‘The biggest turkey I ever hired’

I had the opportunity to work for not one, but TWO Turkeys when I was just done woth my studies!!
The first one would always brag about how much money we could make and how there was no scope of any office-politics, when all he offered was a commission on what you were able to sell, at more than the Market Price for the same product that was easily available at lesser prices.

I saw through his game and quit after 4-5 days.

The second one was talking all big-big things and was not ready to sign an appointment-letter or even pay my salary!I learnt that he didn’t pay any of the earlier employee’s sal either!

I quit in 1 month and never cared to know what happened to him since.

Got a job where the boss conveniently ‘forgot’ to mention key aspects of the job- for instance that my renumeration was based on certain sales.
A real body shopping experience. Once I did some investigative work, i realized that most of his employees were from other countries and that he deliberately treated them poor ( below market salary etc) because he knew that they would not ( easily) go back nor get a new job. These types of companies are actually quite common ( usually small unknown private companies – hidden from public view). They dont do much marketing in order to not attract attention to themselves.
I believe the government has thus cracked down on these types of companies now that the economy has gone south…pity we needed a bad economy to trigger this crackdown.

Annie here — A French boss who said that vacations are “out of the question”? Je suis etonnee!

The worst place I ever work at was a startup software company in Paris, France. And the managers were also some of the worst people I met.
The boss was at the door in the morning making unpleasant remarks if you were 5 minutes late.
But in the evening it was another story: it was a software company and a new version of the software was compiled once a day – most companies are usually happy with compiling once or twice a week.
The version was supposed to be out in the morning but was usually ready by 7pm… then the staff was expected to stay on until the tedious and mostly useless job of completely testing the software was done.
At that time of course, the boss and the top execs were long gone. I guess I never saw the boss in his office after 6pm…
One night, the guy who was in charge of testing fainted in the testing lab one night at about 1am and was taken away in an ambulance after too many nights on the job.
Another guy who was always leaving early in the morning asked once to be allowed to leave at 3pm on a Friday. He was told to use half a day of his vacation time.
At the beginning of the year the boss secretary sent a standard email to all the staff listing the holidays for the year to come and the way to submit vacation requests.
To which the boss replied that every one should be focused on the job and that vacations were out of question. The sales manager sent his email saying how much the boss was right – as always. The following week, the boss was nowhere to be seen. The boss came back with a tan after a week spent in a tropical paradise then the sales manager took an even longer vacation…
That was the shortest time I spent on a job. I slammed the door after 6 months. They went out of business as fast as they had sucked in money from their investors.

I worked for a very small company that had two partners. The partners were total opposites and never agreed on anything. Each would give me instructions on how to complete an assignment for a customer and the instructions always conflicted with the instructions from the other partner. Each thought they had the most say-so and would tell me to ignore the othe partner. It was a lose-lose.

To save money, one partner’s wife prepared the payroll. We would get paid on the correct day if she didn’t have a tennis match; her tennis life took presidence over everything. When I complained the partner told me that I was just jealous because she got to play tennis.

One of the partners threatened to throw me through his window if I didn’t do what he told me to do; he would curse and swear at me. When I finally quit he called me in to tell me I was a very negative person.

Ultimately they realized that they would never get along and decided to channel their anger at me. They would take me in a conference room and berate me for hours – I would be crying hysterically and the more I got upset the more they enjoyed putting me down.

Laws to protect employees do not apply to companies with less than 50 employees. I kept a log and finally contacted an attorney. He said I had a great case if I had worked for a large company.

Sadly I needed the job so badly I had to endure it until I could find another position. The sad part is these people destroyed my self esteem, I really needed the job and I stayed there for 9 years. I had to have counseling for years to get over what I endured.

I was asked by Human Resources to pick up a new hire at the train station where my new employee was face down on a bench. When he got up to meet me, there were imprints on his cheek of holes from the metal bench at the train station. He couldn’t carry his own bags because he was so hung over and threw up out the window of the taxi as we traveled to his hotel. Needless to say, he never made it to his first day on the job.

I used to work for a defense contractor where I reminded the manager of one her sons and was unfortunately treated accordingly. She continually second-guessed me, “nurtured” me, micro-managed me, and continually told me I wasn’t technical enough (I’m and engineer). She personally scuttled to jobs I landed internally in other departments. No wonder her son never left home! Needless to say, my career took off when I finally got out of there.

