The New Hire That Catcalled A Coworker On His First Day [The Bad Hire Ep. 3]

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

00:00:47 guaranteed firings. I'm Ken Monroe, and I'm with Emma, Morgan, and Nathan. Welcome, guys. How are you doing? I'm good. Good. Yeah, good. Every week, we bring the wildest, weirdest, and most jaw-dropping hiring fails from offices, job sites, and organizations across the country. Some of these stories will be shocking, some of them hilarious, and some will make you double-check your own co-workers. And right now, we've got a big reason for you to send us your hiring stories, your bad hire stories. We're running a $10,000 contest. Just send in your best bad hire story for us to read here on the podcast. Funniest, craziest, most outrageous story. We'll pick the best one from the season, and we'll give that person $10,000. So, submit your stories. We want

00:01:28 to hear them. Write good, because we're going to read what you write when you send it in. So, we came here with some stories today. Does that mean that we're entering in to win this contest? No, you guys don't get to win. Oh, man. I don't know why we did it there. What am I even doing here? Oh, you thought that's it? Just kidding. All right. So, you can send in your stories, change the names to protect the not-so-innocent if you need to. But when you do submit them, you'll let us know who you are and what you do, so we can reach back out to you if we want to learn more about your story, have you on the show even to read it or be a guest, whatever it might be. So, let's get started. Who's got good stories? Have I got some? You want to read the first one? Yeah, I'll read it. Here's the first story. I had a candidate accept a job, drive two hours, check into the hotel they put him up for, and temporary housing. This was on a Friday.

00:02:12 Stay a week, then quit. No call, no show, the following Monday. Turns out, he ordered room service every day on the company's dime, bought movies on the TV, stole all the training manuals and stuff, and went back to work at his old company because, well, he never quit. He took a week's vacation from his old job. To order room service? Yeah. It was all worth it. I can think of so many other things I'd rather do. Yeah, that chicken parmesan at the hotel was worth it. Yeah. What hotel was this? Like, was it a nice one or like a motel? Days in with the frosted flakes. Yeah. It was all worth it. That's crazy. Interesting. That's a lot of process.

00:02:53 Have you ever charged? I didn't even think of that. Have you ever charged a movie under your company and just put it to your room and just? No, I haven't. I don't think I've paid for a movie not at a movie theater in 20 years. I don't think I've rented a movie or anything like that. Yeah. All right. Hear about this one. Back in 2012, I had a client ask my candidate. So this is a recruiter. Tell them something interesting about themselves that's not work related. Oh my gosh. To which the candidate replied, I like to make date rape drugs in my bathtub on the weekends. They said this where? In the interview? What? Yes. Yes. I'm hoping that was a joke. My strength is honesty, I guess, is what they were going to say after that. Yeah. Yeah.

00:03:33 That's insane. So the employer says, hey, tell me something interesting about yourself that's just not work related. And I like to make X drugs in my bathtub on the weekends. Wow. Sounds like Breaking Bad. I guess so. I was about to say, talk about, that's a real icebreaker. Yeah. Normally that's when you lie and say, I like to go run. I like fitness or not. I like walks on the beach. I take care of myself. Yeah. Every morning I get up at 4.30 to two hours in gym. You didn't even reframe it. It could have been like, I'm really good at chemistry. Yeah. I'm really good at chemistry. I'm resourceful. This was. Have a side hustle. Yeah. Well, fortunately, I'm betting they did not get the job. All right. So how about this one? Long ago, a candidate arrived at an investment bank for an interview with a beer and a cigarette

00:04:18 in his hand. Okay. He's just interviewed. I couldn't understand why they didn't go down very well for him. The bad interview. Yeah. This is for my break. Yeah. You got to have stories like that. Just people who just showed up for their interview. I don't know. This is my snack. Yeah. I think bad interview stories could actually be way funny. Right. I hope people will send some in. Well, I have some in my list for interviews. Yeah. We'll count those. For this episode. If you send in bad interviews, they'll be up for contention. Yeah. Yeah. I want the bad hire too. Yeah. I mean, they were so bad they couldn't even get hired. So, I mean, that's pretty bad. Yeah. That's how bad of a hire it is. Yeah. Who? The interview was just so bad? Yeah.

