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By Staff Report
Sep. 1, 1998
Apparently, there’s no end to dumb, strange things that employees—and even CEOs—will do on the job. However much we might have hoped we had heard it all (and printed it) when we reported on “A Day in the Life of HR” in our June cover story, it turns out (sigh) we had only touched the tip of the iceberg.
“A Day in the Life of HR,” you may recall, traced your days from the time you got up in the morning (very early) until you hit the pillow again at night. The report was based on almost 900 responses to a survey, mailed to selected subscribers and posted on Workforce Online.
The original survey included several open-ended questions that invited participants to name the dumbest questions ever asked by an employee and by the CEO, the weirdest question ever asked by an employee, and the worst crises ever faced first thing in the morning. Perhaps it’s a sad commentary on today’s workforce (and its leadership) that respondents had no trouble finding examples. We ran the best ones in the June feature, and also posted them online.
That might have been the end of it, but it wasn’t. Online, we invited those who hadn’t received the original survey to share their best stories. Many, many more were posted—most of them as memorable as the first batch. Here are just a few of our favorites:
The dumbest questions employees have asked:
The weirdest questions employees have asked:
HR’s worst morning crises:
And, yes, the dumbest questions asked by CEOs:
Don’t you love HR?
Workforce, September 1998, Vol. 77, No. 9, pp. 23-24.
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