Before that, I worked in the MIS department of a local college where the manager tried to put me in an “office” which was known to have exposed asbestos insulation. I refused to move in to that office and found out that he knew it was asbestos from an earlier report. It made for a tense working relationship.

Went to work for a company as one of two accounting managers reporting to the controller who reported to the CFO…during monthly p&l reviews the CFO would swear and pound his fist and insist that “…our accounting system numbers are wrong, and we made budget…” The controller called me on a sat a.m. one time and asked me “…where was the additional $1.6MM in revenue I forgot to book…” I refused diplomatically…I also insisted that we “…did know the right (higher) revenue amounts on which to pay taxes…” Needless to say I was kept out of meetings and eventually “let go”…They filed bankruptcy within 3 months of my leaving…

I hired a administrative assistant for our insurance brokerage co. She showed up first day, learned few things. Same night, i received a message from her “one of her best friends passed away, so she would not come to the office. I called her, left message. She never returned call back. Next day evening, she left me a message again saying her friend did not have any family, so she would have to do all for her” How convenient was it to kill your friend than tell the truth. I had to let go.

Two “turkey employers” quickly come to mind during the 20 years I crucified myself in the retail investment industry. First, a few months after being laid off in the wake of the’87 market crash, I picked myself up and moved an hour and a half away to begin anew. About two months later, the firm closes that branch. The manager who hired me left a month after I started so I asked the gentleman who came down to break the news that we were closing what I should do… His response: “Call the Providence office (45 minutes away) and see if they have a seat for you.” Yes sir.

Then, many years later, I was hired by a father and son team (2/3rds of the Three Stooges – actually, the daughter made up the other 3rd)to work as a consultant in their Boston office. Unfortunately for me, Moe and Larry neglected to tell me they had also just hired an egomaniac branch manager for that same office. I lasted just barely a year.

It took 20 years but I finally realized I’m not cut out to be a broker. So, I’m a slow learner………

I got a job offer through a head hunter agency– “temp to permanent”. The salary I asked for was 100k, and they gave it to me– no questions asked. They told me the perm would be for 1 month, and then they would transition me to permanent. The same day, I received an offer from a competitor for 120k. I really preferred the 100k company, so I asked to them if they would at least split the difference (20K a year is significant).

The response I got was that they “would renegotiate my salary after I transferred to perm”. When I asked why my perm salary would be any different after 1 month, they told me “The job you are being hired for is slated for 55-60k a year perm- we can’t afford to pay you 100k permanently with the increase in benefits you will receive as perm”. 40K a year for benefits? They were making me pay my health insurance premium anyways! and the 401k match was 5%?!

BAIT and SWITCH if I have ever seen one! Needless to say, I took the other job and haven’t regretted it one bit.

I got hired this August to be a teacher assistant for a charter school in SW Houston. After 5 days of training and 1.5 days of school, I got called into the office and was told by the principal that they actually didn’t have any money in the budget to keep me, even though during the hiring process, he mentioned to me that it was possible to bring me aboard due to the surplus in funds this school year. Well, apparently, the budget “surplus” that the principal had mistakenly believed that he had had vaporized or did not come through. I was allowed to finish the rest of the week but was not offered any severance pay. Since this was my first real job post-college, I had no idea it was possible to ask for severance. Months later, I was talking to one of my co-workers from that school and asked him how all my students were doing and he replied, “well actually, Coach G. and I no longer work there anymore. We were laid off.” So out of the 4 new teachers that this principal hired for the new school year, he laid off 3 of them. Can you say biggest “turkey” ever for a boss? Who does that? This is a clear case of someone in a management position who shouldn’t be.

I used to work for a guy that made us say TGIM ( Thank God It’s Monday). We also were strongly discouranged to ever say TGIF. Oh yeah, he also developed a saying called ” Work is Better…” Better than what is what I’d like to know…

A part timer who was to work 2-6 to help with some of the daily financial tables the newspaper put out. The job allowed for break time, but within a week he was taking lunch. He went to school in the mornings, so it wasn’t a big deal when he ate at his desk. Then he was taking half an hour to eat. Within two weeks he was taking two hour lunches, coming back with red eyes and simply not doing the work. Despite speaking with him several times, the behavior continued. I thought I would have a problem firing someone (he was the first) but that situation made it easy.

