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Loading ...Enter the HR Horror Story Contest for a chance to win The Office Seasons 1-4 Box Set
Have a story from work that would give your HR manager a headache? Submit your HR horror story and you could win The Office Ultimate Package Seasons 1-4 DVD set. We are looking for stories rich in nightmarish qualities, un-PC-ness, humor, creativity and originality.
To get you thinking, here are two HR horror stories from our staff:
Example 1:
Employee had been terminated by his/her foreman supervisor but the foreman did not tell corporate. He was submitting hours and cashing in the termed employees paycheck. When the terminated employee went and filed for unemployment benefits his former company said he was still employed, when he was actually not. The company lost $3,000 because of a dishonest employee not paying attention to detail on the field.
Example 2:
An employee used the company car to attend a non-company sponsored get-together, and picked up her co-worker to attend. They got in a car accident and it was the employee’s fault. Employee got in trouble for using the company car and having an unauthorized person in the car. The two employees had slight injuries, the driver sued.
How to Enter
Enter by posting your story as a "comment" to this Blog. You must give us your name and email (which won’t be published) with your story to be considered as a potential winner.
Contest Guidelines
You will be disqualified if:
- Your entry contains profanities
- Your entry is over 300 words
- Your entry is under one sentence
- You do not include your first name or email
Stay tuned to our Facebook page, Twitter page, and blog for updates to the contest and the announcement of winners!
Deadline is Friday March 27th, 2009
* all stories are subject to be removed from site if they are inappropriate in any way.
Posted February 10th, 2009 by thrivemarketing - Posted in Human Resources | |
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on February 11th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
My coworker had been fired by his supervisor but his boss did not tell the main supervisor! He was submitting hours and cashing in his paycheck for himself!!! When my old coworkers went to get his unemployment benefits they said he was still employed. Obviously he wasn’t, so he ended up finding out what his old supervisor had done behind his back. My company ended up losing $3,000 because of this dishonest employee and probably not paying attention to details.
Ok this story is crazy! My friend and her co-worker once used their company’s car to go to a party/get-together which was not sponsored by the company. Unfortunately, they got in a terrible car accident and the blame ended up on my friend. As an employee, she got in big trouble for using the company car and having an unauthorized person in the car. To make matters even worse, the two of them got hurt and the other driver sued them. This was not good for the companies insurance and reputation.
on February 11th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
HR Horror Stories…I know everyone who has any dealings in Human Resources has a story or five that instantly come to mind when they think about the horror of HR. The first story that always comes to mind for me is when I started advancing my career in HR. As a newbie into an HR role beyond an assistant I had to jump head first into learning all there was to know about interviewing. I had received several resumes from a specific manager who had conducted some interviews. The notes on the resumes commented on what the individual was wearing (hot pink polka dotted dress), looks (blonde hair), family (has two little kids), and other personal information that typically should not be noted. This information made me want to jump out of my skin knowing that it had the potential to get us in trouble for something related to discrimination. Wow…what an experience and the learning adventures that went with interviewing.
on February 11th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
Wow. Where to begin. My boss definitely holds our tips and keeps them all for himself. And we’re not talking petty cash either. And when confronted about it he’s “left them at home”. O__o. Yeah, right.
Also, this boss also fires people left and right but never tells them. So week after week they have to check the schedule and see that yet again, they’re not up there. He just tells them their on “vacation”.
on February 25th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
My husband worked for a small mechanic shop. His coworker was allowed to have his 15 year old son stay at the shop for a couple hours a day to carpool. One day my husband and his coworker got into a heated conversation in the shop while they were working. The coworker pushed my husband to the ground and his son attacked him with a large metal bar giving my husband life threatening injuries. Police and paramedics were called and both were arrested (the son spend 2 ½ years in prison for this.) The owner called me on my cell phone while I was waiting in the emergency room and said that the incident happened during lunch hours in the parking lot, so it was not work related. Also that he had not had workers compensation insurance for the past 5 years, but this was not a workers comp situation, so don’t tell anyone at the hospital it was. Little did he know that I was in the HR field and I knew exactly what kind of trouble he was into for not having that insurance. I made sure the hospital knew the injury took place at work during work hours. We also had a police report stating such via eye witnesses. In the end, the employer was fined heavily for not having workers comp insurance, he had to pay for my husband’s medical bills and compensation to my husband for the severity of his injuries. It totaled over 35K dollars. Just think, if he just had the insurance how different his situation would have turned out!
on March 3rd, 2009 at 8:49 pm
An evening supervisor took an incoming phone call from a citizen who had driven past the plant. The citizen indicated he had seen a male and female in the office reception area window in a very compromising position. The supervisor quickly investigated and found the call to be accurate. It seems a second shift worker was having an episode with the cleaning lady. The worker was suspended immediately and was asked to report the next day to Human Resources. When he came in the next day, we informed him that he was being terminated expecting no objection. We were incorrect! The employee pleaded his case stating he did not understand what he had done wrong since it was his lunch time when he did it and he was not on the clock. The termination decision was upheld.
