Dan Wilbur
Working in an office is a tough business. Firstly, you have to show up. Frankly, that’s 90% of the battle.
Secondly, you have to act “normal” and not like the slob you are at home. Thirdly, sometimes you have to actually do work.
Somewhere in between all these steps, someone in Human Resources has to intervene. Whether people are squabbling over the office kitchen or something much darker, HR is there to make sure the company doesn’t get sued.
Someone on Reddit wanted to know the answer to the following question: “People who work in Human Resources, what is the weirdest shit you have seen?”
People were more than willing to spill the tea on the funniest and weirdest moments they’ve had working in HR.
Here are the most interesting answers to the question “what’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen while working in HR?”:
1. Let’s begin with a wholesome one.
“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.
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.
Watching the footage of him skipping featuring the occasional star jump through vacant corridors for 20 minutes at 1am really made my day.” –Wiwig
2. And now, a dark one.
“Worked for a large trucking company. Every employee would get a present on their birthday (in the mail) and their names on the video board ‘this weeks birthdays are…’
A guy called to ask if his name could not be on the board. Reason: his twin brother murdered his parents and he did not want to be reminded of his birthday.” –_ana_banana__
3. It’s scary out 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.
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’s location.
Last I heard they were told to arrive earlier to get a closer spot and didn’t get an exception.” –Amia262
4. How not to drink at work.
“One of the dumbest things, an employee that worked night audit at a hotel parked his car at the entrance and would occasional go out there to drink a bottle of vodka in full view of the cameras.
He didn’t even sit in his car to drink! Just grabbed the bottle out of the car each time and drank in the open. Seriously, he could have put it in a water bottle and drank at the desk and would have not been caught as soon as he was. If at all!” –tanttrum
5. The side hustle.
“Got a call from our office in India that staff who supported the night shift were running a brothel from the office. They didn’t know they couldn’t do that.
Still fired. They tried to appeal the decision. Did not work.” –gay_flatulent
6. Literal weird shit.
“I’m not in HR but my sister-in-law used to be one for a large Canadian tech firm. An executive at the company got very drunk at a conference in Vegas and the company got a call from the hotel saying they’d have to pay for outside contractors.
He had rubbed his poop all over the walls of his hotel room and the hotel cleaning staff refused to deal with it.” –WhiteyMcBrown
7. Make sure to tell everyone.
“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, but it was the most horrible he ever felt for someone in his life.” –Stopman
8. Call centers sound pretty bad.
“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 ____ that she’s allowed to leave her desk. Oh my god… she’s shitting in her trashcan!'” –JayArlington
9. Magical.
“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.” –thedarlingbuttsofmay
10. Showering is important, despite what celebrities say.
“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.
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.
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 “Goddamn 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.” –B0h1c4
11. Two in one.
“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.
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.
There was also a guy who faked his son’s death for some extra PTO.” –drinkthecoffeeblack
12. Work-life balance.
“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. For years.” –StaceysDad
13. Same shit, different day.
“I had to see a video of a guy who shit himself during work while running to the restroom because his manager wouldn’t let him leave a meeting early… the guy had IBD and the manager knew this, so the video show him running down the hall and literally a few feet from the restrooms, he starts shitting himself and you see it coming down his leg pant. He looked to be in pain cause he kinda collapsed, and then got back up.
People were baffled when they saw this live. Manager = Fired, so definitely the weirdest shit I’ve ever seen, literally.” –jr71727
14. University HR must be the weirdest.
“At my university, there were steam tunnels – underground passages for big pipes carrying steam to heat the buildings. One of the music grad students made his own little living area in one of the tunnels.
He stole books from the music library, and lined the tunnel with them. He STOLE A HARPSICHORD and would have little concerts for his friends, in the tunnel.
He later started a cult.” –aRoseBy
15. The drugs could have come from anywhere.
“I used to work at a staffing agency that placed people at manufacturing positions. Everyone had to be drug tested at the office as part of the orientation. If the pee cup came back as “inconclusive”, we’d send the potential hire to a medical lab. They would take another drug test and the lab could determine if the person was on a prescription or using illegal drugs (and therefore, not eligible for hire).
So one guy failed his drug test at the lab. He came back to the office claiming that it wasn’t his fault. He explained that he he was riding in a car and he stuck his head of the the window. Then, when the car passed under a bridge, someone threw a bunch of cocaine off the bridge, it hit him in the face, and he accidentally inhaled it.” –dailysunshineKO
