty. Well. What do you got? What do you got for us, Corey? I believe this story is going to be similar to your first one. Oh. And, like, how quickly can you get fired? Oh, cool. Okay. So, I manage a small office and we bring on a new admin. She came across really well in the interview. References checked out. The whole thing. Solid hire on paper.

00:18:23 Which I feel like everyone's a solid hire on paper. Yeah. Am I right? Day one, I sit her down with our senior admin to go through training. Pretty standard stuff. The calendar system. The ticket queue. The phones. Around two o'clock in the afternoon, the senior admin comes into my office. Closes the door behind her and tells me she thinks we have a problem. I ask what's going on and she says the new admin just stopped paying attention mid-training and has been on her phone ever since. So, I walk out to her desk and ask if everything's okay, letting her know we've still got a few hours of training to get through. She looks up from her phone and without even a hint of self-awareness says, Oh, I stopped working at two o'clock. That's when my day ends.

00:19:05 I just stare at her for a second. I said, I'm sorry. What? And she said it again. Completely calm. Like this was a perfectly reasonable thing to say on your first day of a job. Now, the job description said nine to five. The offer letter said nine to five. I'd personally walked her through the schedule that same morning. So, I remind her that we work until five and she looks at me and goes, well, that doesn't really work for me. I told her she could go. She seemed genuinely surprised and asked like for the day. And I said, like forever. Who works to two o'clock and your job is standard nine to five. That's why Dolly Parton wrote the song nine to five, not nine to two girl.

00:19:49 We have so many stories of like people who are like bailing. You remember the one guy who doesn't show and then he's like, well, can I leave early? And then by the third day is like, can I go hybrid? Yeah. So, so basically my, my takeaway from that is Morgan and I are good to go at two today, Ken. Yeah. That sounds good to me. Yeah. You know, my favorite line in there, what you said in that story was, uh, you, and you said something about, it was like, uh, it's a solid hire on paper. And you're like, well, isn't everyone like day one on day, but before they started, everyone was, I was a solid hire on paper. Everybody's resumes are pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. I want to get a t-shirt that says solid hire on paper.

00:20:32 There you go. AI isn't a little fat, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Then, then, then day one came. Yep. Wow. I don't know. At least her references checked out. The other guy's references were all fake. So, Hey, at least she was being honest. That's gotta be like super challenging, like to, to just incredibly frustrating. You know, you, you get the role. Clearly there's a startup. It's hard. You got a training thing to go through. It sounded like they had a training class, which means they had to do multiple people. Yeah. And so now on, on day one, you got somebody who's like, after you told them over and over, it's nine to five, they're like bailing at two and you got to start over.

00:21:14 You know, you're just ridiculous. I mean, just like you just, it's gotta be incredibly frustrating when you're like, I, I, I don't even know where to begin. Yeah. It told you nine to five, told you it was still five o'clock. Yeah. You know? It's so weird. I don't know. I mean, Hey man, that's it for us today. That was a, those were good. I appreciate it. We got, we heard a lot of stories around, um, uh, over the last couple of shows around resume fraud and all that. And, um, so I thought they were good, but, um, you know, I, I forgot to, um, I forgot to mention, did I mention at the beginning of the show about the $10,000?

00:21:55 I think you did. Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, you can always say it again. Yeah. $1,000 up in the line guys. We appreciate you listening to the bad hour. Listen, subscribe, rate, review, uh, share, whatever you could do. Um, we appreciate the follows and the followers were, uh, it's actually growing, um, shocking. Um, we just, you know, just continue at it. Uh, and, and don't forget we could win $10,000. So shoot your shot, send your story in. Um, we'll see what's up. So, um, you go to the bad hour.com to do that. And, uh, and you can say, I'd, you know, maybe you want to do a feature or a segment where we do what we do with Matt. Love, love to have them, love to have you do that. So it'd be cool. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So, uh, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Thanks guys. Thank you.