on March 3rd, 2009 at 10:36 pm
I had worked for a light industrial placement agency and left after 8 months. Soon after I received my Social Security statement and noticed there was a gap where there should have been a salary amount earned for the time I worked for this agency. I called Social Security Administration and provided my W-2 form and had it corrected. Over the next several months others employees were laid off. I asked them to check their Social Security records and sure enough, they all had a gap where there should have been salary information for this agency. It turned out that the owner of the company was not paying his taxes and that they had shut their doors on a Friday and reopened under a new name and new backers on the following Monday. I recently heard that they were caught at their game, however, they are still in operation today.
on March 4th, 2009 at 1:59 am
I worked as a state employee, as a Human Resource Manager. Things change and in the course of events our HR division got a new director. This new predatory, demonic, unbelievably stupid director mandated that I alone (a minority female) could no longer sign documents using my earned doctorate degree. How was this “settled?” I had to legally change my first name to Dr. so now either way I’m Dr. (doctor), Ed.D. (doctor). I finally had to quit because I was continuously harassed and discriminated against. And this from the HR department Director.
on March 4th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
I was the ER manager for a finance company and one day I received a call from a branch manager about a temporary employee. She was apparently getting multiple cell phone calls at her desk. When the phone would ring, she’d get up and take the call in the restroom. After listening to the door, the manager heard moans and groans, which is when she called me. She didn’t know what to do. After speaking to the temp, I learned she had a side job as an “adult” phone operator and she was taking the calls during her work day. Suffiece it to say, we ended her assignment.
on March 5th, 2009 at 11:46 am
I was working as a staffing specialist for a large staffing firm. It was my job to identify candidates to put to work through a VMS, submitting many candidates and the VMS narrows down the candidates.
A candidate was identified by the name of “Nancy”, and she had a great record with our firm, so I set her up for the position. When “Nancy” came to my office, I thought to myself, wow, she is one of the largest women I had ever met! Standing over 6′ tall, size 12 heels. She came in and I was clueless that I was speaking to a man - - - totally clueless until my customer called me on Nancy’s first day to state that we had to let her go, it made her other male employees very uncomfortable for Nancy to come in and lift her skirt to releive himherself in the mens bathroom. Laugh or cry, Laugh or cry! Seems that Nancy was changing into a woman, and legally she had to use the mens room until she was made a whole woman.
Of course before I acted on this, I had to call our HR department and get some advice, after she stopped laughing and pulled herself off of the floor!
on March 5th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
I am working in a Software House as a Manager HR. Some days ago CTO called me and asked me to call a person who was going to join us the very next week and ordered that he should not join us. I was totally uninformed of that joining. I asked him “who’s going to join us?”, he said “I don’t know just call him”. That was really irritating for me. I called to branch manager and came to know that a new developer was joining us with getting any offer letter. He gave me his contact number. I called him and conveyed him the message. That person got annoyed and he wrote a long email to the management. The most horrible part of this story was that the CTO called me and said, “Did I ask you to say that to him? I just said that in anger due to some issues with that person. Now everything is fine, so call him and request him to join us”. I was just shocked. He was the CTO of the company but so unprofessional. I wrote an email to him and refused to do so. I also send the carbon copy of that mail to CEO. That developer didn’t join us.
on March 6th, 2009 at 8:19 am
I worked in an office that I shared with two other people. The desks were in a triangle with short partitions between us, but it is possible to see one another through the gaps. One co-worker is part-time, so I was frequently alone with the third. Right after lunch, before many of the other employees returned from lunch I would hear and see him participating in a solo activity usually done in the bedroom. Once I figured out what he was doing, I went to human resources. The manager told me that as she has only had my word about this, I should go find her when he does it again so she can know for herself. The problem is, she was never around when it happened. He would stop if I get up to go out the door and starts when I sat down again. Eventually, I would use the land line phone to call my cell phone, let the voice mail run and record his noises. Their solution was to move me to a window office and put another guy in my old cube space.
on March 6th, 2009 at 10:17 am
I had a coworker jockingly stick a gun in my face and pull the trigger. Luckely it wasn’t loaded. Needless to say I wasn’t amused. I confronted him and told him you never point a gun at anyone now mater if it’s loaded or not. Even if it’s only a pellet gun. A week later I find pellets all over my desk area and embedded in the boxes in front of my desk. Hear is where the nightmare begins. I went to my manager and asked to be transfered to another project, I told him I wanted nothing to do with a person that would pull a gun on me. I was told that I was being unreasonable and was told I had to sit and “talk” to this person. I responded with emails saying I saw no benifit and repeated that I wanted nothing to do with this person. Who then showed up at my desk. This seemed to make management happy with him but I am now the person who was and is being unreasonable. It is now a year later and I still sit here at the same company because of this wonderful economy. I dispise everyday come in. I know that I will be the first one gone if there is a layoff, because I am now a legal liability. I am an engineer and work for a very well known person (you would be surprised) if I were to make a stink he could make it so I would never work again. I have been looking for another job but because of the economy I am still here.
on March 9th, 2009 at 8:37 am
I was meeting a candidate at a Restaurant for an interview which included the General Manager and the VP of Human Resources. The HR VP proceeded to get absolutely smashed during dinner complete with slurred questions to the candidate. It was the longest interview of my life.
on March 9th, 2009 at 8:52 am
In a previous role, I was involved in the termination of 3 employees due to inappropriate emails and abuse of computer policy. Ome of our receptionsits, whom was married, was having extra marital affairs with 2 manager level male employees on a regular (daily) basis in threesome scenarios.