00:04:58 Yeah. No, there's like so many crash and burns in the interview process. All right. Someone sent in this one. A new engineer casually mentioned he had court-ordered monitoring of his online activity. Oh. Court-ordered. Who'd he say that to? I'm assuming he shows up to work and lets everyone casually mention he had court-ordered monitoring of his online activity. Turned out he was a convicted for undisclosed, you know, that was undisclosed during hiring, you know, immediate termination. I'm just, how does that get past the background check? Like, it's sentenced to. Yeah. By the way, I'm already being monitored. Yeah. Just so y'all know. This is small talk in the kitchen.

00:05:39 Thanks for hiring me. I got to be careful. You know, I have a VPN and other things. Yeah. Among other things. That's the thing is, like, I feel like a lot of this stuff comes in accidentally, like, when you're in a conversation. And that's how these companies find out these crazy stories about whoever it is. Oh, I was reading Reddit earlier today, and it was just an entire thread of, like, how to lie. People just like, hey, good for you, because they were lying about their resume. Yeah. And they were just, oh, yeah, no, I just made this up, and I made that up, and the company doesn't check. And literally just an entire thread of coaching, how to lie on your resume, how to, you know, add jobs, how to fill in missing gaps.

00:06:21 You know, I guess this was, maybe he read this on a, maybe he read this. It's crazy how open some people are about these things. Like, oh, yeah, just lie about this or lie about this. It's fine. It's fine. Let me share it to Reddit. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy stories. Yeah. They'll never know. I'm not sure I want to end on that one for me. Just need something a little more wholesome. Okay, we. Wholesome. Wholesome. Wholesome. Just not a convicted, you know. Okay. Right. I got you. Right. All right. We were in a rush to fill a key developer role for a critical project. The candidate's resume was impressive. Great technical skills, experience with similar projects, glowing references. The interview went well, and we were convinced we found the perfect match.

00:07:05 Once hired, things quickly went south. The new hire struggled to communicate with the team and often missed deadlines. Their work, while technically sound, was full of bugs and lacked attention to detail, the worst part was the negative attitude. They were resistant to feedback and often clashed with other team members. After several months of deteriorating team morale and project delays, we had to let the person go. It was a tough decision. Was it? It was a tough decision. They must have had a relationship with them. I mean, hold on. After months of struggling to communicate, missed deadlines, work that was full of bugs, full of bugs and lacked attention to detail. It was tough to let him go. Wow.

00:07:47 But they're good at their job, but they're bad all around. Yeah. It was a tough decision, but necessary to get the project back on track. What I learned is skills and experience are important. So is how someone fits in with your team's culture. Now we prioritize cultural fit during the interview process. Okay. All right. I like that. You think they would have thought of that a little bit going into it? Yeah. Cultural fit. Well, you know, you can think about a technical organization that's like so focused on skills based hiring that they're just like, you know, we need skills, skills, skills. And, you know, they don't really, you know, focus on that. And then, you know, they find out it's important. So. Then they get in there and they, everybody hates them and they hate everybody. And it's like, oh, this person's good at their job, but they're bringing everybody down.