One manager I had would come to work hungover every week. It would take him past lunch-time and several cups of coffee to get going. Then we would have to listen to all his dating problems and he’d constanlty ask the women for advice. He was a mess.

Some of these stories speak more about the bosses than the employees. If you hire someone who isexcited about the job, and then don’t show up for the second day maybe there is a problem with the work environment.

I left a great job one year, thinking that the new job would offer quicker advancement and more responsibility. People in my department had been complaining and I got to thinking that perhaps the grass was greener somewhere else, so when a former employee called to tell me about this opportunity I jumped at it. But it turned out to be the worst job of my life. My new boss acted like a “mother” and treated me like her child. Every morning she would corner me with stories of her child’s issues. Then throughout the day she would hand me jobs and go over them with me as if she was explaining homework assignments to her seven-year-old, or she would yell at me for errors in such a way that I sometimes wondered if I was going to get a “time out.” It was a very degrading experience, and the “advancement” I thought was possible turned out to be undesirable. After three months of this my old job called me and begged me to come back. I immediately accepted, and never lost appreciation for that job since.

Not necessarily a “professional” job, but had to be the worst hiring experience I ever had. Owner of a small “tea room” in a major metropolitan area wanted to expand into a full high end restaurant. They found a building in an average sized city that didn’t really have luck with expensive menu restaurants. I was hired by the executive chef as a sous-chef and did fairly well on his staff. I admit there were some minor issues that I was responsible for (nothing that affected the running of the restaurant) but overall it was a good learning experience for me.

After several months the chef, who had the right idea, clashed with the owners who wanted to cut costs, and the owners got their way, cutting his salary off the payroll. The assistant chef took over the whole kitchen operation and promptly changed almost everything, menu included.

I left one night, after a double shift, standing in the kitchen with the guy as he okay-ed my having closed everything down. I walked in the next afternoon for my scheduled shift and was told to leave as I was being replaced.

According to him, I was blamed for a problem that was caused after I walked out the door by another guy who left before I did the night previous. The kitchen was not in the state they said it was when I left, and I was being fired because I didn’t fix the other guy’s mistake. Not to mention that I wasn’t this guy’s supervisor, and had no idea that anything was wrong until I walked in eight hours after they opened for business that day.

It’s now only a bar, and not even a good dive.

Perhaps it was unintended, but saying they will “muddle through” with the staff they have says a lot about how executives feel about their “staff”.
They would have much better performance in their business if they spent time appreciating the loyalty of long time staff members. Replacing a high-performing individual is difficult and expensive. They should do what they can to retain and nurture them.

I worked for a company writing tech manuals. They got a contract for work in Europe. The HR manager, known for his online gambling habit while at work, couldn’t provide me with any info on working in the Netherlands or the contract. It took 6 drafts before they gave the Dutch a legal contract,just before the deadline to expell me from the Netherlands.

The job was a year behind schedule when I was sent in to replace 5 people. As a ‘manager’ I was told I could hire some help, but was never allowed to do so. After being there over a year, I tried to resign. The company president begged me to stay.

My mother was ill in the USA with terminal cancer. She called and asked me to come home for Thanksgiving. The company refused my request. Four days after Thanksgiving, my mother called again. This time I left and got to spend four days with her before she died.

When I returned to Europe, the company had hired an ‘assistant’. He couldn’t do any tech writing and had never used a digital camera. More time lost training him. I was blamed for his work.

One month after my mother’s death, I was terminated by the online gambler HR manager. We went to court, three times, they lost each time. They still haven’t paid me for the court judgment.

It cost me almost $20,000 to move back to the USA. I have not been able to recover it or other expenses from my former employer.

Check out the company before you send in your resume.

http://01wageslave.blogspot.com

Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Tom

I once worked with a manager who had a bad run of hiring luck. In 4 months he was a manager, he had the following hires (none of which survived) …

- Intern who sent a very large bit map of Yoda to everyone (200,000+ people) working for a large multinational company, shutting down at least 1 business unit.
- Contractor who after the first day indicated he loved the company and people but would need a small pay aise to $160/ hr (from $60) to afford to continue working there
- An employee who showed up in a 1970’s era lounge shirt, buttoned all the way up to the belly button, flayed open to show his chest hair, and refused to dress more appropriaely
- A computer engineer who deleted all “unnecessary” files from the computer to save space, including such files as DOS, autoexec.bat and config.sys.
- And my favorite the employee who on the first day wanted to be able to smoke in the software test lab, and when told he could not stormed into our VP of HR’s office demanding to know who to talk to about the smoking policy.

