20 HR professionals who had bizarre days at work: 'It was the most petty, childish reaction'

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Jul 29, 2025 5:00 PM EDT

Every now and then, you stumble across an employee who you just know is trying their hardest to get fired. Like, if you're a receptionist who picks up the phone by picking it up then slamming it back down to end the call, you're not exactly looking for a promotion. And other people have never met a deadline they couldn't miss. Then there are the people who literally clock in, stare at a blank Word document for 8 hours, then clock out, baffling everyone around them. You're doing worse than the bare minimum, and you're just daring management to put you on a PIP or fire you outright. Still, somehow these daring workers will keep their jobs for years after they stop caring about it… which can make things pretty strange for everyone else who has to pick up the slack. 

No one knows this better than HR professionals. In this line of work, you have to be very cautious about hiring and firing, and you're privy to tons of employee information, sometimes even camera footage of the workspace. Before anyone else in the workplace knows, human resources is aware of in-office spats, who's taking long-term leave, and which teams are getting eliminated. 

Check out a bunch of stories from HR workers detailing their strangest days on the job. Next, see how you'd react if you were the GF who got dumped after her BF failed her Instagram "test": 'I'm apparently supposed to treat her Instagram like a job interview.' 

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  • 01

    Hilariously wholesome

    Wiwig Worked in HR for a couple years now, mostly for large firms managing facilities within properties. One of the strangest cases was brought about because a Client asked us to review CCTV footage as he'd driven past the office late at night and noticed the motion sensor lights inside going on and off and was concerned there had been a break in.
    via u/Wiwig
  • 02
    Turned out our night security officer who's primary role is to monitor cameras from the control room was skipping up and down the corridors cause "he felt too full of energy" and had to get it out of his system somehow.
    via u/Wiwig
  • 03
    Watching the footage of him skipping featuring the occasional star jump through vacant corridors for 20 minutes at 1am really made my day
    via u/Wiwig
  • 04
    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.
    via u/Amia262
  • 05
    This new policy applied to all of the company's locations. 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
    via u/Amia262
  • 06
    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's location. Last I heard they were told to arrive earlier to get a closer spot and didn't get an exception.
    via u/Amia262
  • 07
    [deleted] 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
    via u/[deleted]
  • 08
    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, but it was the most horrible he ever felt for someone in his life.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 09
    thedarlingb of... 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.
    via u/thedarlingb****ofmay
  • 10
    BOh1c4 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
    via u/B0h1c4
  • 11
    him home and told him he couldn't come back until he showered. 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
    via u/B0h1c4
  • 12
    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. 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.
    via u/B0h1c4
  • 13
    The Union steward was holding his shirt over his nose and telling the guy "Gold in dude! You're killing me! You've got to take a shower!". 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.
    via u/B0h1c4
  • 14

    Wonder how long he got away with it...

    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.
    via u/StaceysDad
  • 15
    drinkthecoffeeblack I got a call from a woman I'd never spoken to, asking when she could start. She'd received a job offer after interviewing with a manager for a customer service position, she told me, but no one ever contacted her about a start date or pre- employment processes like a background check, and it had been a month.
    via u/drinkthecoffeeblack
  • 16
    After a lengthy investigation, it came out that this manager had fabricated a job opening and offered it to this woman in an attempt to impress her. She quit her job (but, it should be noted, did not respond to the manager's romantic overtures) with the expectation of joining my company. She got a settlement (with an NDA) and the guy who "hired" her got fired.
    via u/drinkthecoffeeblack
  • 17
    factsfactsgimmefa... I work for a software development consulting company where we go onto client sites and help them develop custom software. One dude, super nice, 7ish years of experience. Goes onto his first client with the company and all is good for about three weeks. Until the following happened in increased escalation every couple of days:
    via u/factsfactsgimmefacts
  • 18
    1. I don't think the manager likes me 2. The manager is badmouthing me to others 3. The manager isn't copying me in meetings, so I don't know they're happening and miss them 4. The manager is taking away my completed tasks from the board,
    via u/factsfactsgimmefacts
  • 19
    so i don't look like I am being productive. 5. The manager is logging on to my computer remotely and reading my personal emails 6. the manager is changing my (consulting company, not client) timecards - which the manager has absolutely no access to.
    via u/factsfactsgimmefacts
  • 20
    Essentially it turned out that he had mental health challenges and thought the manager was sabotaging his every move on the client site. Te paranoia just kept going. Unfortunately he got kind of belligerent at the end. I hope he got the help he needed, but it was super uncomfortable. How do you tell someone that their perception isn't reality?
    via u/factsfactsgimmefacts
  • 21

