HR Confidential A File of Wild and Wacky Scenarios

Unbelievable! A file cabinet full of strange-but-true-scenarios, submitted in by Workforce members as part of the Day in the Life of HR – 2000 study.

Tab 1: Not Ready for Springer Players

Tab 2: Lunar Sightings

Tab 3: Up the Second Amendment

Tab 4: They Were Expendable

Tab 5: Who Was That Masked Man?

Tab 6: Damn, Which One is the Unsend Key?

Tab 7: Scottie, Beam Me Up. Right Now!

Tab 8: Keeping a Straight Face

• One of the vice presidents (female) was caught making whoopee on a top-floor conference room table with a subordinate (male) after-hours.
• Our former CEO squired his secretary, paid her quarterly bonuses, and gave her an office with $50K worth of new furniture. He lasted about six months after that, and his replacement picked up where he left off.
• Our (married) president is having an affair with one of the VPs. They think no one knows. Everyone knows.
• Two contract employees were found in a compromising position on the copy machine.
• The CEO has slept with a large number of female employees. When these affairs end, usually about 4-5 months later, he sets them up to fail and they leave. He hasn’t been caught or sued. Yet.
• A former CEO and VP once “dirty danced” on top of a bar after the holiday party. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), I missed it.
• A VP was having an affair with a married employee and the lady’s husband caught them in flagrante deicto, beat up the VP, and threatened his family (yes, he was married, too). The company had to hire security guards to monitor his home.
• Supervisor A placed her daughter, Lisa, with Supervisor B. Supervisor B slept with Lisa’s husband, and both Lisa and Supervisor B became pregnant by him.
• A senior HR manager was released for doing the nasty with a temp in her office cubicle.
• A temporary employee told us that she was not able to climb the stairs in the warehouse because recent body piercing in a very private place caused her to have orgasms.
• I had a report from an employee that two of our hourly staff were “going at it” in a car in the back parking lot for anyone to see. This turned out to be true.
• An unknown employee tapped into the voicemail system and forwarded to all extensions the recording of an intimate conversation between the boss and a female employee, who were having a hot affair.
• Two women on a training trip were sharing a hotel room. One woman got on the Internet while the other slept and invited some guy that she didn’t know over for a little fun, much to the surprise of her co-worker, who realized what was going on when she woke up to use the bathroom.

• Two senior executives were caught mooning the bar at a company-sponsored dinner.
• I terminated a female employee who had her four- year-old son with her. On her way out, she stopped in front of the building and yelled until a lot of people were looking out the windows to see what was going on. She then mooned them all.
• One of our employees “mooned” other motorists from a company vehicle.
• An employee came into my office and said, “Let me show you this,” and began to pull down his pants to show me a boil on his bottom.

• The CEO of our company placed a loaded .45 cal handgun on the conference table during a staff meeting and stated that he did not want any dissent during the meeting.
• We hired a security officer, and later had to terminate him for sexually harassing our female employees, threatening me, and bringing a gun onto company premises. Once terminated, he tried to blackmail the company, and we finally had to get a restraining order against him!
• A female employee showed up at work with a gun to defend herself against her boyfriend, who was in turn being “hunted” by Colombian drug dealers and gun-runners.
• A former employee stalked me and was arrested outside my home with a sawed-off shotgun.

• Company secretaries were asked to stay behind to search the building when a bomb scare was called in.
• One employee accepted the job offer, came on board, and turned in his resignation the same day.
• During an interview, a mentally disturbed applicant grabbed a pair of scissors and lunged over my desk to attack me.
• I was summoned to corporate headquarters, where the VP informed us (his staff) that he was making an offer to buy the company. He was called out of the room and never came back … he was fired by the president. Meeting over!
• I was punched while terminating someone for low productivity.
• A manager wanted to know how to fire an employee and keep him happy.

• The president of our company dressed up like Elvis and performed at a Halloween party (completely out of character!).
• The managing director of a major business unit dressed up as Batman for a major meeting. The SVP of HR came as a Cone Head. They were trying to show they were “regular guys” and to loosen up the crowd. People didn’t know how to deal with them then or afterwards.

• A new employee, in attempting to learn the e-mail system, accidentally forwarded a pornographic cartoon to every employee in the company.
• A new hire began sending out daily e-mails containing moralistic sermons, sometimes based on conversations he overheard between employees, to our “all staff” distribution list, signing them “Reverend.”
• An IT employee hired a hacker to give her rights to everyone’s e-mail. She then began reading HR’s and the president’s e-mail. I caught her because she failed to mark some of my messages as unread.

• Someone who had been in a coma for years came in to find out where his family was.
• I telephone-screened a sales candidate named “Bob” who showed up for the interview in a dress and heels and asked to be called “Michelle.”
• I interviewed a woman while she was holding a large rabbit she brought with her.
• I had to fire an employee for retaliating against some little children (ages 4 or 5) who threw rocks at him. Our employee did the adult thing, which was to throw them back, injuring one of the kids.
• A clerical employee threw a typewriter out a window without opening it.
• I interviewed one guy whose example of dedication was urinating into a 2-liter soda bottle to avoid leaving his workstation.
• Someone sang to me during an exit interview. Everything that I told her she repeated back to me in a childlike singsong manner. I was very unnerved. She held her purse in her lap the whole time and I was sure she had a gun in it (she didn’t).
• I instituted a disciplinary action on an employee who was so angry with his boss that he frequently urinated into a copier to ruin it.

• I went out to the front desk to meet a candidate to interview, and when she stood up to shake my hand, her skirt fell down around her ankles.
• In the same week I received two workers’ compensation claims, one from an employee who was sunburned at a company picnic and the other from someone who sat on a toilet that shattered under him. What are the odds?
• I interviewed an applicant dressed like “Elvira.”
• A (female) candidate ran her big toe up the inside of my shin under the interview table. I think she thought being “sexy” would get her the job.
• I interviewed a John Wayne look-alike. He looked like John. He talked like John. He wanted a job being John. We hired him to be John!