When we heard the rumors of potential inappropriate behavior, we did some sample server review. It turned out that there was email traffic between these 3 employees that was the most graphic discussion/description of sexual acts you can imagine. The adult film industry would probably be shocked at the deprivity of it. All told there were 9 4″ binders of printed pages of email exchanges.
When we spoke to each individual about this, the common thread was “why does it matter what we do on our lunch hour?”. Turns out they did not understand the concept of the differential of functional responsibilities (reception to management), nor did they recognize that at minimum 3+ hours a day of their work day was being spent writing personal and explicit emails.
Two “cherry on the Sunday” comments from these employees during terminations were: 1) Receptionsist said, “my husband is going to kill me for losing this job and will probably call here asking why I lost my job - can you please just say lay-off”.
Our lives in HR will never be boring…
on March 10th, 2009 at 6:46 am
A former co-worker was a Recruiter for Medical & Dental and I was a Recruiter for Medical & Nursing; she was constantly taking and filling orders from MY clients, even though my boss was fully aware she never did anything about it so it continued. We hired an additional Recruiter to open up a new administrative department and this same Recruiter stole an order from her and claimed it “required medical terminology”; however, her assistant had printed out a copy of the email from the client that placed the order and I accidentally picked it up off the printer with some of my documents. When I saw it I showed it to the Admin Recruiter so she could deal with it on her own; she did approach her but didn’t mention the printed email in an attempt to see if she would be honest about when the order was received and what it required. They had a meeting with our boss and she lied all the way thru it quoting different times & dates she’d received the email and stating it was “unclear” if the candidate would need medical terminology so she had to “check into it”. The order was given to the Admin Recruiter like it should have been all along…but knowing that she lied again was so frustrating and we knew it would just happen again…so I suggested to the Admin Recruiter that she ask her to “email the original email to her” so she could be sure of the requirements of the job. The next morning she did have an email in her box and it was a forward from the client with the details…but the dates and times had been switched to fit the story she had told in the meeting with our boss!!! The admin recruiter brought that to our boss and she was sick about it, when she approached her she denied it and said someone must have gotten into her computer and done that because she didn’t. After a thorough investigation by the IT guy it was found there was no way it could have come from anyone else…and upon researching the security passcode to see what time she had arrived at work that morning it was found she reported at 4am…three & a half hours before her normal arrival time, obviously so she could recount her story to be sure the dates/times were accurate. She was finally fired…after being employed there for 10yrs!
on March 18th, 2009 at 7:54 am
I left an employee to interview alone while I hunted down the other employee who was to be there & was running late. When I called to extend an offer I heard the following from the candidate: The employee I left alone had started off by talking about the area and describing the many things you could visit/do in the Baltimore/DC Metro area. The employee went on and spoke about how their family had been to DC this past weekend (what they did)… and mentioned how traffic was horrible because of a march that had been going on. Went on to explain that the march was homosexual men protesting a women’s right to an abortion. To my amazement - they didn’t stop there! The employee voiced the comment that they didn’t feel “those men” had any right to even have the march as they had no say biologically in the creation of children. I was told by the candidate they would never accept a job from a company that allowed their employees to express their political beliefs during an interview. I had to have had steam coming out of my ears after that phone call!
on March 19th, 2009 at 6:07 am
The director of a mobile telco customer service took part in a 360 along with his co-directors. He got the lowest score and his ego hurt like hell. He pressured his HR colleague to give him details of the ‘confidential’ results, promising not to compromise the confidentiality - and got them. There then followed a series of seemingly un-important conversations with the people who had scored him very low, direct reports - all good people both new and old-timers. He manufactured an attitude problem amongst these people and got hr to set up individual and group coaching, and slowly the awful reality emerged, that they were being disciplined for their input into the 360. I was very close to this group of 7 people, they were my direct colleagues & friends and saw at first hand how this Director manipulated hr to have all but 1 fired. I left a couple of months later in disgust at this ‘corporate culture’. You can imagine how this story became part of folklore, and how much damage was done to managements & hr’s reputation, to customer service and to the bottom line indirectly. No more 360s have been done to my knowledge and the director was himself fired 6 months after i left.
on March 25th, 2009 at 3:55 am
I used to work in fund-raising for one of the most pretigious universities in the UK, and my boss was a younger man. He was a bit of a bully and didn’t listen much in my appraisal (staff evaluation) but at the end he did ask me the required question - did I have any feedback for him.
“Yes,” I said carefully, “I do find sometimes that you are a bit patronising.”
He paused not a second!
“That’s because I’m so clever” he said.