'He got laid off. An hour into his first day': 10+ wild workplace stories as told by HR

Author image for Ben Weiss
Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Sep 6, 2023 4:00 PM EDT

We often talk about how HR is not your friend here on FAIL Blog. That being said, there are always good apples everywhere, and you know with certainty that some of these HR professionals have seen some wild stuff. It could be during the hiring process, when HR employees and hiring managers end up hearing some pretty ridiculous demands or inappropriate remarks from potential job candidates. It could be a crazy story from a boss or CEO, who has pretty backward standards when it comes to workplace behavior and practices. And, of course, it could be during the firing process, where HR professionals often find themselves having to clean up the mess of other folks. 

 

In short, while it might be convenient to blame workplace problems on the human resources department, always consider looking more closely before placing any immediate blame because it very well may not be HR's fault at all. Keep scrolling below for this collection of horrendous HR stories. For more content like this, here is a compilation of stories where employees quit their jobs on the spot.

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  • 01
    Tie - "You've got to take a shower"
    via Sebastian Herrmann
  • 02
    Font - r/AskReddit. Posted by u/Dankuser2020 3 People who work in Human Resources, what is the weirdest so you have seen?
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 03
    Font - StaceysDad The maintenance guy had been living up above the ceiling of the building. He had built a little cubby living area with electricity and a small fridge and everything. Edit: For years. 44.8k Share ...
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 04
    Font - shepanator 2 I used to work in HR at a large corporation. There was a big HR back- office team doing a lot of processing and data entry including employee's bank info for their salary. It just so happened that on the same day two employees with the same name started, and a huge cluster ensued.
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 05
    Font - First the banking information was entered for the wrong person, one of them realised and had it corrected, but the other wasn't fixed so both salaries went to one person
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 06
    Font - The unpaid guy started refusing to come to work, but payroll said that the payment cleared and the account was in his name, so he was terminated for refusing to come to work.
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 07
    Font - He kept calling and the HR support team kept misidentifying him as the other guy who was still working for us, so when they raised a ticket to get his bank information changed they changed the info of the wrong guy, so now the guy who doesn't work for us is getting paid the salary of a guy who does.
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 08
    Font - When this was finally worked out the first guy was given his job back, but on his first day back security misidentified him and issued him a badge of the other employee, so now he was clocking hours for the other guy and not getting paid again because he never clocked in for himself.
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 09
    Font - It took about 3 months for all this to be worked out. Moral of the story is use a Demail address to identify people
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 10
    Font - thedarlingbuttsofmay I once had a temp job in HR. I was scanning lots of old personnel files, and the one perk of the job was reading old complaints against people. The best one I came across was a mediation caused by one member of staff accusing another of witchcraft. 30.7k Share
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 11
    Font - Canuckleball S Guy came in to the interview in sweatpants and a hoodie, and said he didn't need the job because of how much money he was making illegally, but he wanted to have a job so the IRS didn't get suspicious. Weirdest part is I don't live in America, I very much doubt the IRS cares about Canadian tax returns. 27.9k Share
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 12
    Font - McNugget_Princess. The new receptionist was coming in every morning and opening up programs/documents to make it look like they were busy, and they'd sit with one hand on their mouse and one hand on their keyboard and stare blankly at their screen for 8 hours a day and not do anything. They'd also consistently pick up the phone and hang it up without saying anything so that it would stop ringing.
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 13
    Font - I sat in on their termination, and the employee started screaming at the manager about how they were doing an amazing job, and they had to give them another chance... I was 100% confident that they were just trying to get some easy money and wouldn't be surprised that they were finally getting fired, the whole thing was just bizarre. 15.1k Share ...
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 14
    Font - JayArlington Call center employee calls HR to complain about their supervisor: "He's abusive... he won't even let me leave my desk." Supervisor calls HR to complain about employee: "can you please tell allowed to leave her that she's desk. Oh my god... she's Din her trashcan!" It may sound humorous, but there was significant mental issues at the heart of this. 14.2k ↓ Share
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 15
    Font - B meg_w1111. The family of the guy who passed away came to speak to us (it was in a factory environment). To get pension docs etc. We sent them away with a to do list. 1 hour later reception pinged us saying Mr Xs family was here. Strange. The documents take a few days to get. Nope. New family. Yup. The guy had 2 different families. Who were about to have a fun surprise 13.7k ↓ Share ...
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 16
    Font - Garimasaurus One of my relatives worked in tech support for a really high-profile company in Silicon Valley during the height of the dot com boom. Some guy who desperately wanted to work there was emailing his resume to HR one thousand times every day. Several times a day, the number of emails would get too overwhelming. So the people in HR would just select all the emails in the inbox and delete all of them, whether the emails were from the applicant or not. My relative had to show them
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 17
    Font - Stopman My dad works in HR. He just told me about a day when they had to layoff about half of the company. It was crazy and there were a whole lot of moving parts that day. Unfortunately, in all the craziness, no one remembered to tell this one new hire that sadly the position he was hired for was no longer affordable. So he came in to the office only to see everyone clearing out their desks and leaving. And then...he got laid off. An hour into his first day. He said the guy understood, b
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 18
    Font - B0h1c4 . I've shared this story before, but... An employee (from a different country and culture) never showered. He said that whee ehe comes from, they shower about once a month. His coworkers complained of the smell, which was gaggingly offensive. His supervisor eventually sent him home and told him he couldn't come back until he showered.
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 19
    Font - It was a union business and the guy filed a grievance with the union steward. They came into my office, which has a camera because it was where we had all major disciplinary meetings. The moment they walked into my office, I almost gagged from the smell. It was suffocating. I had two chairs in front of my desk and I asked them to take a seat while I went and pulled his file. When I left, I pulled the door closed behind me.
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 20
    Font - I went to my boss's office, told him the situation and asked him to pull up the camera in my office. It was hilarious. The Union steward was holding his shirt over his nose and telling the guy dude! You're Sme! take a shower!". me! You've got to
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 21
    Font - After letting them marinate in the stench for about 10 minutes, I went back in and the Union steward retracted his greviance and agreed to send the guy home. 4.8k Share
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 22
    Font - Amia262. I no longer work in HR or at this company, but it's my favorite story from my time there. Our benefits team made the decision to eliminate reserved parking as lots of employees were frustrated when they walked past dozens of empty spots in the reserved lots every day. This new policy applied to all of the company's locations.
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 23
    Font - Of course, the benefits manager received hundreds of complaints in the first few days from people insisting they needed an exception for their own personal spot. The best reason by far was from one person who "needed a spot close to the door because they were terrified of bobcats". No other context. We didn't have bobcats near the corporate office so at first we thought they meant construction equipment? Turns out there actually were sightings of bobcats, like the animal, near this person
    via u/Dankuser2020
  • 24
    Font - Last I heard they were told to arrive earlier to get a closer spot and didn't get an exception. 4.7k Share
    via u/Dankuser2020

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workplace-stories toxic-manager employee fired work stories toxic-workplace manager job askreddit toxic-boss Office human resources Horrible Bosses reddit thread Reddit quitting toxic-work-environment
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