00:08:30 Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. That's like the culture bomb. I think when you hire somebody like that, I don't know why it's so difficult to let them go. All right. So Nathan, what do you got? I heard you had a couple of stories. I got a couple of stories. All right. I texted them to myself. Okay. Here's the first one. You guys ready? Let's hear it. I worked in a coffee shop in a bookstore while the cafe manager was on vacation. The store manager hired someone without waiting for the background check to process because she was kind of in a rush, I guess the guy she hired kind of creeped everybody out, but it was a temporary position. So we figured we just waited out. Suddenly the store manager quietly let everybody know that he would be leaving without giving any more details, but he came in for his one last shift and he loudly announced everyone

00:09:12 that he had a warrant out for his arrest in another state and he would be going to jail. Oh, the cafe manager banned the store manager from ever hiring anybody ever again. I don't blame them. Good ban. You got to watch out for those creepy. I don't know why they let him come in one more time. Yeah. It's like, Hey, you know what? We'll just let you go quietly. And he comes back in. Hey, everybody. It should have been a sting. Like when he gets there, the cops are waiting. Come in for your last shift. Well, we recommend background checks. Yeah, we do. We recommend. That's why. Got the sponsor. Yeah, there you go. Right there. Beat checks. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. I got another one. Our new head of IT cat called a woman in the parking lot on his way into his first day work. Oh my God. And that woman turned out to be the head of research and development.

00:09:55 And he was fired before lunch. You know, the recruiter on that one was like, Oh my God, that didn't happen. I could have been anybody like cat calling anybody, but it happened to be the head of research and development. Well, it would have mattered who it was, but. Karma exists. Yeah. Karma exists. Yeah, that's true. Okay. Next one. Let's see. I had a sales rep and the company hired ghost everybody. He stole the company car. And eventually the car was found three states away with all the seatbelts cut out. And I never heard from him again. All the seatbelts cut out. Three states away. So not only was he a bad hire, but also he's not safe on the road. He's not even used to see. Yeah. So it's bad all around, really. Those are the ones I have. You probably sped too on Trofast or something.

00:10:38 It's like, no, being a bad hire, being bad for your company is one thing, but at least be safe on the streets. It's still the company car? Yeah. It was just, okay. The Toyota Avalon, whatever they had. Yeah. That's what it was taken. Ford Taurus. Emma? Yeah. Yeah. I've got a couple here. This one's a little long, so bear with me here. Waiting for it. Try to keep it PG for all the listeners out there. This one isn't a bad one, but I have a couple of maybe questionable ones. I once had this quirky guy working for me. Strange hippie dude. That's what it says. Strange hippie dude, but did decent work. He called me one morning saying he was going to be late. Whole lot of commotion in the background and yelling, and he hangs up.

00:11:18 I work construction, and some of us blue collars have other things going on in life. So I give the benefit of the doubt. So as long as you're here on time, sober, and not asking for your check early every other week, it's fine. So lots of leeway. Anyway, about two hours later, he shows up and has scratches all over his face and his arms. Scratches. I say, what happened to you? He then proceeds to tell me how he was peacefully sleeping, and his cat brought him a present. A squirrel. Mind you, apparently the squirrel wasn't quite dead, and the cat dropped it in his bed, and apparently the squirrel came out of its half-dead trance or whatever,

00:12:02 and just ripped his face apart and was tearing around the room when he called me. That's not his fault. Yeah, I'm saying. That's like an actual acceptable reason I went to work. How dare he get torn apart? I'm going to be late. I think it's crazy that y'all believe a squirrel did it. Who do you think did it? Surely, it definitely wasn't a squirrel. You never know. You think he's covered for somebody else? Oh, no. I think his girlfriend tore him to pieces. Dang. All it takes is one squirrel. I guess it depends on how big the claw marks were. I mean. Yeah. Pretty crazy. Here's another one. By the way, was that his first day? Yeah, it sounds like. I'd like to know how that story ends. I don't know. It doesn't. How long did that guy last, and how many stories did he come up with?