My worst experience was when I was hired for a major cable television company working for their IT department. The manager who hired me, Mark, turned out to be a psycho. He routinely yelled at his staff for the most idiotic things such as not running to his office when paged. If you were caught walking to his office instead of actually running, you get a 10 minute lecture with every other word being the “F” word. The reason? Walking instead of running “shows a complete lack of respect to him as a manager.” In my 2 months there just about everyone got yelled at several times, including the first time I was told to report to his office and he actually saw me walking there, less than 40 seconds away. He closed the door and to my suprise proceeded to scream at the top of his lungs and ranted for a solid 10 minutes about how disrespectful I was because his stle of management is when he says jump, we are to say how high. He also stated that he has a reputation of having his staff show up at peoples desk in 60 seconds or less, regardless to what floor they are on and anything less than that is grounds for dismissal.

To make a long story short he evenually got fired for his behavior, which included stealing money from the company (helped himself to the petty cash fund, how he got access the office is a mystery but he got caught on camera when they noticed money started dissappearing), promising a female colleague a mid management position if she slept with him, which she did and in the end he gave to someone else, and the icing on the cake: he sexually harassed another female co-worker in front of everyone and telling everyone present that as the manager he can do whatever he feels like and we can’t do anything about it. HR felt differently when about 7 of us went to them and filed a major complaint outlining everything.

the biggest turkey I have worked for was the director of HR at my last internship last summer.

Out of the 3 months I was there, with my cubicle sitting right infront of her office, she talked to me 4 times.

When we met, when she wanted me to unload her things from her car, when she wanted me to get her coffee, then when she fired me over another employee’s mistakes. She blammed me for the actions of someone I had never met.

I was hired as a systems engineer at a medical education company in Sarasota, FL. The project I was hired to work on was a year behind schedule. After a week of meeting the engineering department and learning the new product I came across a group picture of the “2006 Engineering Department” hanging on a wall. I only recognized the managers, it was 2007 and they had a new team of engineers. 100% yearly turnover! The manager in charge of the project then held a meeting and stated that he wanted to have two status meetings a day, one in the morning and one before quitting time. I asked him why he wanted two status meetings since there would be no difference in status between quitting time and 8am the following morning. He became furious. I lasted only 3 months there. The engineers that remained were gone within a year. 100% turnover in a year, again. That is the worst company I have ever worked for.

The weirdest guy I’ve ever worked for came from the corporate diversity program. They brought him in as a manager of our group, 13 people. When he started there were about nine white and four minorities, though none of us noticed. Within six weeks he’d transferred or fired literally every white person and replaced them with minorities. The business tanked about a year later. He’d destroyed a different business in the same company before that one, and went to destroy another business they assigned him to. He moved on and, last I heard, is now a C-Level executive at a firm that specializes in minority recruiting.

Turkey of a boss-put in for a long weekend two months in advance for my sister’s wedding.

Day before I was scheduled to take weekend off, boss called me in and started heaping new “emergency” projects on me. (most of his projects were an emergency-especially ones that had been sitting idle on his desk for months)

When I told him that I was taking vacation due to sister’s wedding, he asked “Do you have to go?”

I went to my sister’s wedding.

Also remember him yelling at very respected colleague in front of engineering group: “You haven’t done anything in two years anyway…”

Last I heard, guy is still a manager.

I once had a head hunter line up a job with a large insurance company for their network security department. I showed up early, eager to show my mettle to this behemoth organization (anyone remember who had a wild life show Sunday evenings?).

The interviewer showed up and proceeded to try and interview me for a Y2K programming spot. I discussed the disparity with them and we chatted for 20 or 30 minutes. A year later the same head hunter called me about the same company, we put in a resume and they rejected it saying I was apparently barred from applying as an interviewer thought I had a poor attitude in the previous interview.

