I recently asked the former and current HR employees of the BuzzFeed Community to tell me some of their wildest stories and secrets, and they didn't disappoint.
Here are 16 of them:
1. "I had two people that were having an affair. Both of their spouses also worked there. They only got found out when someone else sent us an anonymous message, saying that he had been bragging that they had a quickie in the work kitchen. The kitchen that, very clearly, has cameras."
"Guess who 'got' to check the footage! What was actually worse, was when he was finished, he wiped his d*ck on the husband’s sandwich in the fridge." —What I Did In The Shadows
2. "Former HR here! If you’re doing well with sales, many things will be overlooked. But the second you question hours, breaks, and PTO your work is immediately scrutinized by the CEO."
—Anonymous
3. "Young woman employee had a thing for ze’s manager. He was a married family man of impeccable character. Ze approached him and coerced him into an after-hours encounter in the office. Said if he didn't do as ze wanted, ze would sue the company and claim harassment. He panicked and did as ze wanted. The manager later came to us with texts ze sent to him that cleared him of wrongdoing and saved the company a suit."
—Anonymous
4. "I have 17 years in HR and I've seen just about everything. What most people guess but will never have proof of is that we are constantly using nicknames for employees so that we can talk about them outside of our department. We will use names that are uncommon or not the name of other employees so that nobody can guess who we are discussing."
"It's not all gossip though. We use certain letters for first names to signify something about these employees. If the name starts with A it's because they are an angry employee we should watch out for if we terminate them. If the name starts with an F it means it's a family member of an Executive so be extra careful of who is around us. The most common one is a name that starts with K, or a Know It All. You know the people you hate in meetings that won't let it end or have to one-up you." —Anonymous
5. "If you were a hot applicant, instant interview."
"There was a guy who sent a little pack of specialty donuts to HR after he applied, he got an interview with a recommendation.
Also if a manager of a certain department pissed me off, or just weren’t good managers, I would simply move applicants out of their department and into other ones so they wouldn’t interview for a terrible person." —Anonymous
6. "My ex-boss used to spend 85% of the day at 7-Eleven sitting in his car doing scratchers and playing games on his phone. He would sometimes come back with tall cans of Truly or White Claws and let us drink them in the break room."
7. "I literally just left my job in HR because I could not take it anymore. The ungrateful demands, the hierarchical bureaucracy, the inconsistent 'consistency.'"
"We had an opening once for a role and there was a qualified internal (within the company) candidate interested. There was another candidate, external and unqualified but he was a kid of a family friend of a high-up executive/BOD member. The wife of said executive called one of the HR business partners, screaming why the role wasn't already offered to the family friend kid. The wife made the HR business partner cry (and I am not being sarcastic when I say she is the toughest MF on the team) and there were zero repercussions. The role was given to the external candidate and the internal candidate was passed over, even with her internal knowledge, qualifications, and experience. Yet we tell everyone how fair and consistent we treat situations and there are "equal opportunities for all." —Anonymous
8. "I work in a staffing agency, so when I tell you I’ve seen and heard it all, let me tell you. Once, I had to fire a fifty-something-year-old man because he had urinated on the entryway to his workplace. When I asked why he would do this his response was, 'The bathroom was upstairs and I didn’t feel like walking.' I've had fake doctor's notes, threatening emails and voicemails, employees flirting and asking me out on dates, fist fights, failed drug screens, terrifying background checks… I could write a book."
—Anonymous
9. "A friend told me a coworker got mad at her manager so she peed in a bucket and poured it under the manager's desk. To this day nobody knows. Neither the manager or the worker are there anymore but the story remains."
10. "Several years ago I had to fire a guy for getting high on prescription narcotics and motorboating a female coworker's butt. She was standing on a step ladder and he came up behind her, said something about wanting to eat it, and dove in face first. The same guy came to me a couple years before that asking if the letter he'd received from the 'IRS' instructing him to pay a $2000 deficit in iTunes gift cards was legit. When I told him there was no universe in which the IRS would request payment in gift cards, he said he wasn't sure, and would probably pay anyway just to be on the safe side."
—Anonymous
11. "When a male employee told me (female HR manager) that he could not work due to his balls being sweaty."
12. "OMG there are so many, but the one I still laugh about years later is this one. A guy called in sick and said he had diarrhea and his fingers hurt, for unrelated reasons, but hilarious nonetheless when you wonder why those two symptoms are mentioned together. I had to hold myself back from asking what he was doing with his fingers."
Anonymous
13. "I had a guy who left after claiming I was breaking the law by making him work while he had a sick note. He didn’t have a sick note, what he had was a note saying he couldn’t lift anything heavy and since he had a desk job this was fine. I also told him that if he didn’t feel well enough he could still be off sick but it wouldn’t be paid. But no, I was forcing him to work. His father called me and screamed at me down the phone, threatening me both physically and with legal action. I told him to actually read the note — oddly enough he did and just put the phone down. I also had a phone call from a solicitor, and I explained the situation — he read the note (he hasn’t at this point), agreed with me, and apologised for wasting my time. The guy never came back to work, but I did hear from him a year later when he applied for another job. He claimed on the CV that he had my job 🤦♀️"
14. "Worked at a manufacturing facility in my first HR position. We had a system for internal promotions on the factory floor. The position would be posted, people would sign their name if they were interested and the individual with the most seniority would be selected. One time I posted the position and only one person signed their name. This individual had a great reputation as a hard worker. However, we had a new plant manager who was authoritarian and held onto archaic views. Somehow, he found out that the employee had a drug addiction in the past and didn’t want to promote him. I was pissed."
"I was even more pissed when management actually TOLD the employee that was the reason why. What did the employee do? He brought in a year’s worth of weekly drug test results that he paid for out of pocket (whether court mandated or on his own accord, I don’t know). He then brought in recommendations from his counselors and mentors attesting to his work ethic, his determination to leave his past behind him, his dedication to his new sober and clean life.
I met with the plant manager and told him we needed to abide by the internal promotion procedure. He laughed and said, 'Do you know what I think?' I said, 'No.' He said, 'I think he’s nothing but a druggie who deserves to be surrounded by four concrete walls, never seeing the light of day again.' I was shocked. I was also a young woman at the beginning of my career, in a position with no authority and scared to push back. I told him, 'I disagree but will follow your suggestion.'
The employee did not get the promotion, and I started hunting for a new job that day after I came home and had a long cry. There are many stories I have from that toxic place. Including a sexest regional manager who told me not to be nice to my colleagues because it’s unprofessional." —Anonymous
15. "I will absolutely single out applications when I am going through them. You mention you have three kids and you’re a single mom? Instant no. It just makes headaches for everyone when you call out eight times a month because your kids keep getting sick."
—Anonymous
16. And finally, "HR in manufacturing, we're a little different than your average 'office' type HR people. Manufacturing, not like IBM white room type of manufacturing, we're talking physical, on the floor, making product type manufacturing. Had two employees who got into a fight. One happened to have a fake leg from the knee down. As we're running over to their area (production floor was the size of 2 football fields) the guy unhooks his leg and starts to bash the other guy with his fake leg! Other guy's not having it and grabs the fake leg and proceeded to use it on the guy who took it off! Honestly can say I've never in my 20+ years in HR have I ever seen anything like that! Both were terminated if you're curious, most companies have a very strict anti-violence policy. Never did find out what the fight was about."
—Anonymous