00:12:44 Because he started out with a crazy guy. He just said he called me one morning, so I'm assuming it wasn't his first day. Not his first day. Maybe there was other excuses before that one. Well, he said, yeah, okay. He said, didn't he say he was a hippie dude, and he did good work. Strange hippie dude. So he had been there a while. All right. Yeah. That would be a bad first day story, though. It's all nice to tell if you're going to come up with something to tell me about us. Make it outrageous. You got to make it outrageous. The squirrel got in. The cat lit him in. I don't know. It's kind of crazy. Yeah. Maybe it's more believable if it's crazy. Or if it's true. I guess so. I have another one. Here we go. A few years back, I made some changes to our employee manual, so I put a couple of copies in the break room for everyone to read if they wanted. The next day, one guy from the shipping department, who had worked there for over 10 years,

00:13:29 walked into the main office and punched another guy that he had been having a little feud with, punched him in the right side of the face, called him totally off guard, knocked him out of his chair and onto the floor. The shipping department guy then walks out of the office and then goes back to his job like nothing happened. Police were called, gave him a citation. I told him to grab everything and he was done. He got all upset because he had been reading the new employee manual and one part had said, if there was a problem with an employee, they would be verbally reprimanded, then suspended from work. And if it continues, they would be fired. He assumed he could punch the other guy in the face twice without being fired first. I think I at least get two, right? Three strikes, you're out. Yeah, I get two strikes, right?

00:14:11 So he was the one who punched him in the face and that he was the one who was mad that he wanted a little more grace. Yeah. Yeah. When he'd been working there for 10 years. What do you got to do to someone? Working there for 10 years, he's like, finally. That's a big feud. How do you make the shipping guy that mad? I don't know. The shipment off time, I guess. I don't know. I don't know why people would think, oh, this is all I'm going to sell in. I don't know. I'm really getting along with this guy. I'm going to go for the right side of his face. I'll read one more for now. This one says, My mom was a dentist for years. And when I asked what was the worst thing she had to fire someone for, she didn't disappoint. Over the course of about a month, my mom noticed that several of her patients were complaining

00:14:52 that the amount of oral anesthetic they had wasn't enough, even at the max amount, a.k.a. it really hurt during mouth surgery. She couldn't give any more anesthetic, so she got suspicious. A few hitting cameras later, she found out that one of her dental hygienists was stealing the anesthetic and replacing it with water. Water? She was injecting it with water. Who's going to notice? Yeah. That's a bad hire. That's a really bad one. That could be the winner. What do you do with anesthetic? I guess I'm out of the loop. Anesthetic is what you inject. No, he's saying, like, what do they need it for? Like, what were they stealing it for? For, like, root canals, for, like, people removal. Oh, I know that. Oh. Not why the dentist needs it. So they don't feel anything. Okay. You can...

00:15:32 So a dentist is this doctor that works out. Morgan tells me why the dentist is going to use it. Well, my dad is. So I'm like... Like, uh... No, there are people who shoot themselves up with anesthetic. Okay. All right. We've had... That's their high? Yeah. It's just... Oh, my mouth is not... People have come into my dad's office and stole anesthetic out of drawers before. Wow. To shoot themselves up. They just shoot it up like heroin almost. Really? Okay. You can tell yourself that way, though. All right. Wow. Seems like a bad hire. Yeah. Let's not give anybody any advice. Yeah, this is not... Wow. Do not do that. Do not do this. We just cut that part out. So don't do that. Yeah. Bad hire. I said that was my last one, but this one's really short, and it's kind of funny. Just shows, like, how stupid some people are.

00:16:14 I worked for a private ambulance company for a while. One of my coworkers had a patient die in the ambulance with her. Then she told the person driving to pull over. She took out a cell phone and dialed 911 from the back of the ambulance. What? Stop the ambulance. I gotta call 911. Also, what is a private ambulance? I've never heard that before. I don't know if you could stop a private ambulance company. I'm not sure. It's like when you order Amazon and it's, like, some random driver that drops off your stuff. Is that, like, the alternate for ambulance? I guess. Okay, that's all. I'm not sure. It's a private ambulance company is what it says. Maybe they didn't hire nurses and things or EMTs to be back there.