The biggest turkey I have ever worked for, was a CFO of an entertainment company in Los Angeles. I started to work for him (as a consultant) about mid November and the week before Thanksgiving all of the top brass had lunch together. The CFO was busy telling me about project after project that he wanted me to work on through the holidays, when he addressed our head of IT. She was somewhat distressed about the 30 or so workers she had to lay off before the holidays. The CFO, took a big bite out of his steak and laughed, “well they won’t be having a Merry Christmas…” and laughed at his own joke. This should have been a sign to head for the door. The day before Christmas I was working to get out a report with the company’s ever crashing database. He handed me a Fed Ex package to send out, but we had already missed all pickup times for Fed Ex. I drove across Los Angeles to deliver the package to my friend (kindly waiting) at the Fed Ex office. I was happy that I was able to complete this task successfully, until I returned home and had a phone message letting me know I had been let go. To add salt to the wound, he didn’t include the hour or so I spent treking across LA to mail his package in my final check.

I can’t comment on hiring any turkeys. But, I can comment on all the turkey hiring managers I’ve encountered. When they first meet you and think you can meet their hiring needs, they’re your best friend.

But, when the company decides not to hire you or fill the open position, the turkey hiring manager doesn’t want to relay the bad news to you. So, they stop communicating with you…don’t return phone calls or emails.

Strange bosses? Here’s one – I worked for an entrepreneur who owned a chef’s association. He always went ‘home’ for lunch and came back with lipstick all over his collar.

As a sideline, we provided ’seal of approval’ ratings on various food products which were sent to me to be forwarded to a chef for testing. I came back from lunch one day to find all my employees snickering quietly. When I got to my desk I saw why – there was a 50-pound salmon on ice in a FedEx package that was leaking everywhere.

Marsha
Mint Resumes
http://mintresumes.wordpress.com

Speaking of turkeys, where are they finding CEOs these days, on the short bus? I view with considerable alarm the number of well-tanned, amiable imbeciles that keep showing up before Congress, from Ken Lay to those three buffoons from Detroit. Is the Hudsucker Proxy true? I am not just being a wiseacre. I think something is fundamentally wrong with the intellectual capacity of that class.

Worked for a furniture retail company and asked weeks in advance for the day after Thanksgiving off to spend with my daughter who visits once a year. I even offered to work part of the day. I was told no one would have that day off. The manager not only gave another man the day off but he took it off as well. I quit that day.

I recently took a job with a broker and her two sisters because they were behind with their client base. The broker asked everyone to stay up to date with their client base. The funny thing was that the broker’s own client complained about her the most! When several of her clients ask to work with me she became very angry and terminated my services once I got caught up with her client base. Since leaving three of her now former employees called me saying she terminated them when she couldn’t close her own deals! I told them she’ll be lucky if her business is around in 2009.

Happy Holiday’s

I was being strongly recruited by a company and had to take their psych test. I agreed but came to a question that asked if I was taking an economics course and knew one of my students was a communist, would I 1. talk him out of being a communist 2. tell the professor he was a communist 3. reject contact with him for being a communist, etc. I refused to continue with the test. I told the HR Director that it was none of my business if a fellow student was a communist and had he ever heard of Senator Joseph McCarthy ? He replied that if i didn’t take the test they couldn’t hire me. I replied,”I think that’s a great idea,” hailed my own cab back to the airport and flew home. That company no longer exists.

The second was when I was on my third interview and going to a corporate office. It was a three hour drive, which I offered to do, as a flight was expensive. I get there and the interviewer had not even read my resume. At first I thought he might have had this dropped in his ‘lap’ at the last moment, but he admitted knowing about it for two weeks. I said,”I drove three hours to be here at your convenience and you are not prepared ? I gotta go.”
I shook his hand and left.

I’m still with my original company after 25 years. There are great places to work at and most you’ve never heard of.

I loved the employer that hired me with Venture Capital money that they had not yet received, engaged in bribes overseas which wound up getting the VC pulled and then laid me off. I also loved the CFO who complained that the company of 200 people in 4 countries did not have the cash flow to reimburse a travel expense of 400 dollars.

That was the day I started to look elsewhere in advance of their layoff. They have a name for these things–FRAUD.