    His honesty is refreshing

    Canuckleball 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.
    via u/Canuckleball
  • 22
    Cheezburger Image 10535820032
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 23
    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.
    via u/McNugget_Princess
  • 24
    without saying anything so that it would stop ringing. 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
    via u/McNugget_Princess
  • 25
    trying to get some easy money and wouldn't be surprised that they were finally getting fired, the whole thing was just bizarre.
    via u/McNugget_Princess
  • 26
    Naamah89 Not exactly weird but... I work in HR and we have two people with the exact same name but in different departments. This still causes confusion sometimes but the most awkward was last year at the Christmas party. We have this anual "employee of the year" award and the name
    via u/Naamah89
  • 27
    was announced before mentioning the department or other info, although I warned the MC not to do that, as we had 2 people with the same name. Let's just say the wrong one got the most excited until he realized it wasn't him.
    via u/Naamah89
  • 28
    sm... I work HR for a call center. Entire company has around 500 employees, maybe 250 of them are in the call center. Entry level work, tiny bit more than minimum wage. A girl started her first week doing really well and then week two got really weird. She walked into the CEO's office (on another floor in the building) WHILE HE WAS MEETING WITH
    via u/smokefrog2
  • 29
    SOMEONE, to demand that he buy her a dog because she thought having a companion would improve her work performance. That was the entirety of her rationale.
    via u/smokefrog2
  • 30
    Edit: Many are asking. No she did not get the dog. I wasn't in the room with the CEO so I don't know exactly how he handled it. He is an exceptionally nice human being so I assume he handled it kindly. Though, I mean it made its way back
    via u/smokefrog2
  • 31
    to HR pretty quick so he definitely told some people about it. My colleague spoke with her about it and was just like, no, thats not a thing . she was fired soon after for unrelated reasons (attendance I believe). Also. many are questioning if she had some kind of mental disorder. I have no idea.
    via u/smokefrog2
  • 32
    she... 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 clusterf ensued.
    via u/shepanator
  • 33
    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 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/shepanator
  • 34
    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. When this was finally worked out the first guy was
    via u/shepanator
  • 35
    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. It took about 3 months for all this to be worked out. Moral of the story is use a Jemail address to identify people
    via u/shepanator
  • 36
    edit: yes the employees had unique ids, the problem was people were searching for them by name & tunnel visioning on the first result. Also I was suggesting the email can be used to identify people face-to-face or over the phone, I wasn't suggesting it should be used as the primary key in a database
    via u/shepanator
  • 37

    What was bro thinking here

    ThePrevailer Overnight IT guy started working pantsless. He was the only person in the building, but it still didn't fly. After being warned, he did another shift in his boxers and hit canned.
    via u/ThePrevailer
  • 38
    [de... I work at my family's business in the industrial sector, and HR is one of the hats I wear. 2018 was insanely busy for us, so we had to hire a staffing agency to get some General Labor guys in. It's a simple wax-on, wax-off kind of job.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 39
    The most memorable part of that hectic summer was one temp that the agency sent over for 3rd shift (Midnight- 8AM). We will call him Bobby for this story. Bobby shows up wearing nothing but a pair of cargo shorts, so we had to provide pants, shirt, and steel toes. Come break time at 4, he decided to go out to the parking lot. and scale the building (about 30 feet, probably climbed a tree or
    via u/[deleted]
  • 40
    something), had a smoke and managed to turn the security camera away from the parking lot. Bobby then walked away from the job and went home in the uniform and boots we provided for him. We assumed he wanted to break into some of the cars, but nothing was gone. Ended up costing probably $300 for training, uniform and just wasting our time.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 41
    TL;DR temp employee scaled the 30 ft building and played with the security cameras on his first day.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 42
    Cheezburger Image 10535814400
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 43