00:16:55 Just, like, people to be back there because they were just transporting. I don't know. We're already on the way to the hospital, but let me call 911 anyway while we're back here. Just in case. That's crazy. I'm gonna pull over to call. I don't know if that's a bad hire as much as it is, like, maybe it's a bad business. It's a different podcast. The sat hire. That's crazy. That's all I got. What about you, Morgan? All right. I have one that was actually sent in to me by somebody. This is the first candidate. Yeah. This is our first $10,000 candidate. So, and this is a lengthy story and she told it very well. So I'm gonna start from the top. And this is sent in by Kelsey Masterson and she works in the dental industry.

00:17:35 So another dental story. All right. She said, some mornings you just know the day's about to go off the rails before the coffee even hits your bloodstream. It was around 730 a.m. when the dentist I worked for, the owner of the practice, walked through the door with a little too much bounce in his step. That alone should have been my first red flag. He said, hey, grinning. I think I found our first new office manager. She'll be here tomorrow for her first day. Pause. He hadn't even posted the position yet. She said, no, sorry, what? Inside her. We're hiring? Inside her. Yeah. Yeah. He said, already halfway to the office. She's perfect. You'll love her. I stared after him mentally going through every job listing platform we hadn't touched.

00:18:17 Where the heck had he found someone? Curiosity and a strong sense of impending disaster led me to ask for her contact info purely so I could help guide her into the right parking garage, downtown Seattle. I mean, we were a mere couple blocks away from the space needle and the parking garage was hidden in an unmarked alley. What I didn't expect was that a simple reverse phone number search would spiral me into the twilight zone. Wait. So, hey, can I have her contact information? Just for parking. Just for parking. Yeah. A simple reverse. Yeah. She said, let me go find this girl. On a different note. Yeah. She was curious. I mean, we all are curious, I guess, when a new hire comes in. Like, who's going to be your coworker? This girl just took it to the next level. Yeah, this next level.

00:18:57 So, she said, when I did that, she went to the twilight zone. Well, her, not just one, but two escort sites. Oh. She was on. Oh. Two. Okay. Okay. So, her name, phone number, and very recognizable profile pages, all publicly available, were left without zero doubt that that was the same woman scheduled to start today as our new office manager. I showed our associate dentist. We both stared at the screen like it might blink first. She said, I'm not comfortable with this. And that was the biggest understatement of the year. We talked. We strategized. We debated whether to confront the owner or wait for the morning horror show to unfold. And we decided to confront him. But the owner, utterly unfazed, doubled down.

00:19:39 She has experience. Okay. Sure. I'm sure she does. Maybe not dental experience, but something. I'm sure. Well, she's probably never been an office manager of a dental. No. She's an entrepreneur. Yeah. The next morning, she arrived. And yes, she looked exactly like her online persona, but in an overdressed, straight out of a catalog, business casual disguise. No effort to blend into a professional setting of a dentist's office. She didn't know a single thing about our software. Insurance? Oh, dental is different than medical? Scheduling? Nope. Billing? Not even close. So she didn't have experience. No. Basic HIPAA compliance? What's that? But she didn't know where the back office was. Because that's where she spent most of her time with the owner.

00:20:23 The door closed for hours. Right. Right. Right. She said the rest of us were left stunned and silent trying to hold the practice together while explaining to the patients why our new office manager couldn't answer the phone or schedule appointments or, you know, be located at her desk at all. So she lasted a whopping three days. By day, I guess, four, she vanished. No resignation. No explanation. Just gone like a fever dream. We were all too eager to forget. And she said it's been 13 years and that same associate and the dentist and I still laugh about it to this day when I'm in the chair for an appointment. Wait. Wow. So I guess she still goes back to like her old office and reminisces about.

00:21:04 Okay. So she. Oh, remember that one time you hired? Yeah. Exactly. Like an escort. Hey, you remember that? Yeah. That office manager who only lasted three days. Like that's the story. What was the second day like? How did she last three days? It's funny to me because like, you know, she like brings it up every single time she comes in. Like, oh yeah. Yeah. I'm not going to let you forget. Right. Yeah. And I mean, like, I guess her second day was pinned up in the office in the back. Like. Yeah. I mean. Wow. That's all I can think of. So. It's a bad hire. Yeah. Should have hired that person. Well, I think there's bad hires sometimes by the company. Like makes, you know, it's like, oh, this. And then there's just bad hires for the coworkers. Right.

