What's the worst "HR is not your friend" story you've witnessed/experienced?
HR hired consultants to run morale building employee input sessions.
Basically saying "We're not from the company.
You can tell us all the things you don't like about working here and would like to see changed and we'll put it all into a report for management.
Don't worry, everything is anonymous, we just need material for our report and you guys get to have your say in improving things around here."
Turns out HR and the consultants recorded all the sessions and played the highlights for management.
People were disciplined for criticising the company or their immediate superiors and any shred of faith or trust in management that the employees may
have had was instantly incinerated.
Managers now complain that they don't know what's going on in their teams because nobody tells them anything.
I wonder why.
HR ordered me to downgrade my three excellent employee reviews to satisfactory because management didn’t recognize their names.
I got written up for telling my employees this.
HR denied that they told me anything, even though I had the emails from them documenting it.
Totally worth it.
My employees were excellent and got the raises they deserved.
Every second Friday of the month people in my office would get drinks after work.
One time it happened to fall on my birthday.
Because they let me pick the bar, I figured I would just invite some friends there too to meet up with me after (usually these drinks lasted from like 4-5:30 with my coworkers).
Well...one coworker, who was generally a bit odd, stayed and sort of stuck to me and my friends.
I didn't really want her there, but she couldn't take a hint and I was 3 cocktails in, so I just gave up and didn't say anything.
One of my friends starts talking about sex... nothing particularly vulgar or kinky, or even about our personal lives... it was mainly just about the politics of sex and
relationships.
The following Tuesday I got an email from hr about having inappropriate conversations of a sexual nature with coworkers.
I tried to explain what happened, and even though I think the person believed me (and other workers corroborated my story) I was written up for sexual misconduct.
I obviously did not want that on my record so I escalated it all the way up the company, and eventually, we had a four-hour meeting with a regional HR person where my coworker just cried and caved.
Then afterward she had a bunch of people in trouble for a toxic work environment because nobody wanted to be around her and she was never invited to any social events.
It was the dumbest
beep thing I've ever experienced.
edit: getting a lot of messages, and i can't respond to them all.
but my blanket statement to everyone is that yes, as an individual, she sucked, but that doesn't mean all HR reports of sexual harassment or misconduct are false and unwarranted.
please don't use this to push that type of agenda.
also, like I said, she was *odd...* not so much a Karen, but like a former jehovah's witness who was homeschooled and did not know how to function in the real world.
Overall I've been able to get along with HR departments with one exception.
I was working a help desk job for a company during college and the head of HR called in for help.
He was making an Excel spreadsheet and couldn't figure out how to make a formula do what he wanted.
I offered to come take a look as we were in the same building and he told me I couldn't because the spreadsheet was full of confidential information.
So I asked then if he could describe what exactly he was trying to do without giving away any specific info, and he told me that what he was trying to do was confidential.
So I clarified that he wanted me to tell him how to do something but I couldn't see it
and he wouldn't even tell me what it was he was trying to do.
At that point he agreed that I wouldn't be able to assist him since he couldn't divulge anything.
As soon as we hung up he called my boss to complain that I was useless.
I worked at a smallish company that grew big enough to hire a hr person.
Her office was down from mine so in the mornings I'd swing by and say hi.
That turned into grabbing a cup of coffee she had just made, the into having a pastry and talking about life.
I found that if I mentioned someone's name in passing, a few minutes later she would spill the beans about that person's life.
What work issues they had, health issues, family issues etc.
I learned really quick any issues I had not to take them to her.
She made it like 6months before she got fired.
Upon giving two weeks notice, I get this stupid rant about millennial snowflakes, how we can't take the stress of a real job, and how we think we're so important and unique, but in reality the only thing that would happen, is that they would find another engineer to fill in for me, and things would be like I never existed.
After the initial shock, I replied with a "you are absolutely correct.
Me staying or not is meaningless.
Consider my resignation immediate from this moment, please give me the paperwork to sign."
At my last "real" job before striking out on my own I had an exit interview with the HR lady.
Who was actually just someone who was friends with the company president who was filling in because the actual HR lady with a degree in HR and everything quit.
A lot of people at this place quit.
It was a terrible place to work with out of touch management and delusions of grandeur limping along building websites for a business niche that was mostly old people who thought the Internet was magic.
During the exit interview she asked why I was leaving.
I told her
I liked my coworkers a lot, but hated the company.
She got this exasperated look and got genuinely upset, and told me that she'd been getting that same line from everybody else who quit and had their exit interview recently.
It boggled my mind that they could hear the same thing over and over again from so many people putting in their time until they could go on to something better and not stop to think they should change something.
I worked in the bakery at a Fred Meyers for about 6 months when I was freshly 19.
There was this like 45 year old guy in meat/seafood who was super creepy and all of the women in my department and even one woman who was previously in my department but was moved to another TO GET AWAY FROM HIM warned me about this man from day 1.
Somehow, any time I was on my break, he would "be on his break too" and he'd follow me into the break room and try to flirt with me the entire time.
Not only did he follow me on my breaks and lunches, but if I had to walk to another part of the store to get anything he would run to catch up to me and walk with me,
he followed me to my car a few times after I got off shift and the scariest time was when I was closing by myself and he came into the back of the bakery and kept following me around the long table, trying to grab me while telling me how much he liked me and how badly he wanted to be with me.
I told him no and to leave me alone CONSTANTLY while managers just shrugged and said "that's just how he is".
My boyfriend threatened him when he got off work one time hell even my father came in and threatened him because NO ONE was doing ANYTHING.
The final straw for me was one night when I was closing alone again he came into the back area and followed me into the freezer and tried to kiss me and he grabbed my ass.
I pushed him and beep ran to the closing manager who also functioned as HR.
He said he'd "watch the store footage" and talk to me the next day.
Next day comes and he pulls me into his office and says that he saw the video and saw this man stalking me inside and outside of work and that he "talked" to him about his behavior to which the man responded that it was just a "misunderstanding".
I replied that this had been going on for months and I wasn't
going to take it anymore and he had the beep NERVE to tell me that "He just does this to all the new girls.
As soon as another girl gets hired he'll leave me alone."
I told him he was a bastard and quit on the spot.
Turns out the creep was the brother of the stores owner who had been to jail in the past for sexual assault and RAPE but was now "cleaning his life up".
Tldr: 45 year old man stalked 19 year old me for 6 months trying to be with me.
Told managers on many occasions they didn't listen.
Guy finally assaults me, managers talk with him -
he says it's a misunderstanding.
Manager says he "just does this to all the new girls and when a new girl gets hired he'll chase her and not me".
Turns out guy is a registered sex offender for sexual assault AND rape but he's the little brother of the stores owner so he gets a pass.
Not HR but heed my warning: don't type ANYTHING into your work computer that you wouldn't say directly to your company's HR person's face.
I have seen people had cases built against them for poor work and ultimately fired for the beep they say over Skype.
HR person used her position to collect intel to get people she didn’t like fired.
When I started my job, the person that was training me was telling me that a lead in a different department had been sexually harassing her, and she finally told HR about it.
HR pulled their chat logs, and since she had called him a dick for calling her a hooker, she also got written up.
Not the type of answer you were looking for but....when the stupid, beep self-absorbed, air head beep twat HR person replied to spam email allegedly from the boss, and sent all the Info for all 400 employees.
Everything on your job application.
Sent to scammers.
Thanks, Kathy you stupid beep
We got a "Confidential Employee Survey" handed to us at work.
It had our employee number on the top of the page
This thread makes me understand Michael’s hate towards Toby.
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