    This type of worker can be nearly impossible to get rid of

    Markovitch12 We had a woman who was terrible at her job, always off sick, never met a deadline. Any way protocol was followed. Because some people had given her half decent staff reviews to get rid of her she called in the union to support her. This dragged the process. Then when she got the final papers she sent them back saying she couldn't be fired,
    via u/Markovitch12
  • 44
    she was pregnant. This woman was 54. It turned out she had frozen eggs so she defrosted them etc. The process proving no discrimination then began. Six months go by, she gets served again. We worked at an organisation, big building in manhattan hence terrible beaurocracy. Papers come back, that isn't me you've sent the documents to.
    via u/Markovitch12
  • 45
    Turns out she had provided a false passport when hired, she was actually in her 60s. In the end they gave her early retirement to get it over with
    via u/Markovitch12
  • 46
    salientlife93 I was an HR manager for a small company that shared an office with a mid-sized business. Their HR manager really disliked us, mainly because our company cultures really clashed. It wasn't a big deal for a long time, maybe just a little tense, until one day they decided to terminate one of the shared administrative staff members. I wasn't part
    via u/salientlife93
  • 47
    of this decision, though I agreed with it, and technically that was their employee. The other HR Manager (let's call her Cheryl) calls me into her office to inform me the next morning that this admin had been let go. Cheryl made it clear, I was not to e-mail our companys employees and inform them of the change in employment status. As she put it "They'll find out
    via u/salientlife93
  • 48
    when they get in and she isn't here, and if they don't, well that's not my problem." Lovely. That is not how handle communication matters in my company, and I was completely uncomfortable with it. So I go to a VP and discuss what we should do. He says to hold off for a day, let everything settle, then go back and work out a strategy with Cheryl on how
    via u/salientlife93
  • 49
    to redirect employees who used the old admin until we can hire a new one. Most of our employees, unlike theirs, work out in the field, so it would be important to communicate with those individuals specifically, but it could hold a day. We knew that the old e-mail for the admin was being forwarded to Cheryl, so at least someone was watching the e-mails in case something critical came through. Ok,
    via u/salientlife93
  • 50
    cool. Not two hours later Cheryl comes barreling into the cubical area of our office screaming about how our employees are idiots. They clearly are too dumb to understand that the employee who was terminated the night before was no longer with the company. She was sick of getting our stupid e-mails, and didn't want to have to
    via u/salientlife93
  • 51
    deal with our incompetent employees e-mailing her non-stop. I was a horrible HR manager, I didn't know how to control my people. I clearly wasn't able to handle my job. Just insulting me, our employees, the entire company at the top of her psychotic lungs. I was clearly to blame, and she was going to get me in so much trouble. She goes running into the CEO's
    via u/salientlife93
  • 52
    office, and starts flipping out about me. It was a complete clusterf . She had friggin set me up as a scapegoat in case her lovely approach to HR went wrong, and when it did immediately, tried to throw me under the bus for something she did! I believe that someone had sent the admin a time- critical e-mail the night before, and Cheryl hadn't caught it, and the deadline
    via u/salientlife93
  • 53
    had passed for the item maybe 15 minutes before she actually opened the request. Thankfully I'd already talked to the VP, who was a life saver. Cheryl was reminded that whatever had happened was her fault, and she was told behind closed doors that if she ever did that again, our company would be logging major complaints with her
    via u/salientlife93
  • 54
    company, and the CEO's of the two companies were close friends. She told every new hire they had that our company was full of lazy, entitled a holes, and actively encouraged hostility between people in each company. She forbid our company from going into their part of the office, despite the shared (and partially paid for by us) soda fridge being over there.
    via u/salientlife93
  • 55
    Would host "office lunches" for her company, and bring the leftovers across the hall to other companies so that our employees couldn't get some. It was the most petty, childish reaction to her attempt to slander me and get me in trouble. We moved offices in under 6 months.
    via u/salientlife93

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