I just avoided a turkey of a job! After interviewing for what sounded like my dream job, I was told to expect and offer and was handed off to the HR folks who dragged out the hiring process for nearly 3 months! Meanwhile I had turned down opportunities for other jobs during that period. Well, when I finally got the offer letter, it was adressed to “Mr.” instead of “Ms.”, the salary in the letter was significantly less than what they had told me over the phone a few weeks prior (they denied ever giving me a different figure!), and – how appropriate – they had my start date as November 27th… Thanksgiving! Yes it is also a company holiday for them. Too many red flags during that whole process made me wonder what kind of a mess I was getting into. Good riddance! Gobble gobble!

After working a temporary job on the night shift for 6 months, the company decided to hire me on full time. In the discussion of my salary (which was $1/hr more than I was making as a temp)my boss told me he thought this was way more than I was worth and he would pay me $8/hr if he could. As an engineer with a college education, this was completely insulting to me. I accepted the job, then quit a week later to take a higher paying job with better benefits.

Some of the “worst hire” stories that are mentioned below have, in the white-collar business environment in India, become totally standard practice. It will be interesting to see when and how that arrogance bubble bursts. There is a massive ethical/cultural gap in employee behaviour between India and the US, which is persisting even in the current downturn.

All the companies (BPO and IT services) I have been managing have scores of instances of employees who:
- Show up on the first day, complete their employee paperwork, indicate they are stepping out for dinner (night shift employee) and never return. When called, a relative answers the phone indicating they are not there – or they don’t answer the phone and don’t have voice mail.
- Sign an offer letter, respond positively after signing indicating they have every intention of joining, and just don’t show up (when called, some relative answers indicating they are “out of station”). We’ve even played games by having an existing employee call them, speak in their native language (faking a distant relative) and getting the hire on the phone flat-footed in their lies
- Request leave for grandmother’s cousin’s funeral (no joke) in their “native” village which is granted – following which the employee never returns (more often than not, the “native” village turns out to be an IT campus outside Bengaluru or Hyderabad where they are at a new job)
- Indicate they need time off for medical conditions or issues when in fact they were contracting for a competitor on the side

The majority of employees in the white collar service sectors in India are unparalleled in their actual on-the-job work ethics and dedication. But the volume of hiring candidates today who display an overwhelming level of disrespect for the hiring process is staggering enough that it is not unusual for companies to actually plan hiring processes around them. The biggest issue is the signing of an offer letter. Indian professionals do not seem to understand that signing of an offer letter indicates acceptance. *Receiving* an offer letter and shopping it around is fine. But after an offer letter has been signed, one is expected to agree to that commitment.

How much time do you have?
Early one year, hired into a 30 person mom and pop business in a new Gen. Mgr. position after a prolonged jobless period. Four of the 30 employees were salaried, the rest hourly. Was told if I learned well, then after a year they would make it “worth my while.” Within two months of hire, was directed to document performance and fire the president’s brother-in-law, who had been there for seven years.

Quickly discovered that the job had a lot of responsibility with no authority. The president and her husband (a professional in town working in his own business) were cold, capricious and spur-of-the-moment types in dealing with their people. I do not treat people that way, and it was inferred that I was weak or unwilling to make hard decisions.

No office was provided for me, and I had to double up with the company president in her office- very awkward situation. After about six months the president’s husband took me to lunch to tell me she had problems with my mannerisms or idiosyncrasies and it distracted her work. Eventually was moved into a vacant cubicle in a high traffic call center area.

I began seeing the tell-tale signs that I was an outsider; i.e., not being included in key meetings or P+L reviews. Madam Prez told me at the end of Sept. that my position was being phased out, but retained me until Dec. 20; Merry Christmas. In the lame duck period, I painstakingly revamped the hourly employee performance review system and ghost-wrote each person’s annual review for her to carry out.

They got more than a bargain with my work, as I was involved in every aspect of the business, including the grunt work of package delivery to the post office, trash removal and cleaning and upkeep of the company warehouse. However, I kept my head up throughout the whole frustrating ordeal.

After my departure, the “restructuring” brought in a family friend to be an Operations Manager whose wife provided after-school care for the owners’ children. I’ve recently heard that there has been nearly a 100% turnover in the hourly positions and one employee finally prevailed in a worker’s comp case after fighting with them for a year. Glad it’s all behind me!

A business manager bragged about how while going through her divorce, she dated the lawyer representing her ex-spouse.

Talk about swimming with sharks!