00:21:44 They're just the receiver of a bad hire. Yeah. Right. Yeah. All right. So let's do one more. Go one more. Yeah, I do. Yeah. Yeah. See you next week. This is from Reddit, by the way, y'all. All right. Okay. So the tagline is. Unaliving. Unaliving. Yeah. Unaliving. Okay. The tagline is unaliving. Unaliving. Okay. Yep. This says, I was finishing up an interview and said that we need to do a background check. So as long as you did it, unalive somebody, we should be okay. The candidate replied, well, what if I did? Okay. That happens. It actually happens. He had unalived someone in a bar fight and due to some other factors had only had to serve a few years. Wow. So. I don't know. You know, you know, I'm a big believer in like letting everyone tell their story.

00:22:26 Right. Yeah. So. I guess he definitely wasn't expecting him to say, well, what if I did? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that would have been like, oh, as long as you don't do that, like you're good. I think it's a lot of recruiters do that. Right. They kind of make light of it and say, oh, and you know, you were going to do your background check. You don't have anything. You haven't unalived somebody. Have you? Like it's a little bit of a. Like ha ha ha. Yeah. But also. But they're good. Sure. It's kind of like their way of asking without being, you know, like too harsh or something. I don't know. And then so I would guess that 99% of people go, oh, no, totally good. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing to worry about from me. Yeah. At least the guy was super honest. Yeah. Right. And, you know, I'm a big believer.

00:23:07 I'm a big believer in and everyone get to tell their story. And then if, you know, they've put it together and they're contributing back on schedule, then rock on with them. But very cool, I think. But clearly maybe a, you know, a close. They didn't say whether they hired him or not. No. I guess we'll never know. We'll never know. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. Could have gone either way. Yeah. All right. Well, you guys did awesome. Yeah. Yeah. That was good. Some cool stories. I think the cat cuddler still is right now. The nuzzler. Yeah. The nuzzler. Is that what it is? Yeah. The nuzzler. The cat nuzzler. Yeah. Yeah. Cat nuzzler still can't get that one out of my head. So I'm still thinking. That story had a bong in it. In my, our next episode, I have another story that has a bong involved. So maybe second runner.

00:23:48 Unfortunately, no one submitted that. So the cat nuzzler has to be taken off the top of the heap right now. I know. Yeah. The ones we bring in, I guess, don't count. Yeah. They don't. Sadly. Yeah. You guys cannot. Just for y'all's entertainment. So I'm encouraging everyone to submit their story so that they can take down the cat nuzzler and these three who aren't in the contest. We're looking forward to getting the stories and we want to read them. And clearly we have a lot of fun doing it. You know, the bad hires, you know, we want to make light a little bit of the bad hard. Like most of us here, our entire career, big parts of our career today, at least are about preventing bad hires. And we know that recruiters and talent acquisition folks, that's what they live for. But it's still, you know, everyone experiences a bad hire.

00:24:31 We all miss the mark sometimes. And it's often fun to just kind of make light of it, know that it's not the end of the world and, you know, reload and try again to find great talent. But I want to thank our sponsor, B-Checks. If you're going to hire somebody, make sure your next hire is not a bad hire. Screen them using B-Checks, a background screening company. Thanks to them for sponsoring us. And we'll see you on the next show. Thanks for tuning in to The Bad Hire. Don't forget to follow, rate and share the show. It really helps us grow the podcast. Got a story of your own? We'd love to hear it. Visit us at thebadhire.com to submit your story or connect with me on LinkedIn at Ken Monroe.

00:25:12 Until next time, remember, don't make your next hire the bad hire. The Bad Hire.