I was hired to work for a major food manufacturer as a supervisor. Thankfully, in this economy, I was able to find a new job, but during my employment at this factory, I worked wtih pedophiles (2) that were in upper management, fraudulent plant manager who bailed said pedophiles out of jail, an absentee safety manager, and an HR department that would pretend to be on the phone when you walked past her office. One of the best replies that was given during a “training session” (by an HR rep): “Sucks to be you”. Yeah, I took the hint and got out of there!

Most impressive though, was my boss who didn’t talk to anyone… ever. Amazing.

This wasn’t actually a hire, but an potential employee came in for her interview. I was running behind and after she waited for about 10 minutes she stormed into my office and said, “Are you going to interview me?” I replied “I think I just did, thanks for coming in.”

He was a one person CPA office and offered growth and potential ownership to entice me in. Shortly after starting found out.
1. He would barter work for meals.
2. He got a large payment from a client and went out and spent it on new furniture for his house,(didn’t even have enough to run the office)
3. He was basically only days ahead of an eviction notice.
4. Myself and the two para’s would have to call the bank to see if there was money to cover our paychecks. If there was we would stop working and go down and cash them.
5. When I offered to review his corporate activities to help him organize the office, he said I couldn’t because I wasn’t an owner.
6. Realized I should have listened to my wife who did not get a good feeling after meeting him.

I stayed for about one tax season and ran!

How bad is this guy? He’s lost his CPA license; has been convicted of felony embezlement; and is serving a 12 year sentence for that crime.

Can’t say too much because there is a case pending with the EEOC. I have chronic illness so I requested working some mornings from home to deal with a medicine’s side effects. I was denied by my manager stating it was against policy and a detriment moral and productivity. Yet, that same manager would routinely leave work to go work from home when he had a big project due claiming there were fewer distractions.

Worst of all, he was later caught at his country club playing golf when he claimed to be working from home. He’s still there and still a manager.

Just out of college and looking for some experience I took a job in AZ paying about half of what I expected. The company expected employees to work 10 hour days plus 5 hours every Saturday. I was making less than $3/hour and no benefits.
I acquired some experience, but not what I was looking for.

My first “real” job – got hired after extensive interviewing and psychometric testing at an HR consultancy, went through their 6 month training program on their software and internet programs, only to sit in my chair for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week with no work. After reaching out to my boss hourly, daily for SOMETHING to do, she gave me a project that was meant for a senior associate. Subsequently, I made numerous mistakes, while not being supervised, the client complained and I got fired.

It’s sweet revenge to know that their turnover is now 75% and their HR director resigned after being told to hire cheap, young employees.

Turkey of a job

Yes, it works both ways! i once took a job where I had lots of responsibility and no authority to affect the process. Shame on employers for defining such a Catch-22 job. Lately, the employer is now in the “bailout” line asking for gov’t help. I’ve moved on.

I once hired someone because he was very professional and seemed to have good morals. Shortly after accepting the position, he began speaking to our middle-eastern customers in their voice. And, no, he wasn’t Frank Calienda.

Our firm at the time needed a highpower executive. They tried to steal a guy from another firm by wining and dining him, even taking him to the chairman’s home in another state. On his first official day, he interviewed me about what he should be looking for in his department about the company. I advised him and gave a bit of history about the company. I returned to my office to continue working. The next day he did not return to work, but returned to his old job. What a turkey, but a smart one. I left the company three months later (a screwed up bank mg’ment will do it every time, take a look at citi).

The worst hire I ever made wasn’t even my hire. My manager interviewed and hired someone for my department on my day off. After two weeks of training he came in for his first real day of work, picked up his check for his training days, and left. However, I was written up for the bad hiring decision because “I didn’t do enough to retain that person”. I quit that job shortly after that.

During college i worked for a landscaping company where the owner was so cheap he had us keep using old half broken equipment. They had one tall step ladder that i had to use several times that was rated for 150lb (i weighted 180) that also had cracks in it. Probably not to smart on my part to even get on the thing as it did finally completely break and leave me hanging onto a beam. Also fun was the 20 year old pick up truck that i had to hold the drivers side door every time i went around a curve or it would fly open.

My favorite thing though was that he would change the time on the clock in the office to 8am when the last person showed up for work.

Hiring contract help is fun. Hired one guy for help with a large project, after 1 1/2 days of orientation with our systems, he left his badge on admin’s desk on his way to lunch and never came back. The next guy was openly combative with his team, and the next wanted to work from home full time.